Depression
A close family member of mine is going through a serious bout of depression. This post is for them, first and foremost, but it’s also for anyone else who might relate (to) or benefit (from) it. I take nothing for granted these days, so the disclaimer here is that my words represent — in no way — a substitute for mental health treatment or medical intervention. Additionally, as it pertains to certain types of mental illness, words (alone) may have no effect at all, and often don’t.
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Dear [ ] —
You are the ultimate coordinator and facilitator of your own rehabilitation. You have but one job to do right now: treat yourself with kindness. Fill yourself with unconditional love. Give yourself every break and concession a human being could possibly give themselves. If a stroke or heart attack patient is to fully recover, their rehab wouldn’t involve spending one minute beating themselves up, negating themselves, nor giving into bleak thoughts indicative of the worst kind of nihilism.
You were once joyous, alive, and fully engaged with the world. For the vast majority of your life, you have been a source of endless passion and atomic energy. You’ve charmed waiters and waitresses, coat-check girls, grocery store cashiers. Every action you took was in service of creating enthusiasm and eternal delight. You were never once stingy with your ebullience, and you have not “run out” of positive life force.
Right now, more than any other time in your life, be self-indulgent and narcissistic. To focus on reclaiming who you truly are at the expense of everything else right now seems like the right bargain to strike. Drink tea. Reconnect with nature. Read William Blake while walking in the woods. Stop to really notice a wild rabbit or resting deer. Through these observations — made without judgement — you have a real shot at reconnecting with yourself. This is who you are, anyway. This is not a prescription. It’s what you have always done. Put on your Panama hat and cut the brush at the end of your road with that rusted machete you keep tucked away in the rafters of your garage. It’s not a metaphor.
There’s that old blues song — Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me. The only version I’ve heard is from The Doors’ “LA Woman” album, and while Jim Morrison couldn’t take his own advice very well, I think there’s something useful in what he belted out. Once they get the medication calibrated, it (perhaps) is up to you. You’ve gotten out of your sunken place before. It wasn’t me who lifted you up then. Mine was just one voice (of many) that droned on — attempting to cut through the din, the clutter, the chaos, and the constant self-doubt. You, in the end, were the source of your own salvation. Never forget that.
If you stay in your head, you’re dead. I’m being dramatic here, but I’m also quoting Tony Robbins, someone we both have respect for. It wasn’t immediately clear to me what Robbins meant, but it seems he believes that action is the answer to one’s problems. I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s possible that retraining your brain will help lead you out of the maze you’re in with (seemingly) no exit in sight. It’s even likely that, in your past life, you perseverated about things that brought you positive results. It’s possible that your A.D.D. kept you moving from object of beauty to object of beauty, never stopping to judge anything critically. Now you’re all judgement and no beauty. Why not invert that? Or try? Your “head” has served you well in life. It’s helped you survive multiple car wrecks and far worse. What if you sat alone in that proverbial room and listened to those thoughts without any other stimulus? What might your head deliver you from? Yes, it would be uncomfortable, but it might lead you to explore what’s (still) beautiful about the world, and to wonder “What’s next?”
We all have hang-ups and get “hung-up.” Years ago, you made a bold assertion about me, that I “had no hang-ups.” Well, I did then and I do now. Unsurprisingly, we all do. Why make it our goal to eliminate phobias, or update our software once a metaphorical bug reveals itself? Bugs - perhaps - are a feature of our humanity. You once spent an entire summer reading bleak novel after depressing novel until you were filled to the brim with melancholy and the infinite sadness (to borrow a title from The Smashing Pumpkins). The very little I know about The Bible comes to mind here: We contain multitudes. You don’t need fixing, but you’d likely benefit from rebalancing. You have not failed because you are depressed or profoundly anxious. Quite the contrary: you are just currently experiencing the alternate version of yourself. You’re in the Led Tasso phase of your Ted Lasso-ness. My hang-ups are my compulsions. Yours are the paranoia and impending sense of doom you sometimes experience. I’ll stay with that Good Book I know nothing about for a minute: “This too shall pass,” is something a kidney stone sufferer (like myself) winces upon hearing. I don’t think our hang-ups pass — they’re always with us. There’s a reason you read every 19th century Russian novel ever penned in the space between your junior and senior year of high school. That bitter, Siberian existence spoke to the buried — but very present — part of you.
Don’t mark the time. You’ve been in this headspace for nearly a year now, and it’s natural to fixate on that fact. I can remember when you were two months into a spiral, then three. And, in conversation with you, “how long you’ve been down” is a recurring theme. One might think of depression as that scene from The Count of Monte Cristo (with Guy Pearce) where the prisoner marks off the days with hashes on the wall of his cell. Or it might be the complete opposite: one day melts into the next like objects in a Dali painting. Either way, it matters not if you’ve been depressed for a month, a year, or five years. It only matters that you find a way through it, as you did the previous time. Don’t let “how long” be the leading indicator of “how likely.”
Listen to any voice of reason. Right now your entire being — every fiber — is fighting the battle against ration, logic, and reason. In your current condition, others can see what you cannot. It will take every ounce of energy you have to let Uruk’s city walls fall, to bring down King Duncan’s drawbridge, or (insert any old-timey literary reference here that suits you). Remember: you have one job to do. To take incredibly good care of yourself. To cut yourself endless amounts of slack. To stop apologizing for your very being and what you’ve (allegedly) done. To end the self-effacement and self-negation. And part of that job is listening to — and perhaps considering — the voices attached to people who have your rehab and recovery top of mind.
Perhaps: Don’t expect too much of yourself right now. Don’t focus on external accomplishments. Don’t think about what could have been. Not about loss. Not about failure. But about the wellbeing of one critically important patient on your health-care roster: YOU.