Dineo Ranaka talks about suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy
"My fear is what if I never wake up..."
Dineo Ranaka has been going through the most in her personal life.
The media personality has been feeling suicidal and opened up about suffering from several mental conditions.
In a recent post, the 39-year-old shared her struggles with temporal lobe epilepsy, the most common form of focal epilepsy.
Dineo described the condition as "a dangerous epilepsy".
She said she was diagnosed with the condition in her mid twenties.
"My episodes have gotten worse with age. It frightens me honestly."
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The TV star says the seizures occur in her sleep and they scare her because they might kill her.
"Imagine having seizures in your sleep. So I experience seizures in my sleep. My fear is what if I never wake up.
"Circling back to temporal lobe epilepsy. Just so you understood it's not my body that goes into a seizure. My brain has a seizure. It's scary."
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Dineo went on to address some of the misconceptions people have about depression.
"I'm a happy, fulfilled high functioning person with depression and figuring myself out. A little weird cause depression is associated with sadness.
I know that depression is misunderstood largely because it is associated with feelings of sadness. But it is not the absence of happiness either," she wrote on Instagram.
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The DJ said despite what people believe about depression, she is not feeling sad and depression should not only be limited to feelings of sadness.
"I'm honestly not sad. I've got so much to be glad about. To be excited and to look forward to but I'm diagnosed with severe chronic depression.
"Like any normal person, I have my good days and bad ones. So I truly believe depression is explained wrongly by using "feelings". Feelings of sadness."
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Dineo added that "you are not depressed because you are sad. You are depressed because somewhere in your brain, you are unable to produce what I will call vitality."
She explained that vitality is "the power giving continuance to life".
The media personality said "depression is not sadness or the absence of happiness. Those 'feelings of sadness' is the beginning of the brains inability to produce that thing that gets you active, strong. The thing that gives you energy to live. Not just energy to clean the house or make your bed. It's a totally different energy this. We need a medical term for this energy cause it's certainly not happiness is the the opposite of sadness."
Dineo says people should understand that "depression is a neurological condition" and not just a "mental illness or mental condition".