March 2020 – COVID-19 and Depression
I’ve been offline for a few months, in terms of putting out this newsletter, but it seems this is that time to get back in touch. For all of us. So, in this newsletter (and likely quite a few to come), I’ll be offering some initial thoughts on this COVID-19 period, as it relates to staying mentally healthy, and particularly with the challenge of managing depression.
May you be well, healthy, connected, and finding resilience during this difficult time.
COVID-19 and Depression: Some Thoughts and Suggestions
Some thoughts:
As a teenager, I would read a lot of books about the end of the world: Omega Man, The Tripod Novels, The Quiet Earth, etc. Basically, books in the thick tradition of young adult angst. Usually, oppressive forces arrive, strip the hero of agency, against which he or she struggles to find power and eventual freedom, usually by refusing the tattered rules of society and making their own way. Well, it’s a very interesting contrast to this time we’re suddenly thrust into, at least as it seems so far, and I’ll highlight a couple leitmotifs I’ve been hearing in conversations I’ve been having all week. For me, the personal and professional upshot is that I continue a long arc of being impressed by us humans, and this last week has just deepened it. Not in a Pollyanna way—if you stay a psychotherapist long enough, that burns off—but in a reasoned, objective, observational way. We humans seem, ultimately, when everything is weighed out, to privilege the light over the dark. Maybe not by that much, but apparently by enough.
First: In my straw-sampling of folks, and in the media reports at large, there’s a remarkable lack of panic. Not a lack of anxiety, or confusion, but of fear-driven behavior, rapaciousness or self-centeredness. The amount of the pro-social stands in such contrast to my YA books, and to most “apocalypse lit”, in which when society gets shocked, it’s everyone for themselves. It also does not seem to be simply people holding their breaths, or building fortifications, but that people are staying connected, not despairing, not projecting dismal stories that push out ahead of the data. So far, people seem remarkably, and, given the last four years, suddenly rational.
Second: Already many commentators, and normal folks I’m talking to, are thinking about the possible impacts this event will have. Not doom and gloom, but entertaining the ways this could induce positive shifts, which I’ve never read that in zombie novels. That in itself I’m finding fascinating and hopeful, essentially that there’s a kind of faith underlying these conversations. Or, perhaps, there is a dawning awareness of the intrinsically integrated nature of the contemporary world (as well as, maybe, an awareness of the fundamentally systemic nature of reality), in which there’s no thing that’s just itself, and that (as Hull and McDowell’s song, “River Rocket”, says) “Everything everywhere matters to everything.” Not in some aspirational, flowers-and-rainbows way, but in an objective and harshly-lit way. As just true.
Third: There is an awareness of the surreal quality of this experience that seems to be directing people to reflection (rather than panic). Our standard models of our day-to-day reality are not doing well to help us understand this event. It’s a beautiful, early-Spring afternoon here in the SF Bay Area, and the neighborhood’s quiet, without gunfire or explosions. How does that get squared with the macro events and crisis, in all its dimensions? Or the vast wealth of the U.S. and of this particular region, with the partially empty grocery stores? It seems that there is some level of awareness and interest (rather than frozenness) in the rifts between the reality and our conventional way of interpreting it. I think this can only be for the good. Wisdom comes out of these kinds of dislocations and exposures of the failings of our own stories: “Oh, so this is reality.”
Fourth: Similar to the last observation, people seem to be embracing both the macro and the micro at the same time. Meaning that the awareness and attendance to the large-scale requirements (of social distancing, of staying at home, of the meaning and need for careful hygiene), is not swamping or overriding the micro needs and decisions at the individual level (What exactly do I do about going out for groceries? How exactly am I going to not go stir crazy at home? How do I have to be more careful in terms of communication with my roommates?). This also seems so remarkable, if I’m clocking it correctly. The philosopher Ken Wilber said that maturation is measured by the ability to hold paradox, more and more perspectives without collapsing any of them into each other. I hope this is an emergent of this time, because against the regressive neo-tribalism of recent years, if we are all going to grow up from this experience, and actually embed a complex, multi-perspectival orientation into the body politic, then such a maturation of our ability to embrace paradox is utterly necessary.
Some suggestions:
In terms of working with depression at a time like this, here are some initial suggestions that I hope might be helpful.
1) Let yourself acknowledge your particular reactions. For instance, one person I talked with was struggling with the fear of infection, though they were in the least affected demographic. Another was feeling the relief of the whole world going through this together, rather than feeling isolated or the odd one out. And another person was relieved to feel this as so clearly out of their control, that even their self-critical voice gave up. Whatever you in particular are feeling and however you might be reacting, is utterly OK. There’s no road map for this, and there’s no mandate to respond in any particular way. Give yourself permission, as best you can, to have your uniqueness.
2) Don’t only fill your time with distractions. Yes, catch up on Netflix, but you’re probably going to find that enjoyment runs out pretty quick, and then your reality will be right there. With depression, dosage is really important; when down, taking a 30 minute nap can be a relief, while taking a 3 hour nap is a further descent. Reconcile to the necessity to be creative with your time, engaged, and having to resist the depressive tendency to go on “pause” mode.
3) Choose meaningful things. Given the problem with distractions, we have to figure out what is meaningful, and focus our attentions there. It doesn’t matter what those are for you; our uniqueness is non-negotiable, like it or not. Ideally, use this time to get to know yourself better and more specifically. For instance, whether documentaries are generically good things, are they good for you? And you’ll know this by their aftereffects: meaningful things leave a quality of connection, positivity, possibility, and hopefulness grounded in experience. I.e., the opposite of depression. Let your experience of activities, in terms of how they make you feel, be the guide to your choices.
4) Stay active and engaged, with what energy you have. This is a watchword with depression, that frozenness and lethargy are both fertilizer for depression, but also manic activity will eventually collapse back into depression. We have to work within the range of energy that we have. Which means, we have to actually pay attention, and pay respect, to where we are at in the moment, and not default to where we think we should be. If we check in with ourselves, and find that we barely have the energy to water the flowers, then that is the action or movement to take, and we need to trust (and then observe) how that tends to open more energy for the next thing. But collapse (rather than the “therapeutic distraction” or reset of, say, a 30 minute nap) will always tend to reinforce itself, like a whirlpool with a motor.
5) Stay connected. What this means is going to be different for each of you, but that’s OK, since in order to work with depression we must respect the exact contours of our own depression experience. But it’s also true that the human body and nervous system, way way older than our own personal selves, privileges connection, even down to the neuronal level (the book Loneliness is a great read on this). Whether that means calling people, social media, or connecting to a long-dead philosopher—that doesn’t matter. Rather, it matters that you feed this part of your nervous system, which is as non-negotiable as eating protein.
6) Meditate. A colleague quipped that a silver lining to this time is that more people, out of necessity and boredom and burning through their Netflix queue, might actually develop a meditation practice. Amen to that, if so. Because meditation—technically, mindfulness practice—is so vital and necessary to resolving depression. Basically, depression is a wildly impactful story (“I’m worthless, the world’s worthless, and past and future are worthless”), which scoops us up into it, and then pretends that it is just reality, no story at all. Without a practice that trains us to see outside the story of depression, and that depression is actually telling a story, we are stuck with it, like a king with an unreliable counselor. Use this time to start or deepen a meditation practice. It’s really critical. (A good starting place is the Headspace app, although there is an enormous amount of resources out there, both contemporary and classic. Poke around and see what actually works for you—again, the value of paying attention to your uniqueness.)
7) Don’t forget your body. Even if you’re not able to do your usual routines around body (the gym, running the trails, dance clubs, etc.), don’t forget to program in time. You don’t need the gym for a workout. Go on online and look up “bodyweight workouts” and you’ll find how much you can do without any accoutrement. That’s one level of body. But more importantly for depression is to pay attention to what your body is saying about your experience, whether it needs more activity, or less, or a certain kind over another. Whether it’s feeling unplugged from reality, and needs something to feel “plugging”, or whether reality is getting too much and it needs some “de-plugging”. The body is the most important source of information on where you actually are, versus where you think you are. Keep feeling and checking in with your body, and then practice taking its instructions, and practice discerning the difference between what your body is saying, and what depression is telling you.
Final thoughts:
I know we’re in the first throes of this time, and are inevitably disoriented and challenged. As I said, I have a lot of hope and trust in humanity. And…we’ll see how this plays out, and need to stay open and flexible in the face of the unknown. The points above are some initial observations, which might all change next week, which will clarify themselves simply as we go along. But the suggestions are all time-worn and solid about depression and how to manage it, with this virus simply providing a big dose of stress. They are fairly broad scale, and if you want more detail, try poking around on my articles page, and also I’ll be writing more in the coming weeks. Be safe, be mindful, and use this time to practice and train. It will pass, and we all can come out of it a little wiser and developed, or not, depending on what we choose.
