Are you fucking depressed?

So am I.

Or at least I was, but it’s taken me so long to write this article that I’ve gone back and forth. But why do you care how I feel? The presumption that anyone cares about any blogger’s life is a delusion; a blogger is like the proverbial grandmother, sharing pictures of grandchildren with strangers: Look at my grandchildren, Depression and OCD. They look just like their parents, Worry and Dysthymia.

And really, is there anything wrong with being depressed? Why aren’t more people depressed? And are you (maybe) and I depressed, or simply unhappy, frustrated, overwhelmed, or something else? There are any number of things that are overwhelming — climate change and wars and psychotic government leaders and high infant mortality and mortality itself and potential nuclear annihilation and bigger wildfires. And on the personal level, humans want things that sometimes the universe says no to. You could argue that depression is a reasonable response to living on this earth.

Maybe if I write the word “depressed” enough, it will lose its original meaning in your head and start to mean “radiant time of relaxation.”

Anyway, the medical profession insists that depression is a pathology that needs to be fixed by drugs. But I like this perspective (plus, Lisa Miller has awesome hair): https://youtu.be/7c5t6FkvUG0. In this kind of scenario, depression is a spiritual condition, and it is not something to be fixed but faced. Embraced, even. Of course, certain depressions do need drug treatment, but I wonder if that may be the exception and not the rule we’re led to believe it is.

In the past weeks as I’ve been writing and rewriting this article, I’ve been feeling around in the dark to understand my personal reasons for feeling depressed. And my list is very compelling, to me at least. (Oh no, here come the pictures of the grandchildren.) Mainly, my depression comes from a sense of being powerless over the harsh realities of modern life. Also, overthinking and fear of or sensitivity to rejection. Specifically, right now I am trying to change careers and taking lots of action: Informational interviews, a career coach, and looking for work in odd places. For instance, recently I started a class introducing the Union building trades, only to realize, no, I don’t want to commit to being a plumber when I’d have to commute a lot, not work outside the union ever, and be unable to change careers until I earn my 5 year apprenticeship by working another 5 years. So I quit the class, and my new career feels further away than ever. (I have to grudgingly admit that my conscious emphasis on this struggle means I am not writing about the many great people and things in my life.) Like I said, the universe sometimes says no, or at least not yet.

But check out this video from Abby Medcalf: https://www.facebook.com/abbymedcalf/videos/1101010386742173/. She talks about how setting individual goals actually does not make you happier. Notice the warning that those of us tending to depression especially need to set social goals as well as individual goals.

A quote I read in National Geographic, I think, went like this, “A dolphin alone is not a dolphin.” I think that applies to me as a person as well. And on that front, there’s the whole support group arena. Professional and otherwise. Costly and free. Therapists. I’ve received much support from many people.

If you struggle with being sensitive and not having good boundaries, this article is awesome: https://thehappysensitive.com/essential-boundaries-for-hsps-and-empaths-keeping-track-of-our-own-well-being/. During the writing of this article in summer 2018, my family stayed at a house near Tahoe in which my wife’s coworker learned in October 2017 that her place in Glen Ellen, CA, burned down. So the main bedroom feels like it has ghosts in it between 1 and 3 am, probably when she found out. But don’t ask me how to have boundaries with ghosts or a house’s stuck energy.

Since it appears that now I’m sharing what has helped me, here’s more: For grief itself, this book is excellent: https://secondfirsts.com/about-the-book/. Great exercises for letting go of grief and starting to build a new life. I even joined the social network support group for a while (lifestarters.com) but quit it when I realized social networks leave me feeling less connected because I want to talk with real people in person.

One of the first really great books that shifted how I thought about depression is The Depression Book by Cheri Huber. From a Zen Buddhist viewpoint, the book focuses on witnessing depression, watching the thoughts. Also, accepting and loving yourself in depression.

Now, if you’re used to how blogs work, you may be expecting me to launch a business called Don’t Be Depressed, Get Dressed! Except I don’t want to set myself up as a guru; I’m simply a fellow human trying to navigate this world. And starting and running  businesses is a giant assache.

One last source of help is this: https://jamesclear.com/inversion. I use inversion on depression, such as, what if I wanted to become more depressed? What would I do? This really shines a light on what I do to maintain depression. And then I can stop doing those things. Or do the opposite. Or something. For instance, isolation helps me become very depressed. So, I try to get out of the house and talk to people or call someone on the phone. Or maybe even tell someone I feel depressed. You know, all the difficult shit I don’t want to do in the first place. Taking an action sometimes tricks my mind into thinking, “Hey, I can’t be depressed, I just actually showered and am wearing clean clothes and not in bed, and I gave this stranger directions to Pony Gate Trail at Sugarloaf State Park.”

Overall, the best thing I try to remember is that depression is a mental channel that keeps saying the same things over and over. Probably I can’t stop the radio playing, but I also don’t have to listen to it or believe it. I recently tried https://youtu.be/BFAjsyJ_WK4 by Lisa Nichols, for one way of turning the radio down. Yes, it’s super new agey, but on the other hand, sometimes my brain just says the same shit over and over, and I need to do something and be curious about what is behind the wall of thoughts.

Finally, consider this: What if depression is just nature’s way of giving birth to new versions of people? And that the bottom of the hole seems like there’s no way out, but in fact, there are many ways out. Maybe it’s even possible to reverse gravity and simply fall out. Make space for the miraculous, what the hell.