Storied Mind

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Here are two posts about self-esteem (here and here) I’ve recently published at Health Central. “Loss of self-esteem” has become the clinical term for one of depression’s key symptoms, but it doesn’t convey much about living with the contempt I used to feel for myself, day in, day out.

One habit that was especially hard to break was the constant comparing of myself, always unfavorably, to just about anyone I met or even read about in the news. A day was filled with reminders of inadequacy because of this, but I think part of it was also envy. I’ve always felt contradictory impulses – tearing myself down but also feeling strongly competitive with other men. I could easily shift from feeling powerless to imagining myself capable of super-achievements. I suppose these are different forms of insecurity, damaged sense of self, loss of self-esteem – whatever you’d like to call it.

The other habit was lashing myself with the failures or blunders I committed each day. Of course, I could never see the positive side of anything I did when consumed by depression. I obsessed and winced over each mistake and took it as yet more proof of worthlessness. Strange how limited the mind and emotions become in this state – one answer, one judgment for everything.

In one of the Health Central posts, I describe how I’ve worked to break these two habits I lived with for so long. They still come up, but more as ghostly reminders that I can back-hand out of the way.

I hope you’ll find these posts helpful.

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In recalling how couples I’ve encountered have dealt with conflict in their relationships, two moments come to mind. These were just glimpses, but they stand out as the extremes.

Once during a visit to a Native American community in the Pacific Northwest, I went to see an elder couple at their home. What they said has faded from memory, but how they said it was completely enchanting. Their words flowed together as if the two of them were inside each other’s minds. Without a pause, they spoke in rhythmic alternation, picking up each other’s sentences, finishing thoughts in a way that seemed like sharing rather than interrupting.

Their voices perfectly complemented each other in tone and pitch – it was like listening to music, a beautiful duet. I could hardly imagine what they might have done to reach that harmony. No couple gets through decades together without their share of differences and conflict. I knew they were prominent in the ceremonial life of the community, and perhaps it was that spiritual dimension that had helped them achieve such harmony.

The other example was as different as night from day. I was driving a few blocks from our house on a beautiful New Mexico morning, with a clear view of the mountains on either side of the Rio Grande Valley. In stark contrast, I saw a young couple about a block away flailing in their own dark storm.

The man had just left their house, crossed the street to his car and looked back to see the woman following him out. She marched in one determined step after another right up to him and without a word punched him in the face. He immediately hit back just as hard, and the fight was on. They kept pounding at each other as I watched from a distance, horrified, immobilized. It seemed my car just kept going where it needed to go. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m a paws-on kind of guy so I get really upset when they’re tied behind my back. Truly, deeply, combustibly upset, especially with the self-imposed deadline for my new website fast approaching.

For two weeks, I’ve been sitting at this keyboard staring at spinning beach balls of computer death against the bright and cheery background of my frozen website. Gray screens, grinding gears and broken hard drives. Vanishing posts, failed backups and wheezy memory of the random access type. Very, very random.

Primary system blown, older system now in place. More spinning beach balls, grinding gears and gray screens. I work at the machine’s convenience.

Is there a lesson in this? Is it hubris to set a deadline for launching a new website?

I guess I’ve set my own stress trap and should have read this post of mine again before making firm commitments. After all, no one but me cares about or remembers or ever knew about this deadline, so I’ll try to relax about missing it. Good practice in breaking an old depression-era habit.

So, RecoveryFromDepression.com will remain shut behind password-only access well beyond my hoped for launch date of August 1st. I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

In the meantime, I get a cool new computer to satisfy my gadget-lust. So all is not lost.

Here’s wishing you the best in hardware reliability.

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Depression is a natural enemy of close relationships. It helps build tension and conflict as a once-loving partner either withdraws into emotional isolation or turns angry and blaming. I suppose that’s inevitable since the loving support of a long-term relationship doesn’t fit the depressed view of an undeserving and damaged self. Nor does it fit the phase of depression that blames the partner for causing the inner pain.

Either way, depressives push their partners off to a distance they can handle, and the partners search for explanations. A helpful one is to think of depression as a force that splits a person in two and starts an inner struggle between the healthy and depressed personalities. Then depression becomes the cause of conflict, the culprit that breaks apart the relationship.

My wife and I came to think in these terms and took comfort in imagining depression as the evil twin I needed to kick out of my life. That view gave us something to hope for. With each new treatment, there was another chance to get rid of the intruder and bring back the real me permanently. That’s how we’d end the tension and restore what we could of a damaged relationship.

But there were problems with that approach. It took a lot of our energy away from dealing with the tension and conflict we lived with every day. It was true that I had to focus on ending depression – my wife couldn’t do that for me. And while I was working hard on doing that, she had to take care of herself. But we also needed to try every day to repair the weakened bond between us. Read the rest of this entry »

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In response to a recent post, Clinically Clueless commented that, for her, recovery was a process, not a destination. She needed to keep aware of it, like those recovering from addiction, in order to catch the signs of relapse. I’ve thought of recovery in a similar way, certainly not a state you arrive at and then take for granted. These days I consider it more like a set of skills that I have to keep practicing. I need them almost every day.

But I’ve also been unwilling to think of myself as always in recovery, as I wrote in this post last year. I want the different way of living that should come next, one with the vital energy that depression drains away so completely. Sure, symptoms linger on, and that’s why the skills to deal with them are so important.

In the past year, I came to believe that I had recovered, that I was “there.” It took quite a while before I felt OK with saying this out loud or writing it down in this blog. There had been so many false “recoveries” that I couldn’t quite believe I had changed so deeply. But it gradually dawned on me that my way of living each day had a new energy about it. I knew what I wanted to do and could get it done. I laughed about mistakes that I used to take as disasters. I started reconnecting with my family and friends, instead of lurking about in shadowy absence all the time. (However – tons of work to do in restoring relationships – much more about that coming up in another post.)

Most of all, as I wrote here at a critical moment, my belief about myself had changed. I no longer assumed I was all wrong as a person, a fraud, worthless – that endlessly replayed recording. There wasn’t any recording. I didn’t start thinking how fine and OK I was. I was simply feeling, thinking, behaving differently, without that constant bleak drag of heavy chains.

It’s true I’m not done with the symptoms, but I do feel done with the beliefs of depression. Without the power of those negative beliefs behind them, the symptoms are more like old habits. After decades of doing things their way, I have to remain aware when I find myself repeating one of those patterns. Read the rest of this entry »

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1. When deeply depressed, it’s not the fear of failure I carry but the fear that success is getting too close.

2. When I’m living in the timeless Now, what happens to hope, to a future, to recovery? I think I’ll want them back if I land again in the tightly timed now.

3. @soulful sepulcher said to me: Try this, you’re already recovered. Real recovery began as I considered that idea.

4. Mind: Recovery takes a long time, many steps, hard work: Belief & Feeling: Take us too or you’ll never know when you’ve arrived.

5. Thought, feeling, decision are instantaneous & preverbal. So what’s with all the mental words that slow down the doing?

6. Who am I talking to when I talk to myself? Who’s in that nameless, invisible audience I need to convince?

7. I’ve got a backseat driver jabbering his stop-action words of fear and undoing. He used to be the buzz but now he’s too boring to keep around.

8. No room in this town for Depression and me so I’m chasing him out right now. Or is that him chasing me?

9. Pema Chodron says the struggle to “meditate” gets nowhere. In the moment of hearing the gentle gong, your mind is still. That’s the moment of non-meditation.

10. Steven Hayes re ACT: “To be willing & accepting means noticing you are the sky, not the clouds; the ocean, not the waves.”

11. Steven Hayes again on ACT: “..willingness & acceptance are states of being that minds can never learn how to achieve.”