Depression

Depression may be thought of as secondary emotion. By this I mean that there are other feelings which contribute to and cause it. Sometimes I think of depression as an army made up of soldiers. These soldiers are the primary negative feelings one feels attacking the amygdala.

For example, one might feel alone, lonely, rejected, discouraged, loss, grief, unfulfilled, disconnected, uninspired, unproductive, unaccomplished, uncertain, misunderstood, pessimistic. Together, all of these feelings drain our energy, kill our motivation.

It helps me to isolate each feeling, then take action or at least think about a plan to attack each negative feeling individually. In each case, ask "what would help me feel less (lonely, unproductive, discouraged)"

Here are some questions which might help you if you are trying to diagnose your own depression:

I find that taking my negative feelings one by one helps one feel less overwhelmed. When I feel better in just one area, it helps me feel more energized and more capable of conquering the other negative feelings.

Sometimes when I am depressed and not talking people will say, "What are you thinking?" For me, this is not a helpful question. When I am depressed I can't answer that question. Yesterday, when I was in the shower, I figured out why.

When you are depressed your energy level is very, very low. To explain what you are thinking simply takes too much energy.

That is why it is better to ask someone how they are feeling, if you need to ask them anything at all. There is a chance that they can find one word to summarize how they are feeling, or one word to tell you the main feeling. For example, they might say, "Alone." This could be a start to helping them talk.

Or if it is too difficult for them to say anything you might get them some paper and a pen, or colored markers.

Or you might show them a copy of my common negative feelings and ask them to just circle the ones they are feeling.

But one of the keys to helping someone who is extremely depressed and not talking is not to ask them to do anything which requires a lot of effort. Asking them to tell you what they are thinking is probably something which requires a lot of effort at that moment. Also, if you ask them what they are thinking, they might feel pressured to say something and since they can't, they only feel worse and less understood. If you get frustrated with them they will feel disapproved of on top of everything else. When I am depressed, mostly I need to know someone cares about me and won't reject me. When they ask me to tell them what I am thinking, and I can't, I am more afraid of rejection.

I might also be afraid of telling them what I am thinking. So you might say, "Are you afraid of telling me what you are thinking or how you are feeling?" They might say yes. Or they might say nothing. The other day I asked someone if she was afraid to tell me what she was thinking and she said nodded her head yes. So this was a small step forward. I think she felt a little more understood, which in turn helped her feel less afraid to start opening up, which she did shortly after that.

These are just a few thoughts based on my experiences. If you have other thoughts or suggestions please write me.

There are two sides to this. One is positive in the sense that if you need temporary relief from depression it might help to get busy doing something, such as cleaning the house, going for a walk or bike ride. But action is not a permenant solution because it does not address the cause of the depressive feelings. Some people use activity to avoid facing the causes of their depression and to avoid allowing themselves time to feel. In the long term, merely being active and even productive does not fill the required unmet emotional needs.

(This quote is by Patrick Wakeling's and comes from his chapter in the book Wounded Healers by Vicky Rippere and Ruth Williams)

This is in response to a letter I received from a site visitor asking me what I thought about the use of medication to treat depression.

Hi Dave,

You asked about medication.... generally I am very much opposed to it. The main reason is that it does not address the underlying causes of the depression.

It does nothing to improve the social and family conditions. It just perpertuates them, in my opinion.

For me, depression has a purpose. It causes us to slow down and rest, and think. If we use this as an opportunity to think about why we are depressed, for example to identify the specific unmet emotional needs, we can start to get some insight into what changes we need to make. I think most of us could use some slowing down. I think if we took time to listen to each other, for example, there would actually be less depression. I also think that if we would stop and ask why we are working so hard, and reflect on what is really important, we would see that relationships, and inner peace are what are important, not money and material things. We would then invest more energy on self-growth and personal relationships.

I have gone through lots and lots of depression, even feeling suicidal. Always, though, I have come out of it with some new awareness.

I see nothing particularly wrong with depression. What I think is wrong is people who act like it is a moral flaw or something, and people who want everyon to just keep working and "getting on" with things. I have said, only half-jokingly, that if you are not depressed at least once a week, then something is wrong!

I think depression helps us see the pain and sadness in the world and there is a lot of it to see.

I read that depressed people are more realistic, by the way. (I don't think the study talked about which was the cause and which was the effect though!)

There was a book called The Right To Feel Bad... I have some notes from it on this page

http://eqi.org/books9.htm

It is worth a look. (Unfortunately, the book is now apparently out of print and unavailable. This may be a reflection of the prevailing view that it is not okay to feel depressed! People want to hear how to quickly get undepressed, I guess, not how depression might actually be helpful.)

Something else good about depression is that it can get you closer to your feelings if you don't try to numb yourself from them. This closeness helps you identify with other people. Not just depressed people but with people who might be lonely, or discouraged, or invalidated, or judged, or unaccepted, or confused or grieving the loss of something.

One big problem in society is lack of connection, so if we can connect on an emotional level with other people when they feel something like one of the many primary feelings which contribute to depression, we feel more connected and they feel less alone and more understood.

Well I hope this helps a little bit. You have helped me think through these things a bit more.

Steve

Here is another letter to Dave

Another letter to Dave

Hi again Dave,

Sorry for the delay. I wanted to wait till I had time to read your letter carefully. I am usually rushed when I am on the computer.

But I want to say a couple things. First, you are an extremely insightful and self-aware person.

Your letter brought me to near tears. You describe things so articulately. Only an exceptionally aware and intelligent person can do that.

On a more practical level, I support the idea of "therapy" or talk therapy let's say. And groups. I started an informal men's group once with the help of a guy who had been in one. It was helpful for me. I also went to various other support groups such as the 12 step ones, even though I wasn't alcoholic or a child of an alcoholic. The problems were similar and it helped to hear others talk so openly. I highly recomend them, as long as u don't get dependent on them, but u dont seem like u would.

Please keep me posted with how things are going. I cannot always promise a speedy reply of even a reply at all, but I can promise that I will read your letters. Sometimes I am traveling and have to pay for internet time by the hour and I never have enough time to answer my business type mail and my personal friends type mail.

About not invalidating people. Of course I will recommend you read my pages on validation and invalidation again even if u have already. I think they are the best around! lol

But generally one tip is to just say 'yeah' when someone tells u something. I find that the less I say the more helpful it is almost, but it depends on the person.

This morning I listened to someone for nearly three hours straight and barely said 50 words i think.

Something else, u r an excellent writer. i would suggest writing in one of the online diaries. Check one of the search engines for online diaries. http://freeopendiary.com is one. Http://teenopendiary.com is another. http://Blogger.com is another.

There u can meet other people of like intelligence, emotions, issues etc.

Generally the people are incredibly supportive. writing there helped me find my best friends. i wrote honestly there and people who related to me and connected with me wrote back over time and friendships developed. i found who i could be myself with and still be accepted. this is an incredibly powerful feeling, to feel completely accepted by someone. i also felt supported, believed in etc etc. my online friends filled my the emotional needs which my family left unfilled. probably they did worse than just not fill my needs, they probably moved me from a content child to a needy adult.

i dont remember u talking much about ur family. i think this is important to look at. most "therapists" dont seem to want to get in to family stuff. i can only speculate as to why.

it sounds like the person u are talking to is okay so far. how much do u feel understood by him from 0-10? how much do u feel cared about? I am unusual in that I think it is important for us to know someone cares about us, even a professional.

i had a lawyer once who i paid a lot of money too. but i dont think he cared about me much at all. he could have just as easily represented the other side of the case i think.

probably we need to learn to care about ourselves, accept ourselves, to accept ourselves etc. but it sure helps if someone else cares about us, accepts us admires us, appreciates us, values us and so on.

did i ask u to take a look at my mom test?

if not, please do when u have time... and add any additional questions u can come up with.

www.eqi.org/ptest.htm

finally, your writing is so good that i really would like to share it with my site visitors. i used my letter to u as a basis for a section on a page i just started on depression.

best wishes, i invite you to write again.

Steve

It is 11:22 on Weds morning. I just woke up a little while ago. I am still feeling depressed from something that happened yesterday. Here are some notes/thoughts

.- When I am depressed, I sleep. Sleeping restores my energy. No one has interrupted me. Invalidated me. Forced me to do something else.

- But depressed teenagers don't have the freedom to sleep. To rest. To think. They are ordered to get out of bed. Told to "cheer up", go to school. smile. Thus they don't have time to heal from whatever it was that depressed them. Depression comes from emotional wounds, emotional pain. Time and sleep can heal those wounds naturally if people don't interrupt the process, and if the person hasn't been taught to think self-destructively.

- Teenagers also don't have enough privacy. There is almost no privacy in schools. Many teens I have known tell me they go cry in the bathroom, but I have heard that in the USA teens are now being followed to the bathroom by an adult who waits outside and will come in after them if the adults think they are taking too long.

Don't tell depressed people what you think. If they tell you something, don't disagree. Just listen.

Don't try to explain anything. Just listen and let them come up with their own explanations. If they want to hear your opinion about something, they will probably ask you.

Don't tell them what you think before you tell them how you feel. Or maybe, don't tell them what you think at all.

- If you need to leave, tell them where you are going and when you will be back so they won't feel abandoned. If possible, ask them if it is okay if you go before you leave..

Most depressed people I have known think a lot. And they have a lot to say. But for too many years no one has listened to them.

Most depressed people I have known are also intelligent, both intellectually and emotionally.

Learned helplessness explained a lot of things, but then researchers began to find exceptions, of people who did not get depressed, even after many bad life experiences. Seligman discovered that a depressed person thought about the bad event in more pessimistic ways than a nondepressed person. He called this thinking, "explanatory style," borrowing ideas from attribution theory.

For example, lets say you fail a math exam. How do you explain why? You could think: 1) I am stupid. 2) I'm not good in math. 3) I was unlucky, it was Friday the 13th. 4) The math teacher is prejudiced. 5) The math teacher grades hard. 6) I was feeling ill that day. 7) The math teacher gave an expecially hard test this time. 8) I didn't have time to study. 9) The teacher grades on a curve. Seligman found that these explanations could be rated along three dimensions: personalization: internal vs. external, pervasiveness: specific vs. universal, and permanence: temporary vs. permanent. He found that the most pessimistic explanatory style is correlated with the most depression: The statement "I am stupid" is classified as internal (use of I), universal, and permanent. This response conveys a sense of discouragement, hopelessness, and despair. On the other hand, a more optimistic person would blame someone or something else, such as "The math teacher gave an especially hard test this time." The most optimistic explanatory style is external, specific and temporary. Conversely, for a good event, the explanatory style reverses. For example, for a perfect score on the math exam, the depressive would say: "I was lucky that day," discounting his intelligence. The optimist would say something much more encouraging, such as "I am smart." We often learn explanatory styles from our parents.