Journey (Parts 8 & 9)

8. I don’t know.

Even though up I have given six (plus one, after this digression) convincing reasons how I got to where I am, I really can’t say whether these things were the cures or whether they were just indicators that something else had done the trick. It might be an entirely chemical thing that happened to fix itself somehow. Maybe God sorted it out. I really don’t know for sure, but there is probably some truth to both. Anyone who has experienced depression knows that there is some kind of feedback loop going on. I wish I could say I know for sure how I got out of it, but I can't be sure

9. I never really did overcome my depression.

On the day that my therapist told me that I could schedule another appointment if I wanted, but that in his opinion weekly sessions were no longer necessary, I told him that I still felt down sometimes. He gave a weird analogy about how when you pee, you can never quite get all of it out. (My least favorite thing about that therapist was the number of strange and often perverted metaphors he would come up with.)

So while I left his office feeling happy that he had basically labeled me as “CURED”, I was nervous about how easily the depression might return. And it did return. After that day, I would sometimes get sad for several days and feel like I was kidding myself if I thought that it was just regular sadness and not part of a larger condition. And that has never stopped. I still get down for days at a time sometimes and don’t know how to lift myself out of it. But it’s ok, and here’s why. For one thing, it doesn’t last as long and it is not as hopelessly intense. I don’t know when this change started taking place (or when it finished, or if it has finished). I just know that now, and for the past few years, it has been far better.

A psychologist might make a case for me having “overcome” depression, but I think it would be more accurate to say that I learned to manage it rather than get rid of it.
Since that session, I have resumed treatment twice but it has never lasted for more than about five weeks. One of the times was after a break-up when he told me, in effect: You broke up with a girl. It sucks. Its not depression. You don’t need to be seeing me unless it lasts for several months. It did last several months. Then it stopped slowly.

It might well return someday. If it does, I hope I can keep some perspective. It would be easy to see all of the time since I walked into my first session as wasted. After all, if I had learned anything, why would my depression have returned? But hopefully I would realize that in the intervening years that I was happy at times, neutral at others, that I had had lots of experiences and made some memories. Maybe I had even added some worldly accomplishments to my resume. Here’s an added bonus: I think it can give us more compassion than we would have otherwise had.

The fact is it could very easily return. I foresee at least two very stressful things in my future: A real career and my own family. It would be stupid for me to think that the pressure of maintaining either, let alone both, would not have the power to stir up clinical depression again. I worry about that quite a bit, actually. I guess I’ll find out. And I do want to find out.


TR Brooks

A Journey (Part 7)

7. I conformed.

This might be the most individual thing of all about my experience with therapy. My therapist once hypnotized me. He said that he was doing this in order to turn off all of my thoughts except for the portion of my brain that was causing my depression. His plan was to then talk to just that part of the brain (not the rest of it), and ask it what it wanted in order to quit making me miserable.

Besides the numerous assumptions that one must make to think this treatment would work, it all sounded weird to me, but I was intrigued, and not about to turn down some kind of radical treatment. Plus it kind of played into my appreciation for science fiction.

He put me into a trance and eventually addressed this one little part of my brain. He asked it to manifest itself so that he would know if it was listening. While I was wondering what he meant by “manifest” itself, I suddenly felt my fingers start twitching uncontrollably as though they’d been electrified. It was frightening, and I panicked, and felt myself breathing quickly and my eyes opening until he reassured me. “It’s okay”, he said. “Relax. This is what we want.”

Then he asked this little part of my brain what was wrong in my life to cause the suffering. There was no answer. Eventually the therapist brought me out of the trance and asked me if I had learned anything. Particularly he wanted to know if I had had any thoughts come to my mind when he asked his question.

I had. Just one thought. I had thought “to be normal”. The therapist seemed disappointed, and I realized he had understood this answer differently than I had. He thought “normal” meant “not depressed”, but I actually meant “normal”.

You see, in high school and now into college, I had been a bit of a non-conformist (don’t we all like to think so?). I wore weird clothes (not clothes my parents thought were weird, but clothes that have never really been in style). Example: purple corduroys with a black and white flowered Hawaiian shirt. A brown wool driving cap. A maroon double-knit polyester shirt. And I never wore jeans. Ever. Because everyone else wore jeans. Crap like that. People seemed to respect my individuality so I kept it up. I tried to do everything in a way that was unique, no matter how time honored and obviously sensible the conventional way was.

But I guess I got tired of it long before anyone else. It had become a compulsion rather than an exercise in creativity. And I guess some part of me was sick of it.
People tell me I haven’t changed a lot, but I think I have. I wear jeans all the time now. I try to dress nice and look good. I try to not stand out too much. The nice thing is, I still kind of do stand out once in a while, but it is not an obsession any more.

I don’t know how large a role this played in helping me manage my depression, but it taught me several important things. First, that there are processes going on in my mind that, while difficult to discover sometimes, are valuable to explore through meditation and talking to others. Second, that its ok to be mediocre. Actually, I believe “ok” is the definition of “mediocre”. And being mediocre is certainly preferable to being sad.

Since then I have been hypnotized several more times, and have actually gotten better at staying in a trance (it does take some practice). It has given me more respect and awe for the human mind and I think it has been therapeutic even when it wasn’t intended to be.

A Journey (Part 6)

6. Self-help books
It takes a certain degree of humility to read a self-help book. I was always able to tell myself that as a psychology student, my interest was academic. That was a lie.

Here are all that I can remember reading:

-The Knight in Rusty Armor by Robert Fischer

This one is very short, and I have read it many times. It has become a personal classic of mine. It is very funny and insightful. It is an easy book to hate because it is a bit simplistic about some things. But I highly recommend it.

-The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Not really a self-help book, but it gave me the same feeling as one. Sad, very uplifting and highly recommended. This is C.S. Lewis’s vision of heaven and hell, and the chasm that divides them, and the bridge that crosses that chasm. Highly recommended.

-Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute

This one is slightly boring and quite badly written. But if you’re someone who sometimes has difficulty absorbing abstract principles, maybe its for you. I don’t really like it, but lots of smart, respectable people that I have talked to got a lot out of it. It is about how to see people as people rather than as objects.

-If You Meet The Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage of Modern Psychotherapy Patients

I found this book in my mom's house. I think it was popular back in the seventies but I quite liked it. It is about freedom and moral autonomy. It is also about depression and happiness. Another major theme is the importance of telling one's "story". A person's story is a myth. i.e., It is not the accuracy of the events that is important but rather what they mean to the person and to the listener. In this way, the value of the story is to be found in its telling, and to try to hide it is unnatural and unhealthy (see #4).

-The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

I am not sure whether to recommend this one or not. It is written as a biography, but a good portion of it seems made up. The best thing to take away from it, I think, is the fact that the main character took years and years of discipline, study, and meditation to bring peace into his life.

Who knows how much these books helped me. At the very least they were interesting. When you’re absorbed in a book, it’s difficult to be depressed in that moment.

A Journey (Part 5)

5. I gave up on happiness. Or, I found something different and started calling it happiness.

I remember, while going through therapy, that one of my biggest concerns was that now that my childhood days were over, that I would never be happy, in the carefree, completely lost in the moment, without any self-consciousness sort of way. It was like the magic in the world had vanished. Or that every single magic trick had now been explained to me.

Here’s the crappy thing: It has never returned. I really think that it is gone forever. But there are still pleasant emotions. I like laughing, even if it is when I am having a bad day. It seems like every good emotion has some bitterness mixed into it now. I guess that’s kind of sad, but sometimes there is still more sweet than bitter. And then sometimes bitter things can be sweet, like a sad movie that can make me cry but still be beautiful. Or when I know I am seeing a friend for the last time because he or she is moving, and it hurts, but I know that it hurts because of all of the good memories with that person.

I used to like eating spoonfuls of pure white sugar when I was kid, but now I think that is gross. There needs to be something else mixed in. Some of my favorite drinks are Ginger Beer, which is sweet but burns my throat as it goes down. Bitter Lemon, which I have to drink slowly because of its bitterness, but which I keep on drinking, and unsweetened herbal tea, which is completely bland unless I concentrate on all of the different weak flavors in it. I didn’t used to like any of these drinks. Sadly, I no longer like pure white sugar.

A Journey (Part 4)

4. Other people.

This is a more recent development. Although I have always liked performing for or competing with others, I think it was on my mission that I started to realize how interesting other people can be. Since returning home I have been more talkative, but initially only with superficial topics.

While my sister and I were both experiencing the different emotions associated with dating, we started talking more deeply with each other. My brother was all but left out of these discussions because he married his high school girlfriend. Then, through spending time with some close friends and some new friends, I started talking to them about serious things. When I was twenty two I finally had what one might call an exclusive relationship for the first time ever. I realized how difficult it could be to communicate with someone that I was dating.

And it continued to be difficult. I felt like the only serious conversation I could have with a girl was the breakup one, with an occasional serious moment in more casual conversations. Eventually I dated this one very unique girl who just told me absolutely every thought that she was having. It was disarming and the only thing I could do in return was spill some of my secret thoughts back at her. I realized that you can say some really personal things and people are generally supportive. The only disadvantage is it tends to move things along faster than they might have otherwise, and you end up breaking up sooner. At least I think so, because she and I didn’t last too long.

Anyway, while I still have trouble sharing my grief with other people sometimes, I do it much more often than I used to, and rather than see it as being “needy” (which I guess it kind of is), I see it as necessary and I try to be available for others when they need someone to spend the time and energy needed to listen to them.

I cannot express how important I think it is to talk to and be with and understand other people. When my parents split up, I remember feeling like I was going to throw up if I didn’t talk about it.

I found help in unlikely places. One friend who I had always seen as obtuse and difficult to talk to at times, when he heard what had happened, in a matter of seconds, transformed into someone who listened and understood. It was the first serious conversation I had had with him, and I never expected him to suddenly be so open.

Then another friend, who I had known much longer and talked with much more, was the opposite. I was on a trip with him in a foreign country and couldn’t talk to anyone else. But when I brought it up he seemed to shut off and got very uncomfortable. He became silent, didn’t look at me, and didn’t ask any clarification or follow-up questions. It was disappointing and a little embarrassing. The difference between these two friends was that the first one had experienced his own parents’ divorce and the other one could not even imagine such an event. So I think it is important to seek out those who have been through similar challenges. They will understand.

Part 5

A Journey (Part 3)

3. “Life is hard”.

Everyone knows that life is hard, but I think it was important for me to recognize the difference between “Life is hard” and “My life is hard”. The first statement links our difficulty and hardships with those of others as part of the human condition. It gives meaning to the suffering and creates compassion in us. The second alienates, sets us apart, and reinforces the incorrect thought that since our suffering is unique or worse than other people’s, that we don’t fit in with them.

Part 4

A Journey (Part 1)

Recently I told a friend that I had been treated for depression and she asked, "How did you overcome it?"

I gave her a rather inaccurate answer. I said that I had gotten tired of worrying about everything, so I stopped. Over the next few days I realized the answer I had given was wrong, or at the very least grossly incomplete. I told her about my mistake and realized that I couldn't really give an easy answer to her question.

Over the last two days, I have been thinking about the answer and doing my best to write it down. What resulted is the next eight (at least) posts that you will read on this blog, and they are more of a reflection on the question than an answer. As you will see, I don't really know the answer; all I have are suspicions. So here we go.

"How did you overcome your depression?"

1. I got tired of thinking about it.
What I meant when I said this originally was that I slowly got more and more sick of asking myself if I was happy or not. It consumed so much of my time and energy that I sort of started to do it less and less. I think that a great source of my depression was the fact that I would worry and feel guilty about the fact that I could be depressed when I had everything in life going for me. Eventually when I was depressed I would just let myself sit there and be depressed, and I think that helped the guilt go away.
When I gave this as a reason, my friend replied: “So it just lifted.”
I guess, but it happened over a period of months and, I suppose, years. I wouldn’t say that it just lifted, but rather that it very slowly and imperceptibly dissipated. Mostly anyway.

Part 2