My cousin and I benefitted immensely from TMS, in her case, and ECT, in my case. While the procedures are vastly different, they are astonishingly effective in treating treatment resistant depression. Nearly 80% of patients report a lessening of depressive symptoms, but one thing that post-treatment survey results fail to capture is the depression that comes from not being as depressed.

The best encapsulation of what depression feels like that I’ve come across is from Andrew Solomon in his book The Noonday Demon: “You don't think in depression that you've put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you're seeing truly.” Non-depressed individuals have a hard time understanding that we (the depressed folks in the room) honestly believe that we witness reality in the realest terms possible — nasty, brutish, and short.

In my cousin and I’s shared experiences of success with TMS and ECT we got to see the depressive veil shred apart over several weeks. Thinking became clearer. Colors a smidge brighter. Emotions a tad more balanced. The false, depressed reality that we became so accustomed to lost the death-grip it had on our minds. Oddly, while this gave us both feelings of increased happiness and wellbeing, we each felt intense shame for feeling good!

How dare we experience joy? When is the shoe going to drop? Is it okay to feel happy with life?

We commiserated about how strange it felt to feel good. It was almost like we were getting away with something. Freely stealing cookies out of the cookie jar with absolutely no consequences whatsoever. Yet there was a consequence, and it was our unfounded feeling of shame. It felt as if we weren’t worthy of feeling good, nor of being able to think so much more easily than ever before.

Brené Brown contends that “shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” I see shame as an internal rust factor to the structure of our psyche. Spend enough time dwelling on how awful you are and your inner scaffolding becomes less and less capable of supporting you. Eventually, some life event will happen and your mind’s structure will collapse.

How then to combat this rust factor?

Well, she and I talked. We both shared what it felt like to feel shame for feeling good. We better understood that our feelings were not isolated, that we weren’t unique in having these thoughts even while our health improved. Shame withers under shared observation. My cousin and I laughed about the strangeness of how we felt. The oddness of how feeling lighter walking around and more hopeful about the future was somehow being turned into a negative by our brains. We were used to feeling terrible as our default; that basic goodness was foreign and, as the kids say: “sus.”

I’m grateful that my cousin and I are both feeling better. Not just due to these treatments. While they definitely helped, we each go to therapy, take our medication, manage our diets, and generally try to be healthy. I’m most grateful that she and I are able to talk about our experiences and realize that we are not alone. As I’ve learned, the greatest differentiator in long-term recovery from my mental illnesses is the strengthening of connections around me. While the discussions can be painful, they reinforce that I am loved and am capable of loving.

If your curious about how these procedures work, please view the videos below: