Huh?? That’s probably what you thought when you clicked on this blog post. Depression….. The X Files….. Right. I’ll admit, I’m a scifi fan, and the X Files is one of my all-time favorite shows. I’m old enough to have enjoyed it the first time around in the ’90s, and now I’m watching the entire series again on DVD. Yes, I’m a big nerd, but I digress.
A couple of nights ago, I watched one of the many alien conspiracy episodes involving Agents Scully and Mulder, Assistant Director Skinner, Alex Krycek, and a host of other folks mixed up in a thick plot. This is somewhere in the last of nine seasons, so alien conspiracy and high drama are not new to the regular viewer by this time.
I had a few thought collisions today, leading me to compare depression with the X Files. I was briefly distracted from my normal writing tasks when I recalled what I was thinking during the episode I watched recently: “Geeze, it always seems like nobody believes these people, even when there’s clearly a huge problem.”
They can’t tell anybody, they don’t know who to trust, and whoever they do tell surely will think they are crazy. Really, who would ever believe that the informant who is trying to feed the agents helpful information really has the scar from a metal chip in his neck because he’s an alien hybrid? Even though all the viewers and the key cast members know all about this threat, the agents never seem to know who they can trust. They live in a world of worry, peril, secrecy, and confusion.
Ta-da. There’s my connection. I have often said to myself that my depression felt like an alien had taken over my brain, though the takeover wasn’t complete because I still knew that I was me. I was just disabled enough to have little control but aware enough to realize I wasn’t able to get the alien out by myself.
I needed help. This wasn’t normal; I knew something was different. But what? And how do I describe this? Would anyone believe me? And would I wish I would have kept my mouth shut once I said something? How will this affect my job, my kids, my marriage? I can’t keep going on like this, but I don’t know if I can tell anyone either. Which is more dangerous?
And all Mulder, Scully, and Skinner have is each other. They’ve witnessed and been through difficult things that would be hard to believe unless you’d been there. Depression often is that unbelievable, too. Unless you have felt the takeover of your mind, seen the lost look on your own face in the mirror, and begun to doubt everything you’ve known, it can be hard to understand from the outside.
Fortunately, there is much more support and help available for people with depression than there ever seemed to be for Scully, Mulder, and Skinner. Those aliens just kept coming at them and they kept fighting them tooth and nail. Suddenly, I’m feeling a fond kinship with these X Files heroes – alien fighters to the end.
7 comments
Yes, I did – I got it in a Google Alert with and ‘alien’ tag and I said “Huh?” 🙂
I don’t live in a world of “worry, peril, secrecy, and confusion” but I do live in a world with menopause so I have depression for approximately 4 days each month. Like clockwork – every 28 days. I’m on year 12 with menopause but that dang clock never stopped.
My depression I can define as a degree (not a great degree) of derealization. When my daughter is bugging me to do something for her and I’m depressed I’ll take my hand/arm – reach out and pretend to be grasping the air with it. She knows that it means I’m trying to pull my reality back because it’s floating out in front of me somewhere. 🙂 It can also be defined as wool in the brain. Of course these definitions are everything short of the ‘sads’ and all that go along with that. ick pooh! Hate those times.
One last thing. I found something that works for me when I’m on day 3 of 4. My eyes are tout. I found that odd. I sat there and felt prompted to push on my eyeballs ever so slightly. I sat up and pushed to the point to where you feel like you’re seeing through the eyes of a fly.
OMG! When I do it I have this tremendous amount of stress release from my body from my eyes down to the bottom of my brainstem and I sit there and wonder where in the hell did my depression go. It could be very dangerous of course if done wrong and repetitively but boy oh boy what a difference.
Cute alien picture by the way. I stole it. 🙂
Well, it’s been swell.
Eileen
Alien, UFO & The Paranormal Casebook
X-Philes unite! Let’s not forget about people like Deep Throat and Mr. X who seemed to be on the ‘bad’ side, but understood the truth of the situation and fought in their own way to help. Let’s hope this is the future direction attitudes towards mental health take, with more people speaking out the truth. Also, there’s the episode where Scully, after Mulder follows some outside advice, asks, “Whatever happened to ‘trust no one’?†to which Mulder replies, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I changed it to ‘trust everyone.’â€
Interesting article. I liked it.
I found this while searching for info on a 3rd X-files movie, oddly enough… It’s really a good connection! Outstanding!
Very funny but relevant connection. It also makes me think of the stigma that can be involved with depression, it’s hard to discuss it with people who don’t really believe it’s a serious issue. Thanks for the post
Hi Erika, I’m also a big fan of X-Files and sci fi. It’s funny that you brought up the point about once you’re viewed as a alien by normal human beings, you’ll always be looked at as a crazy person – and nobody wants to believe anything that you say. Even if you have important information that will save the world from a disaster – How Depressing Is That?
Absolutely love this comparison! I already knew I was the female version of Mulder! People look at him like he’s crazy when he mentions the possibility of extraterrestrial life and I get odd looks when I mention the stigma surrounding mental health or explain that I can’t just “be happy”.