Driving Time, Stress and Mountains

Posted by JohnD Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:14:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by wili_hybrid at Flickr

Reading old journals reminds me how full of twists and turns a recovery road can be. Along the way, I have encountered strong presences that restore a sense of balance – when I have let them. For years, though, I could not let them work within me for more than a few moments. I’ve edited a few journal entries that show the struggle. I was partly aware of the possibility of change, partly convinced I could not break the cycle I was in.

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Stress has a lot to do with depression, we’re told, and time has a lot to do with stress. And it’s true, my life is timed, and time runs out before I’ve done enough. Enough to prove my value, enough to quell the sharp-edged voice talking me toward nothingness, enough to win a race I mindlessly run. That’s all the stuff of stress. But I see another side to it. Staying within time is a protection as well. The sequence carries me from place to place, job to job and builds a structure to guide and shelter me, stressful and exhausting though it is. “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back wherein he keeps alms for oblivion.” It can be a prison, time, but its walls shut out thought and feeling that carry me in dangerous directions. So there is tension and stress inside those walls, but fear of something worse on the outside. Can that change? Can I step outside this beating time without becoming lost?

Posted in Surviving at Work, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags culture, depression, Montana, mountains, Native American, New Mexico, prison, Pueblo, recovery, stress, tension, time, tradition | 5 comments

Surviving Work, Surviving Depression

Posted by JohnD Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:08:00 GMT

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A few months ago, Therese Borchard of Beyond Blue was describing in one of her insightful videos the nature of her belief in Catholicism. She had been accused of being a “cafeteria Catholic,” picking and choosing which of the Church’s teachings she would accept. She emphasized that she read the Church Catechism as a bipolar person, and, as she was clarifying what she meant by that, started with: “Staying alive is my first priority.” That stopped me.

I’ve watched that video a couple of times since then, and, though I hear and respect her thoughtful discussion of Catholicism, that simple statement about staying alive is what cuts right through me. There is no getting away from that stark reality. The deepest depression turns on the neon light of suicide.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Surviving at Work, Fighting Depression | Tags depression, energy, Getting It Done When Youre Depressed, Julie Fast, Karl Menninger, living, Man Against Himself, obsession, optimism, suicide, surviving, Therese Borchard, transition, work | 3 comments

Creating a Way Out of Depression - 2

Posted by JohnD Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:20:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by ul_Marga at Flickr

I want to explore a lot more about creating and the creative process, but first I need to examine methods to keep depression from undermining the creative work I try to do. Or should I even put it that way – is it depression that stops me? For years, I told myself I couldn’t work when in a mental fog of depression, my will to act paralyzed, my motivation even to imagine a new writing project completely gone. Does it have to be that way? Here are a few writers who say NO!

Near the beginning of Julie Fast’s Get It Done When You’re Depressed, she quotes an artist suffering from depression who made an important discovery. Although she had been thinking she could not work when depressed, a friend asked her if she could see any difference in the quality of the work she produced when feeling good and when feeling bad. She realized that there was no difference. That was an eye-opener. She realized that even when she felt low and lacking the will to get to her creative work, she was still capable of producing the painting that gave her such deep fulfillment. Now she’s focused on her work, rather than on her feelings about whether she’s able to get started. For her, this realization has made all the difference, and she’s painting whether she’s excited about her work or unable to stop crying.

Posted in Surviving at Work, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags art, creating, creativity, depression, Fast, Fear, Fritz, Julie, Robert, work, writing | 2 comments

Am I Normal? Am I Depressed?

Posted by JohnD Sun, 04 May 2008 20:09:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by notsogoodphotography at Flickr

Which insightfully bewildered comic strip character was it who said: I never knew what I was missing until I lost it?

I read that line about ten years ago after a series of surgeries had removed a few expendable body parts and left me in a lot of pain during the weeks of recovery. Suddenly I thought of all the things a healthy body lets you do – simple things, like bending down to get your shoe on, that I had never imagined having trouble with, or complicated things, like climbing mountains, that I had never realized I might someday might dream of doing. So those words hit home.

Depression wasn’t so immediate in impact as surgery. Instead it crept up on me over such a long period that I didn’t realize how much energy of life and mind was disappearing until I got to a point where others had to tell me what I had lost. A basic force for life had gone missing, and I wasn’t sure I would get it back. It was no small part of depression’s voice to tell me over and over again how I had wasted life, and I hadn’t fully realized what was passing me by. Strange how a comic strip character can make you laugh about a condition that wants to leave you hopeless and humorless all the time, that wants you to think about loss, about what you lack that normal people still have. Comic insights often run deep.

Posted in Explanations, Surviving at Work, Growing Up with Depression, Experience with Treatments | Tags change, cycle, depression, disease, energy, health, loss, normal, pattern, recovery, work | 8 comments

Working Depressed: Changing Careers

Posted by JohnD Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by fdecomite at Flickr

I’ve just gone through a six weeks experiment to see if a moderate dose of lithium would strengthen an antidepressant that’s been fading in effectiveness. No such luck. Instead, I went through a tortured sequence of headaches, dizziness, muscular wobbliness, loss of balance, tremors and thick mental fog that always hits in depression but this time was intensified by the strange poison in my blood. I felt mentally impaired for several weeks, with difficulty retaining enough organizing facility to give a short presentation. Try doing your job when you’re under that influence. The crisp one-two-three main points at a meeting become uh, one is something like this or maybe that and somewhere in here is two and was there another point, uh, let’s see, uh, well, never mind. Eyes glaze over, exasperation is high, things are said, I am called on the carpet afterward. That’s humiliating, though plainly justified, and it’s just not the way I’ve been regarded by my peers before the onset of this last period of illness that now adds up to several years.

The lithium experience may have intensified the sluggishness of thinking that always comes with depression, but that symptom even without the impact of lithium has done more to undermine my effectiveness at work than any other. I’ve written other posts about this problem, but things have only gotten worse in terms of performance. Since I can’t function at anything like the top of my game anymore, I’ve decided to pull back from active practice and instead focus on using the knowledge I’ve gained through 25 years in a profession to write and mentor younger people trying to learn the ropes. Those are things I can still do quite well.

Posted in Surviving at Work, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags career, change, depression, failure, joy, mind, obsession, profession, work | 8 comments