• 29/08/2022
• By wizewebsite
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Dominika hid her depression for years, she wanted to kill herself even with her son in the car. Now she's written a book<

"You are such a sunshine," everyone said from little Dominica Marhoul. She was always full of energy, loved nature, her three dogs, followed her dreams and loved life. At the age of 23, she experienced burnout for the first time, and two years later she fell into depression. She kept this a secret from those around her for less than two years. She decided to write a book about the fact that even "sunshine" and ordinary people fall to the bottom. In it, she describes her journey from the moments when she wanted to kill herself to the time when she began to heal herself and feel happy again.

"I was driving in the car and I was looking at the tree I was going to burn it into. I thought to myself what a terrible person I was, that I also brought my son into such a world. He was sitting in the back seat," describes 28-year-old Dominika Marhoul in skype conversation. While I am in Prague, she calls from Mníšek pod Brdy, where she was born and where she also lives today with her husband Mark and four-year-old son Nick.

Dominica's life from a young age was defined by two lines - the dream of moving abroad and the love of animals. Her parents worked in a zoo and she grew up surrounded by animals. At the age of twenty-one, she started her first business, dog training. From the first few clients, she quickly had a full diary of individual and group lessons and was earning a living without any problems.

Her whole life has been accompanied by her love for animals, which is why she started a business in dog training. | Photo: Archive of Dominika Marhoul

He describes to me that it might sound strange, he prefers not to just say it, but he knows how to communicate with animals. "I ask the dog out loud what he needs or wants, and he will answer me. I can read their signals, reactions, emotions and sometimes even thoughts. Over the years, I have not only learned dog language, but also communication using energies," explains Dominika, while she laughs at the comparison to Arabella.

For half a year she just lay in bed and cried over the senselessness of everything

It was her specific connection to animals and the realization that many owners did not want to understand their pet, but only to have an obedient dog, that depressed Dominika. From an early riser who got up at six every morning to walk in the forest with his dogs, he suddenly became a person who constantly moved his alarm and appointments slowly disappeared from his diary.

"In the end, I didn't have anything in it at all. For half a year I just lay in bed and did nothing. I didn't see the point in anything. Why do something if in the end someone else will do it differently and better or it won't be to my liking? I was frustrated by the fact that I put everything I can into life, but still nothing comes out. I cried at home over the senselessness of everything. From a young age, I had the energy and desire to create and do something, but suddenly I was full of fear and disgust," she describes Dominica.

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Before this feeling, she tried to escape to the things she loved from her youth: painting, photography and dogs. "But nothing helped, and every such attempt made me worse. I lost my appetite, I felt sick and my legs were spinning. I was crying all the time and I still had a headache," she adds.

It was her husband Marek (then still a boyfriend, editor's note) who told her that it couldn't go on like this. In order to get back to "normal", Dominika started working as a saleswoman in a clothing store. "That was good, because at least I didn't think so much. The biggest relief for me was that my colleagues asked me about things that I was able to respond to. My name, how old I am, what I graduated from. I myself because she constantly asked questions that I couldn't find an answer to. What is the meaning of life, if it's for nothing anyway. Why plan something or pursue something if it doesn't bring what you wanted?" says Dominika, who graduated from a secondary art school.

She got a new impetus when she and her husband decided definitively to try their luck abroad. She went to Great Britain alone for two months, her partner and three dogs were supposed to come with her when she found a job and a place to live. Despite the strong feeling that this is her path and dream, she did not get a job. "I was already completely desperate. I sent several hundred e-mails and went around all the fast food places in the area. I even tried the local dog sitting service, but they didn't want me anywhere. I asked myself if I was so terrible and impossible. She was ashamed I'm going to come back and show that I failed." Dominika, then 24 years old, eventually returned to the Czech Republic.

She went through burnout and depression. These states allowed her to get to know herself better. | Photo: Archive of Dominika Marhoul

Second business, the happiest period in life and falling to the bottom

"We're actually a suicidal couple, because when one comes up with something, the other says 'Yeah! Let's do it!'," recalls Dominika about the next step in life and the second business she and her partner started. They founded a transport service that delivered food around Prague. In one car they transported fragrant cakes from the bakery directly to the company headquarters, in the other boxed diets and planned further expansion. At that time, Dominika became pregnant and by the seventh month she was driving alone.

He describes the birth of his son and the first two months after the birth as the happiest period in his life. "We lived in an apartment in Mníšek pod Brdy, and for a moment it seemed to me that time had stopped. My youngest female's illness took a break, the newborn happily snoozed on long walks through the winter landscape of Ladova. At home, we all snuggled together in the duvets and they rested. I felt surrounded by love and for a moment my inner tension was silenced," she describes.

Shortly after that, however, things started to go wrong. Both cars broke down, they had no money to repair or buy a new one, and the company found another supplier. Marek took a job in Germany and went home only on weekends. The illness of Dominika's youngest female hit harder and she had to put her down. Two months later, she also lost her second partner, who she had been with since she was eleven. Three months later, their last dog also died.

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Even before the birth of their son, the collapse of the company and the death of the dogs, they also decided to move to a farm that is partly owned by Dominika's family. The plan was that they would repair the farm, buy the second share and live happily on it with their son and animals. "It was an old property, waiting for renovation, it was cold and empty. We imagined how the dogs would run around the garden, Nick would ride the slide and we would gradually fix everything. And suddenly nothing. When the plan was realized, I was just Me and Nick.”

Dominica was getting worse and worse. First the fatigue, heaviness in the legs, the constant feeling of vomiting, then the migraines returned and she lost her appetite again. She couldn't sleep at night and had increasingly frequent panic attacks and anxiety. Again, she began to ask herself questions about the nature of the world, from which beings and animals that would still wish to live are leaving prematurely. Why do things like this happen to someone who is trying to live the best they can. To escape the worst feelings, she drove several hundred kilometers to visit a friend.

"Being on the road and away from an empty house helped me. I drove maybe 200 kilometers just there and back for a coffee," she recalls. But her conditions did not improve, on the contrary. Dominika reached the stage where she thought about committing suicide and crashing into a tree with her son. She regularly looked "the right one" on day trips. "At that moment I realized that I was depressed. I kept telling myself that I was just sad and refused to admit that depression can happen to anyone, including me," Dominika describes one of the main reasons why she decided to write two years later the book From Depression to Happiness.

She was ashamed of her condition and afraid of being locked up in a psychiatric hospital

"People ask you how you are, but when you say you've experienced depression, it's like saying , that you have some kind of contagious disease. They immediately change the subject, they don't want to hear about it, it's taboo. At the same time, psychological problems and mental health need to be talked about, it's a completely normal thing. Everyone's good at chatting about the weather and happy topics, but when someone brings out the painful reality, we don't know how to react. Such an approach only complicates the whole thing. The last thing a person thinking about suicide needs is alienation and misunderstanding," he points out.

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But Dominika did not realize this four years ago and did not confide in anyone about her condition. She told Mark only once that she was tired of living and didn't know how to proceed, but then she decided not to stress and trouble her husband. Her classic answer to all questions was: "It doesn't matter" and "I'm fine". But the world was like behind a dark curtain for her, and the only way out of the nothingness for her was her son's smile. "At that moment I always realized that I had to do something with myself, that it was worth being here for him." She was ashamed of her condition and was also afraid that she would be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. "I was afraid that I would lose him too, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to cope in the ward," she explains.

In order to get the battle with her own head at least a little under control, she started looking for information about what actually causes depression. "At first I was looking for a way to survive the day, later I searched deeper out of curiosity," she says. She paid for a membership on the Mindvalley platform and watched lectures on how the human brain and psyche works for more than half a year.

Depression is not a diagnosis for life, but a life experience

"This changed my life. A sea of ​​new information opened up to me. This time, no one claimed that depression is a diagnosis for life. The experts went straight to the source and following each other, they discovered possibilities for hacking the human mind, health, sleep, memory and much more," describes Dominika, who was most influenced by the idea that each of us is limited by the boundaries of our own mind and that we can develop ourselves endlessly as long as we try to push the boundaries. Depression can be, from a certain point of view, the best thing that happens to us in life, and it is actually just a way to better understand ourselves.

Every day she practiced yoga, which helped her focus on her breath, body and inner being. Subsequently, she started meditating and today she sees meditation as the main tool for understanding oneself and finding pleasure in life. "It's nothing religious, you just calm down and start listening to the signals or the things that your gut reveals to you. You'll feel that everything is fine. Even what upsets you so much. But that only happens when you come back to yourself , you silence the noise of society and the environment and humbly open yourself to a conversation with your own inner universe," Dominika describes.

Meditation showed her what she doesn't have closed in herself, what troubles her, how much she lies to herself and how petty it is in the whole context. "She enabled me to mark the things that I want to change and absorb, so that I no longer drag them on through life and do not reflect them again into the future. I also found my depression triggers with her, which I was able to cure and thus manage the entire depression," she says.

It was in her book that she decided to convey to people that depression can be managed. She would like to see more people in recovery exploring their triggers with a therapist, as well as raising general awareness that mental health care is fundamental to being happy in life. "Depression is not just some biochemical disease, but above all long-term neglect of one's mental health," the young woman points out.

She is currently looking for a job, but most companies reject her because she has a child. He and his family are looking for their own house and for now they are living with Mark's grandmother. "Everything is as it should be. I know myself better than ever before, and even if life is not a fairy tale, it is always a journey. We don't always have to understand everything, the meaning of things and the sequence of events are often revealed to us much later," he concludes.

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