Too depressed to do anything else, I'll write about my depression

It's a new experience, being depressed. Now, to be honest I haven't actually gotten a depression diagnosis. But my wife, Laurel, is a retired psychotherapist. And she tells me, "Brian, you aren't just tired. You're depressed."

At first I didn't believe her. But Laurel gave me a Psychology Today article, "Depressed Without Knowing It," and that helped to change my mind. 

I knew that several health problems had made me anxious, sad, worried, nervous about the future. I also was feeling a lack of energy, and was having trouble doing things that I used to enjoy. But since I'd never suffered from depression, being a pretty damn optimistic person, it took a while for me to realize that something different was happening to me.

Like, tonight I'd semi-happily watched an Oregon-Wyoming football game. Then I suddenly felt a wave of what felt like tiredness wash over me. I didn't feel like doing anything. All I wanted to do was lay on the couch. 

I told Laurel, "Sometimes doing nothing feels like what I want to do." 

She let me lay there for a while. Then -- and I'm really fortunate to have a live-in therapist -- Laurel knelt by the couch and started to talk to me. 

Did I want to watch TV? No, I said. Did I want to read something? No, I said.

We kept talking. Eventually I told her the truth: "The only thing I really feel like doing is writing about what I'm learning from my depression. For me, blogging is like a diary that I can look back on when, hopefully, I'm feeling better."

Interestingly, as soon as I decided to be open with the world (or rather, the few people who will happen upon this post and decide to read it), I sensed some energy returning to my addled brain. I guess this is why writers write when they can't do anything else.

I don't have any fantasies that a waiting world really cares about how I'm feeling. This is one of the things I'm learning from my depression: I don't matter to other people as much as I thought I did.

Understand, I don't mean that I don't matter to my wife, daughter, dog, and other loved ones. Rather, what I'm realizing is that when I can't write blog posts as often as I usually do, or pursue the citizen activism activities I used to dive into with a lot more energy than I have now, life goes on.

This shouldn't be a shocker.

I'm just one person. There's billions of people in the world. Heck, there's over 160,000 people in just my home town of Salem, Oregon. Why would I think that what I'd been doing to help change the world, or Salem, was so crucial, so important, that my lassitude would make much of a difference to anyone but me?

So this strikes me as one benefit of depression. It leads me to a sort of Buddhist-like insight: my self isn't as central to reality as I thought it was.

Now, this insight is both sort of depressing (or disturbing), yet also a relief. It takes some of the pressure off me to get back to acting "normal," since I'm realizing that while my usual life is important to my near and dear ones (our dog would miss our evening walk, and even more, me preparing her evening meal, if I wasn't able to do those things), for most people I'm simply an occasional thought. 

Here's another semi-Buddhist'y insight: I don't even matter as much to myself as I thought I did. 

During the past few weeks I'd have occasional (OK, frequent) crying spells and near-panic attacks when I'd think, or tell Laurel, "I feel myself slipping away." Yet obviously there was still a Me able to say that. What I really meant is that the Brian I was used to being was feeling more and more foreign to me, like a person I used to know well, yet now was fading from memory.

In my saner moments I'd grasp that the cosmos doesn't give each of us a Lifetime Guarantee that the person we most enjoy being is going to stay that way. Change happens. Life happens. Illness happens. Suffering happens. Shit happens. 

We've all got to deal with it.

The (likely) fact that I'm depressed shows that I'm not dealing with it as well as I could, since I know quite a few people who have more serious health problems than I do, and they sure seem to be handling life better than I am. But this isn't a competition, and I guess I need to stop comparing myself with others -- including my previous self.

"It is what it is, dude" probably is the wisest thing I tell myself these days. 

Well, equally wise is a new mantra that I started repeating today: Feel more, emote less. By this I mean that letting myself get overwhelmed with emotion doesn't work out very well. Better is when I simply am aware of how I'm feeling at the moment -- tired, satisfied, worried, peaceful, anxious, whatever. 

This is much more of a bodily feeling than a mental sensation. I can be tired, yet I don't have to worry about being tired. Yeah, I know: Mindfulness 101. Also Cognitive Therapy 101. It's just a new experiential insight for me, separating what is actually going on with me from the stories I tell myself about what is going on.

Heck, I love to tell stories to myself. And, others.

But I'm finding that when I'm in a depressed state of mind, it's best to let the storytelling fade away into a corner of my mind rather than taking center stage. When I talk to myself, these days often it isn't a conversation that I really want to have. So I'm doing my best to live as much as possible in the actual here and now rather than an imagined there and then.

Or, an interpretation of here and now that gets too far away from the physical facts of what I'm feeling at the moment. 

Lastly, I've got to give a shout-out to one of my favorite authors, Jack Haas. He wrote one of my favorite books, "The Way of Wonder." It's a strangely wonderful book that I bought nine years ago and have re-read several times. I've written several blog posts about the book and Haas' other writings (you can search for them in the Google box in the right sidebar). 

Today I thumbed through "The Way of Wonder" and came upon this passage. Perfect for my depressed mind!

We must forget the forgettable, become fools, have no purpose, and make the mind new at every moment. We must live without knowing what it is to live, and be without knowing what it is to be. That is how we plug into the mystery. That is how we... be.

(In case you're wondering, yes, I have some good doctors who are aware of my not-so-good state of mind, and I've got an appointment with a mental health nurse practitioner next week.)

Comments

[Steve E]

Word

[Graham]

Sorry to hear this Brian. Good luck, good thoughts, and hope you feel better soon...

[Rain Trueax]

Is it possible your depression isn't just the health issue but your awareness of aging and that nobody escapes it even though you had hoped you would? It is one of those things we have to come to grips with and it can be depressing until that happens and understands old age is part of the cycle of life for us all. Another aspect to this is with summer coming to an end, a lot of people talk of feelings of coming darkness. It is a normal part of human life to have dark and light times-- just we enjoy the light more. Hope you get good results from talking to a professional.

[Susann Kaltwasser]

Crying is very healthy. Men should do it more often. It releases some sort of chemical in the brain that changes how you see the world. Us women do it all the time, for good reason, it feels good when you are done. https://www.agingcare.com/Articles/reasons-why-crying-is-good-for-your-health-146022.htm

[Alistair]

Hi Brian, I have suffered from depression for over 30 years despite heaps of RS meditation (inititated by
Charan Singh in 1979). Like you I didn't realise I was depressed. I just thought I was stressed and tired (I had a lot to be stressed and tired about back then too!) It wasn't until my wife described my behaviour to her doctor and she said "get him down here asap" that I realised I was depressed. Turns out it is genetic/physical and a SRI medication made me feel nornal for the first time in about 15 years. BTW, I was meditating a lot at the time and I used to experience a lot of bliss in meditation but would be just as depressed when I came out of it.

Now I am 59, have had to stop work as a high school science teacher due to cancer and tick bourne diseases I contracted about 5 years ago. Now I am having similar symptoms to you. Waves of tiredness come over me sometimes and I don't want to talk to anyone or do anything, just lie down and be in the consciousness or at least relax and observe the thoughts and feelings. I occassionally have crying spells too when things overwhelm me and I fall into feeling like everything I am is being taken away, and I am facing a brief and unpleasant future. My cancer is slow growing so I could die within 1 year or I may go on for another 20 depending on the sucess of treament. But imminent death is not the issue.

I have been through many spells of sickness so transforming my neurological processes that I feel like a different person, a much dimmer person that is not recognisable compared with prior internal states.

I worry about the effects of my depression and physical illness on my wife. She is very loving but worries about me. Also, there are things that have happened in the past that have resulted in situations with relatives and past loves that make me sad but I cannot hope to change in any meaningful way now. I do not regret anything. I do not blame myself for my past failures or take pride in my successes. I don't see how there can be any free will. I am an atheist (the result of experiencing of my own still empty consciousness as a result of RS meditation rather than light and sound and the Master inside) and I can't see any objective evidence for anything like a soul surviving death dispite what a couple of my RS friends who claim to go inside on a regular basis would have me believe. So I have no fear of death. But I do have a fear of the process of getting there! Pain and suffering are not fun.

I very much wanted to be able to go inside and experience those higher regions but I have come to the conculsion that such experiences are a result of rare genetics/brain chemistry and that they don't reflect an objective reality. Never the less, I feel heart broken on some level that RS has turned out to be BS for me.

I am not intellectually satisfied with the stillmind-emptyness-nonbeing state that I experience. It provides no answers to the why and wherefore of things. Anything I think about it is just subjective rumination. It is wonderful and blissful and profound sometimes but still provides no objective knowledge.

I have typed this rave in part as a reaching out from my place of depression to someone who seems to be in a similar place and also in the vague hope that it may make you feel a little less alone in what you are going through. Or, that you may find snippits interesting, that raise further questions, which I am only too happy to answer.

P.S. I did find a number of visits to a pyscotherapist very helpfull for a while about 12 years ago.

[Brian Hines]

Alistair, I deeply appreciate your honest comment. It does indeed make me feel less alone. And thanks for being so upfront about your religious skepticism. Naturally I share your views. Occasionally I still reach out to the God and Guru I no longer believe in, asking them to make an appearance in my consciousness. Until that happens with undeniable clarity, like you I'm unable to believe in their existence.

Our atheism does have the downside of not providing us with the support that believers have. Considering pain and suffering to be God's will or the burning off of karma gives true believers some comfort. However, if comfort comes at the expense of reality, this is a questionable bargain. My attitude is that Hope and Reality have to be in balance. We need both, and there is plenty of room in a secular perspective for each of these precious attributes.

[Alistair]

"Occasionally I still reach out to the God and Guru I no longer believe in, asking them to make an appearance in my consciousness." Ditto, although that hasn't happened to me for a while now. I have found the thing that gives me the greatest acceptance has been an understanding of evolution and genetics/inheritance. It's no bodies "fault" including mine that I am ill. There is no paying of karma, no "reason" for it or "divine plan or lesson" in it. It is just an event that is the result of genetics and environment. I don't ask "why me?" and I have never thought it was unfair that I got cancer etc. It's just nature ... hang around long enough and you'll die of something and there is a bloody good chance it will be cancer or heart attack or stroke. That thought that I am just like the birds in my yard, living out my life as best I can, curcumscribed by my evolutionary history, makes me feel part of the bigger whole which is nature on this planet. I think this is the secular equivalent of accepting all as "gods will". Everything is what it is because of everything that has gone before plus some randomness introduced at the level of the very small.

Do you still meditate do you think because you enjoy it or are you motivated still by some hope that the inner veil may be lifted and some kind of real transendent certainty will arrive before death does? I find myself still meditating as much as my health allows which is only about 30 mins a day. I do enjoy the peace and stillness of mind that comes but I am still secretly hoping that I will be able to have OOBES or some total loss of self or something along those lines. I am hoping that that kind of wishful thinking will go in the end. What's your thoughts on that? Krishna Murti once said "hope is the slayer of the real". I worry that the old RS mental habits actually stand in the way.

And lastly, I have met six people during my life who were able to leave the body in RS meditation pretty much at will. One of them was my ex-wife. I found none of them convincing mainly because I have seen none of the saintly qualities in them nor did they exhibit any real understanding of the obviously primary role of the consciousness in producing one's reality. They all seem(ed) totally distracted by their internal trips. A couple of them seemed to be totally mad! My ex-wife eventually stopped meditating having come to the conclusion that all the internal regions and shabd were projections of her mind. Another friend of mine complained that his spiritually evolved wife was really bossy and selfish! Another friend of mind who says he spends very little time in physical reality now I have observed to love to mind-fuck people, doesn't believe in climate change and rejects the idea of Darwinian evolution. I don't think these people were or are lying about their inner state but it has really made me wonder about the value of it. Have you had any encounters with these types and if so what was your impression?

[Glenda May]

I must say, think Rain may be on to something under the general heading...realization of getting older.... When you ask yourself 'what's it all about' ...after a lifetime of fun and joy and sadness and pains and embarrassments and giving and receiving love and and the incredible wonder of this physical world learning and growing ....and the answer comes up 'I don't know'. ....whoa.... Well isn't all 'this' and more exactly what life IS? Too obvious?

Ok then, there's this...I believe my spirit will soar once I am willing and able to drop this body which allows me to experience so much, but not too much. And 'no body' will also be experiential..or not. But at this point, what really does all that matter. YOU are undertaking this journey, no one else. If it includes an exploration of psychotherapy, good on. It's all grist for the mill someone beautiful said so clearly.

So be the best tired you can be, be the best ANYthing every moment. I have always enjoyed your writing, this post too!