Lisa Zhakova recently published a photo project “We don’t think” about depression and bipolar disorder. In an interview with Psychologies.ru, she talked about how she lives with these diagnoses, why she does not want to associate her work with them, what is wrong with the #faceofdepression flash mob, and much more.
Psychologies: Lisa, you said you didn’t want your name to be associated with bipolar disorder. At the same time, you speak frankly on these topics in the press.
Liza Zhakova: Yes, I do not perceive it as a coming-out. Everyone I know has known this since I was 14. It’s just that my project is still a graphic product. I hope it may have therapeutic value, but I would like to separate work from illness.
I do a lot of things, and now I already want to do completely different things. As soon as I finished the project, this story stopped being interesting for me. I want to forget about it, as if it never existed, and do other projects that have nothing to do with bipolar disorder.
Were you scared by the resonance caused by your project?
No, it was pretty logical. If the thing I created works and it helps someone, that’s good. Of course, it had an effect on me personally as well.
It’s very brave of you to be so open about your diagnosis. Often people with bipolar disorder are embarrassed to talk about it.
Yes it is. Recently, a woman, a well-known journalist and photographer, wrote to me. She wanted to send her son to psychotherapy and complained that he did not listen to her at all — he agreed to take pills, but refused to work with a psychotherapist.
When I took the pills myself, the body could not cope with them: continuous side effects and no positive changes. I stopped drinking them, and I felt better, although at the same time it got worse. After giving up the pills, I lost 18 kg, and before that I gained more than 20 on the pills.
Do you think that in your situation you can just get by with psychotherapy?
Maybe yes. I’ve always been a rather asocial element. I myself decided that it would be better for me. And I think if I still took pills, then no psychotherapy would have worked.
How did you find out about the diagnosis? Was it hard to accept?
I was 18 years old. My grandmother sent me to a neurologist, they did an MRI, they took tests, and then they sent me to a psychiatrist at the Institute. V.M. Bekhterev. The psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants, but they did not work for me. A psychotherapist who worked there told me that depression is normal. And I was pounding so terribly, it seemed that I was about to vomit right there. I didn’t go to her again.
After that, I went to a psycho-neurological dispensary. There I was assigned to a day hospital, prescribed some kind of drug, and I felt better. I used to go there all the time.
But there is such a system: doctors do not announce the diagnosis to the patient if he is in serious condition and this diagnosis can scare him. The patient may refuse treatment or hospitalization, which is necessary in the opinion of doctors. And so I later learned the diagnosis.
I knew something was happening to me and I wanted to know what it was
At the next appointment with a psychiatrist, I was briefly left alone in his office. There was a laboratory assistant, quite young. We got to talking, and he told me what is written in my card. In fact, I learned the diagnosis fraudulently. They didn’t call me, they just said that in my condition I need to be treated and take pills that will be given out at the nurses’ post.
Nobody was going to tell you about the diagnosis?
Apparently yes. But I knew that something was happening to me, and I wanted to know what it was.
It is believed that in the stage of depression, people with bipolar disorder understand that they feel bad. And in the stage of mania, it is very difficult for them to realize that something is wrong. Have you noticed such an effect?
Yes, that is right. Rather, there is an understanding that something is wrong. But that doesn’t matter at all. You just don’t care. After one very unpleasant story, I went to a psycho-neurological dispensary and told everything about myself, as if in spirit. And the doctors shamed me and prescribed pills, which only made things worse.
You said that once you drank a smaller dose of medicine and you became ill. What then happened?
I then left for the summer to shoot. I bought pills with a margin, but I didn’t feel the need for them — they seemed to slow me down. And they stayed like that until I came back. I got worse, and I drank half the dosage of neuroleptic. I fell asleep for 16 hours, woke up, went to make tea and fell. I hit my head and my boyfriend took me to the injury. There they took an x-ray and said that everything was fine with the gray matter.
After this incident, I became very scared, because I never had suicidal tendencies.
Have you ever thought about suicide during your depression?
No, no matter how hard it is. I know for sure that even if I had such thoughts, I would never have done it.
A depressed person often needs the help of someone close to them to at least decide to see a doctor.
How do you feel about the flash mob #faceofdepression?
When I started shooting the project “We don’t think so”, I learned that there is a huge community dedicated to depression. Initially, I was going to shoot for the project not myself, but other people. I wrote a post, and it was published in one of the thematic channels.
Different people began to write to me, I began to meet with them. They told how communication in groups helps them, how much there is of everything useful and necessary. I became interested, and I went to read. To be honest, my hair started to move in horror, I didn’t agree with what people wrote there.
This flash mob is very logical. Previously, the topic was closed, but now a certain movement has begun around it. They write and talk a lot about depression, but there are very few really useful texts from which you can really learn and understand something — in all the time I have read only two of them, probably.
At the same time, there is nothing useful not only for healthy people, but also for people who are familiar with depression firsthand. Last year there was a flash mob #I’m not afraid to say. There was a wave, there was a hysteria about this on the Internet, and then it all went away, and few people remember it. It seems to me that the flash mob overly romanticizes this story. This is the wrong message, because it does not help fight depression. A depressed person often needs the help of someone close to them to at least decide to see a doctor about their problem.
What advice would you give to people whose loved ones suffer from such conditions?
Listen to what a loved one says, try to understand what worries him. Really hear it.
Did you have such people around when you were feeling bad?
Now I have a loved one who helps me a lot. Before that, no one really supported me. The ex-boyfriends were aware of my diagnosis, and it seems to me that they saw the disease in the first place and did not see me. This is terribly infuriating, because the personality is not determined by the diagnosis. I’m not a «bipolar girl». Now, fortunately, everything is different in my relationship.
Do you think there is a prejudice in society regarding bipolar disorder?
It is. I see this a lot, but I don’t care what people say about it. I perfectly understand the difference between behavior when I feel bad, and behavior when I’m just sad. There is a huge difference between these two states. I think a depressed person is unbearable. There is something about him that makes people around him feel that way. Even people with depression irritate me. Despite the fact that I understand the reasons, it is very difficult to deal with this.
You just pull some things out of yourself, and they lose power over you.
How did you decide on therapy and how did you find a therapist?
At some point, I became very ill. I just lay in bed all day, sometimes I went to the dispensary. I had glazed eyes, I hardly spoke. My boyfriend supported me. One day his friend came from Moscow, who studied at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and became a psychoanalyst. He saw me in this state and after his departure advised my young man to talk to me about psychotherapy. He did not want me to know that he was aware of my condition, but he wanted to help in some way. I ended up going to psychotherapy.
What direction of psychotherapy did you choose?
Psychoanalysis. I don’t lie on the couch, I just sit and we talk. Mostly via skype. Previously, we practiced twice a week for 45 minutes, now less often. We met in person twice. The therapy has been going on for a year now.
Did you stop taking your pills when you went into therapy?
No, before. I haven’t taken a single pill since I fainted. On pills, I planted my stomach, I started having health problems. It seems to me that drugs, even painkillers, do not suit me.
Did psychotherapy affect mood swings?
Yes, everything has become more “smooth”. And even this terrible depressive state, which I still do not know how to describe, I managed to stop. It ended before it even started.
If something seems to you, it doesn’t really seem to you
Won with the power of thought?
It works due to the fact that you begin to be more aware of everything. You just pull some things out of yourself, and they lose power over you. For example, I completely stopped communicating with my family.
Is it easier for you?
Yes. I have a very complicated family history, I was raised first by one grandmother, then another. From the age of 7 to 20, I lived with relatives in St. Petersburg. I didn’t live with my mother. Now I don’t even answer my parents’ phone calls, which is the smartest thing I’ve ever done. We communicate very rarely. I recently attended my great-grandmother’s birthday party and it was amazing. At half past eight in the evening, I said that I was late for the last minibus to the house, and left there not very elegantly.
Do you think it will get worse if you interact with them more?
Yes. It has a very bad effect on me.
It is believed that people with bipolar disorder tend to push away those closest to them. What do you think about it?
It depends on what the people close to you are. I don’t think it’s a matter of frustration in my case – our relationship has always been like that. If something seems to you, then it doesn’t really seem to you.
Did you say that it was a discovery for you that the emotions that you are experiencing actually exist?
Yes, and it’s very interesting. I came to therapy as a naive person, because all my ideas about psychotherapy were derived from American films. And rightly so, in this situation it is better to be an absolute «sucker». Now I even think of entering the Institute of Psychoanalysis myself.
Do you want to study this topic further?
Yes, it turned out to be terribly exciting.
Would you like to help other people?
To begin with, I would just like to know and understand.
Depression is emptiness, boredom, something so sticky and disgusting that you can’t get out of. This state takes the soul out of you
What other projects do you have?
In addition to the project on depression, there is a project on the BDSM community, my favorite. In general, I shoot very different things. Last year we filmed a project in the Russian outback, now I am doing portrait photography, I want to make a book.
Why BDSM?
This is a funny story. We went to school to shoot at a sex exhibition. There, people danced to the music of the 90s, it looked very funny and somewhat ridiculous. I met a professional «mistress», we became friends, and I photographed her for some time. But I myself have a very distant relation to this story, because in this sense I am as normal as possible.
What is normal?
In the classical sense, I have no deviations, except for a slight voyeurism.
And how do you feel about the point of view that there can be such a severe depression that the only way to help is with the help of euthanasia, as in the case that happened in the Netherlands?
I think you should never do this. Nothing is finite but death. When people say that they have depression and have to sit on pills for years, it’s terrible. Because years are long. It goes against everything and is completely unnatural. It’s hard for me to imagine a case where you can’t help.
What are you most afraid of?
Void. This feeling is difficult to describe, it is more at the level of the body. It’s very scary. Depression is emptiness, boredom, something so sticky and disgusting that you can’t get out of. This state takes the soul out of you.
How do you feel about the statement that “depression is a fracture of willpower”?
Depression has nothing to do with willpower. Willpower is needed to run a marathon. And to get out of depression, you need to feel very well what you need now. It has nothing to do with willpower. If I feel that this state is looming on the horizon, I say — ok, I have Shabbat. I turn off my phone and rest. And then I get up like new.
Does that mean you take care of yourself?
Yes, I began to love myself much more.
Haven’t loved before?
I used to hate it. Therapy is very difficult and painful. I described some of the emotions associated with therapy in my work, but there was actually a lot more. And it helped me. Friends say that even my face has changed. And I feel it myself.