June 2020 – Tips for the Depressive in Turbulent Times

In these incredible, and incredibly difficult times, we all need to pay attention to the non-negotiable rules of balance, not to the negation of action, but to actually make those engagements sustainable. In my more political 20’s, I saw over and over in my activist peers, and in myself, the tendency towards burnout, almost as a badge of honor. It doesn’t work, not for sustained social change, nor for sustained personal survival.

So in this month’s article, I offer some particular suggestions about ways to orient to this time. Especially with those of you with a history of depression, the need to be aware and careful with your own levels of energy and overwhelm is even more important at inflamed times like this.

Tips for the Depressive in Turbulent Times

I wanted this month to offer some thoughts about the state of the world, as a therapist, from the lens of maintaining one’s mental health, rather than a politico. I haven’t much to offer, really, on the latter—my thoughts these days lean towards the philosophical and psychological, rather than politics per se. But in these kinds of wild, uncertain, and transformative days, those who have had to live with the wild moods of depression need to pay special attention to their health, because the conditions of such times are rife with triggers for the depressive.

In sketch form, what is depression? It is a complex of symptoms (fatigue, negative cognition, hopelessness, a pervasive sense of futility, etc.) which arises when one interprets one’s self threatened by losses that are unsustainable (more detail is in these past articles/audio: “Futility”; “Depression and Ungrieved Futility”; “What I’ve learned from Depression (so far)”). It responds to overwhelm, uncertainty, diminished resources, and confusion about action.

Well, these times have a lot that map onto the nature of depression: they’re uncertain about outcome; resources are threatened (unemployment, leadership, future quality of life); systems (personal, cultural, political, economic) are overwhelmed, and there’s no clear actions to be taken, at multiple levels, but particularly at the personal level. It’s like the fire season in California: the low humidity and high winds don’t make fire, but they sure make fire more likely to flare up.

So, at a practical and pragmatic levels, given this matching of conditions between macro events and the nature of depression, the depressive needs to be extra careful and mindful during this time. What that means is that when the impulse, driven by the strong winds of current events, to emphasize action, to ramp up energy expenditure, to forget about rest (or see it as an abrogation of responsibility), we need to actually move more slowly, and/or increase our level of supports.

Remember, I’m writing as a therapist, whose perspective is that mental health and mental balance are not negotiable conditions, not something you can debate with reality. Public discourse and political perspectives, activist calls for action (from wherever on the political spectrum), do not trump the rules of the mind. If you’re walking on a high-wire, you won’t fall if you pay close attention to the rules of the situation, but if you decide, or take on a belief, that actually you can now run, physics will give you a rather quick corrective.

So, like it or not, regardless of your desires to “run” or not, and despite what your political allegiance or group might tell you is the appropriate response to the times, you have to pay attention to your own balance or you will—it’s not negotiable—fall.

What, then, does that actually mean? Here are some pointers:

• Don’t abandon the “being” actions (journaling, meditation, philosophizing) and over-emphasize the “doing”. This is a natural reaction in the face of (or what is perceived to be) a crisis, and gets buttressed by some activist voices/ideologies. But from my experience in my early 20’s of activist culture, there is a perverse emphasis on the rightness of burnout. Certainly find where you are called to act, then engage, but only up to the point of overwhelm (see this audio for more on this need, in relation to depression, to engage and take naps: “Depression and the Fundamentals of Healing”). The guilt that that comes about is an old way in which our monkey nervous systems want to keep aligned with the group. Maybe you’re doing something wrong—do your own self-examination—but probably it is an old reaction, within this upset of groups and belonging. Don’t take that guilt for granted—examine it, and set it aside in order to take smart, considered, and self-respecting action.

• Don’t abandon your right to assess, analyze, and decide what you think is right. Especially in crisis, strong impulses arise to find safety, orientation, and affiliation with the group through adopting others’ perspectives. This is a trap for the depressive (maybe for everyone). Depression is already an imposition on one’s personal process of perspective-taking. Instead of consideration of reality as it is now, depression steps in to assert a generic reality: you’re terrible, life is impossible, and it will never get any better. This displacement of our own view itself feeds into depression. There may be an excitement for a while in finding orientation through taking on a publicly sourced perspective, but it will bite you the end

• Don’t lose the sense of context. Nothing that is happening now hasn’t happened many times before; nothing now is without precedent or discernible nature, structure, and dynamics. Social disorder, social transformation, economic stress, political chaos, mendacity, nobility—none of this is new. That doesn’t mean what is happening is not meaningful, is not important, is to be shrugged at. But it does mean that we’d better pay attention to both history and to more underlying, pervasive structures of these events, if we’re not to get into a “panic of uniqueness”. That kind of panic implies that there is no roadmap, no orientation, no resources (both in terms of logic and earned wisdom) to help us. This is not good for the depressive (probably not good for anything), because depression already says that very same thing about life and self.

• Study what is happening. This relates to both slowing down and context. Don’t just ramp up out of panic or the feeling of “I need to do something!” Engage, but in a studied way. Do your homework. Be inquisitive rather than reactive. Ask yourself, “What is the context for what I’m witnessing and participating in?” and then ask around, and study what our predecessors already learned.

• Study what is still utterly OK. Don’t forget to look past and under the contemporary and what is inflamed. Don’t let the quiet of the day, the amazing qualities of life (the awesome phenomenon of lettuce unfolding from a tiny seed), the astounding capacity of humans to care about each other, the incredible resilience of human culture in the face of stress—don’t let those truths become subsumed or negated by the pain and urgency. That is also what depression does in its carpet bombing of belief in the goodness in life.

• Choose goodness. If you don’t choose to orient towards goodness in life (which is essentially the definition of faith, as in this article, “Faith as Openness, Faith as Training”), then depression is happy to fill the vacuum with its orientation to grimness. Not with the realm of facts and data; don’t make up stories about what can be known. But in the realm of philosophy, of questions without data to answer them, that is where depression and faith duke it out. Use this time to further train in faith, in answering the uncertainties and mysteries of this life as they are being expressed in this time, with a willing and intentional choice to orient towards them with openness, with a willingness to engage, and with a choice to assume goodness.

So, again, as a therapist I’m not here staking any political position, but just offering a reminder about the non-negotiable rules of the road for the depressive, to help you navigate these already painful times without adding too much suffering to the pile.