In, On, and Of Depression

I have suffered from clinical depression, to a greater or lesser degree, for at least the past two decades. Within that time, I have generally been fine (or at least functional), but I have also experienced a couple of prolonged episodes of severe depression, one of which I have recently started to emerge from. If I had to guess, I’d say the first signs of this episode started some time in the late-summer of 2013 and got progressively worse over the next year. But the very worst of it—which included severe anxiety and insomnia—started in August of 2014 and lasted for about 8 months. The major causes are pretty easy to point to: (1) a close friendship ended in a dramatic and protracted way, and (2) I was under a tremendous amount of stress as a couple of high-stakes deadlines coincided with being on the job market (another indescribably stressful process, at least for me). These two extreme stressors (along with any number of other, less momentous stressors) resulted in the anxiety and insomnia. In short, I was constantly stressed out, exhausted, and anxious, all of which worked together in a destructive feedback loop. It was a really tough period, and though it started to improve significantly last April, I’ve only really started to feel like myself again in the past month or so (and that intermittently).

The funny thing (ha!) is I didn’t even recognize the last two years as a bout of depression until after the worst part was already over. (Actually, I didn't even recognize it then--my mom pointed it out.) I knew I was stressed and tired and anxious, but there were all sorts of things I could point to as the direct causes of my distress. In retrospect, however, the distress did not go away when the apparent causes did. In fact looking back, I recognize whole stretches of time I lost to avoidance…of anything and everything. I would hole up in my office, turn off the lights, and basically hide. How anything got done in those two years, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully explain.

The point of reflecting on these past two years is not to solicit sympathy, but to mark a point of progress. There is therapeutic value in being able to identify a period of real misery and begin to pull at some of the various threads. What were the causes of the misery? What were the symptoms and the signs, especially the early signs of bad things a-comin’? What could I have done differently? Sooner? With more care? What was good despite the misery? And what were the consequences? No need for comprehensive answers to any of those questions here. Lots of people have written about the personal toll of depression. I’ve taken a lot of solace in the essays, blog posts, cartoons, and revelations of fellow depressives, especially Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” (part 1), (part 2) and the Bloggess’s blog (part everything). Lots of commentators also note the collateral damage of depression for people near and dear to the person suffering. I won’t rehearse those things here, which have been well rehearsed elsewhere.

I do, however, want to note one consequence I’ve only recently recognized, which has to do with the effects of my depression on other people. Specifically, I missed/passed up a lot of opportunities in the past few years to offer comfort to other people who were in need of a kind word or gesture because I was so busy trying to keep my head above water. At first, I thought of these missed opportunities as a form of selfishness. I think this is pretty obvious. When you’re depressed—even mildly depressed—sometimes you just don’t notice other people’s suffering, even when their suffering is severe. When every moment of the day requires crisis-level triage, you overlook a lot of things that aren’t your crisis. Such self-interest may be justifiable for someone struggling with depression, but it still wears on the people around you.

Even when you do notice, it can be hard to muster the energy to attend to other people. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, I think Christine Miserandino’s “Spoon Theory” is useful here. Spoon Theory essentially says that people struggling with mental and/or physical disabilities have to be very careful about how they ration their energy. Sometimes running to the store for a greeting card, writing a note, and sticking it in the mail can obliterate an entire day’s spoons. When I'm depressed, I get stingy about caring for others, even in relatively meager ways, because I’m hoarding spoons, knowing full well that if I spend them too quickly or too frivolously, I’ll regret it later. And once I start hoarding spoons, it becomes increasingly easy to justify hoarding. It becomes habitual, made ever easier by the fact that I don’t always notice other people’s suffering to begin with.

But when it comes to comforting others, the real tragedy may be in those times—more common than they might seem—during which you (that is, I) notice someone you care about who is in need of comfort, you have the energy to comfort them, but you convince yourself they wouldn’t want to hear from you. In other words, you convince yourself you can’t be a source of comfort to people you care about, and even that your comfort may cause them additional pain. (Can I stop here to say: just typing out those last two sentences really sucked.) In this case, it's not selfishness at work--it's a weird, stupid, self-destructive selflessness. It's a huge loss for everyone involved, and it's usually invisible to everyone (as well as another feedback loop).

Emerging from depression has been (and is) a very slow process for me, in part because I feel like I have to relearn some pretty basic human interaction stuff, the muscles for which have atrophied. And taking stock at points along the way is helpful. And sometimes writing stuff down is a good way to remind myself that the cock-ups that result from depression are not elemental failings that spring forth from the unalterable core of my being (unlike melodrama, which is apparently part of my very fabric). And then noticing that I spent the time and energy to write something down helps to reassure me that I’m continuing to emerge. And hopefully that will help me to remember how to do some of those human interaction things, like comforting the people I care about when they need it. All of this to say, if I err on the side of over-comforting you in the next couple of months, or if I'm just generally weird, I’d appreciate it if you’d chalk it up to relearning how to be a functional human person.