How Instagram Saved My Life

Road tripping with Athena Grace, June 2015

*Warning: this post contains content about severe depression*

After about a year of not feeling like I could keep up with life and losing all of my motivation for life, I was officially diagnosed with clinical depression in November 2011. I immediately stopped studying my Graduate Diploma, I abandoned my path to my dream career, I quit my retail job that I loved and was really good at, I started anti-depressants and started weekly psychotherapy.

I felt completely overwhelmed but also was completely numb.

At its worst, my depression would lead me to "self-sabotaging", meaning, I would position myself in dangerous situations and hope for a terrible accident. I would wander alone around the city streets well past midnight, I wouldn't look for cars to cross roads, I even snuck off into dangerous, rocky waters at a beach while I was with my family on a holiday. I didn't tell a lot of people about my depression when I found out, though I did tell the people who needed to know. But for years, I never told them about these behaviours until I'd worked through them with my psychologist.

The tricky thing about depression is being so unable to do anything which leaves you far too alone in your own head. Nothing is motivating and you don't even want to be motivated. Thankfully, I was very fortunate to have a small handful of people who were able to give me their time, their patience and their listening ears. I was very fortunate that my anti-depressants worked on the first try and relatively quickly. I was very fortunate to be part of a clinic at St Vincent's Hospital that allowed me to have free weekly sessions with a psychologist. Having a routine was the beginning of me coming back to myself.

My first post on Instagram, April 2012

April 2012 was a turning point that I wasn't anticipating.

I distinctly remember where I was when my beautiful best friend and housemate told me about this thing called "Instagram". She knew I loved Pinterest so she knew I'd enjoy Instagram. I even remember exactly how she explained it to me. She said, "It's like a Facebook feed, but only with pictures. I think you'd be really good at it." I checked it out, and as you can see from the image below, I apparently already had an account. (I wouldn't be surprised if my friend had set it up for me in advance...). And so began a new platform for me to scroll through and become visually enticed and inspired.

When I started coming back to myself from depression, it felt like I was blank slate and I was adding bricks to be built up and feeling strong again. It wasn't even bricks, it was tiny, tiny pebbles. For me, some of these pebbles was being able to see the tiny, tiny details of my daily world. Hindsight shows me that I was reverting back to my old, pure, childlike love of #littlethings and this started emerging in my first few posts on Instagram (April 2012).

First Insta grid, April 2012

The biggest proof of this was when I stumbled across Fat Mum Slim's "Photo a Day" challenges. Before the start of every month she would make a list of "prompts" for each day and the challenge would be to capture and upload a photo in reference to that day's prompt. It blew my mind when I was doing my research for this journal entry because I found out that I successfully completed this challenge almost every day from September 2012 through to April 2013 - that's eight months of routine and consistency which is exorbitantly difficult for someone with mental health barriers!! Also note that this was right before mindfulness and "daily gratitude" and "adult colouring books" became mainstream. But even now, I still don't think I have ever stuck to something so consistently for so long as I did with these #fmsphotoaday challenges.

Still one of my most favourite photos, and the epitome of finding joy in the #littlethings, June 2012

This, however, was not the end of depression for me. It stayed with me for years after, and I have now developed anxiety that has overridden the depression. But this story is still so worth remembering and it still truly was a turning point.

I mentioned before that I was reverting to my old, pure, childlike love of "little things", but this was also me reverting back to my old, pure, childlike expression of creativity. I still look back at those Instagram photos and I remember taking each one. I remember the story behind each photo before reading the caption. I remember how I spent each monthly challenge desperately trying to avoid the cliches and trying to create something pleasantly unexpected. I was combining my problem-solving tendencies with the creative and abstract parts of my mind. The debilitating part of depression for me was only being able to see in black and white.

Being creative again allowed me to see colour.

Being creative again helped me start feeling like I wanted to live.