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Tag Archives: depression

Your Clothes Miss You

29 Nov

Wherever you go throughout your day or evening you’re likely to encounter someone who appears to be on the brink of downward facing dog. Doctor’s waiting rooms, grocery stores, department stores and classrooms will no doubt boast at least one person in yoga pants. You may think to yourself; “Oh they have just returned/are on their way to a yoga class.” If this is the case I pity the poor forsaken changing room; it’s cubbies and benches empty and lonely. Perhaps all these stretchy panted people are returning/on their way to storefront yoga studios whose only distinguishing feature is a wooden floor and bacteria sodden mats. The transition from clothes boutique to yoga studio consisted only of a few lotus decals and an oppressive air of serenity; bereft of a changing room.

That storefront-no dressing room scenario explains some percentage of the ‘no, no, they just look like sweats/pajamas” yoga pant wearing crowd. Of course people are allowed to wear whatever they wish. But a sea of black spandex is a bit dismal. We all have days in which we don’t want to get dressed (they’re usually called ‘sick’ days.) But these athletic clad people are out socializing in the world. They are at lunch and shopping for non-essentials (both activities one doesn’t immediately associate with clinical depression.)

Not everyone enjoys clothing and/or accessories. Some people consider dressing a bore and a chore. No amount of “You look like a sad mime!” messaging is going to make an impact. Perhaps the message that ‘wearing spandex leads to needing spandex’ might influence their decisions. As we embark on this season of shortening days and excessive gaiety, a zipper and button can be a guy/gal’s best friend. As you reach for the second glass of champagne or third mini-quiche, you might feel the pinch of a strained waistline of actual clothing. Nothing modifies behavior more quickly or efficiently than physical discomfort.

For people who do enjoy clothes and/or accessories it’s important to remember that clothes need air. They need to be worn and have a life. They are not meant to be purchased only to languish in closets/dressers. If you’re thinking; “I want to be comfortable” ask yourself why your real clothes are uncomfortable. If you’re thinking; “It’s too much trouble” perhaps you’re underestimating yourself. There’s something quite uplifting about making a bit of an effort (and it is such a little effort.) Walking out your door wearing actual clothing communicates; “Hey world I’m ready” both to you and to the world.

 
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Posted by on November 29, 2012 in Style

 

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Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other

30 Sep

Life is not a spectator sport. Life is to be embraced, battled, survived and celebrated. Yet there are times (perhaps long stretches of them) that life is barely tolerable. The world, if it must exist, is best viewed from under a blankie from the vantage point of the couch. There are variations on this lookout. Perhaps a box of Cap’n Crunch (crunch berries optional) is involved. There may be an 18-hour background chatter of Law & Order employed. The constant of course is the elastic waist pant. No respectable day of sloth can be had in real pants.

Self-imposed solitary confinement is nothing to aspire to, but it’s not shameful either. One need only be concerned if frequency or duration increases (like an erectile dysfunction drug side effect; after four days one should seek medial attention.) If we are relatively healthy people, our forays into fleece and foods of childhood are sporadic and strangely motivating. But what of the everyday less-than-fleece malaise?

If life is lived with any participation: sh*t happens. Things come up that are not of our own making and that make us miserable. Even good things (new; jobs, projects, relationships, etc.) can make us feel overwhelmingly uneasy. Dread, misery and anxiety are often lumped into the category of “stress.” Since “stress” can also result from happy things, we sill stick with specifics; dread, misery and anxiety.

  • Dread – Channel your Scarlett O’Hara
    • Don’t think about it until tomorrow. Dread is one of the all time biggest thieves of happiness there is. Weeks will be wasted dreading an event that at most will encompass 24 hours. Each time a lump in the pit of your stomach starts to form, grab your phone, notebook, slab of stone and write down your specific concern (i.e., my cousin-in-law will use the funeral as a platform for subtle anti-Semitic rhetoric) and go back to the business at hand. Trust that the specific concern has been properly mulled.
    • Focus on getting back to Tara. Yes that root canal or colonoscopy is going to be wretched. Nothing will change that. Focus on what you will do after the event (and after the narcotics wear off.) Plan something enjoyable.
  • Misery
    • Awful things happen, that is the burden of survival. Disease, death, desertion are often unavoidable. Sadness and often mourning is wildly appropriate, but should not become a lifestyle. There’s really only one way out; take a shower. Get up, put one foot in front of the other and fake it ‘til you make it. Pretend you are functioning and before you know it, you will be.
  • Anxiety
    • High anxiety (as it relates to a state of being not a Mel Brooks’ film) is a very uncomfortable state. Sustained non-specific anxiety (not related to an event) warrants medical attention.
    • The remedy for event specific anxiety is often directly related to the event:
      • Public speaking? Rehearse, rehearse & remember that most people aren’t really listening
      • Job interview? Research and keep in mind that you are interviewing them as well
      • Blind date? Have an exit plan
      • Socializing with people you do not know? Think of yourself as Jane Goodall and discover everything you can about these people and their ways

Often the best way out or through is to consider what we’d advise a friend. Most likely we would not encourage a friend to perseverate, we’d encourage them to get up and get out. We would lift the afghan from their shoulders, brush the crumbs from their chest, wipe the melted ice cream from their chin and whisper; step into the sun, step into the light.

 
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Posted by on September 30, 2012 in Well-Being

 

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Shameless

27 Aug

The University of Colorado, Denver has been conspicuously silent about their former graduate student turned gunman. There’s nothing particularly surprising about that. Universities are loath to discuss their students or alumni unless doing so will bring glory to the institution. Universities are also part of the elite group of organizations known as suffering from acute “litigation paranoia.” But onlookers accept the silence as being a vague yet misguided attempt at protecting someone’s privacy.

If what we were discussing was a physical disease or impairment, patient privacy would be a valid and even laudable motivation. As a society we’ve determined that patient privacy, even when a diagnoses could involve potential contagion, is necessary. We’ve also determined that when a disease poses an imminent public threat the afflicted will be quarantined (and thereby outed.)  In other words; public good trumps the individual. On the most basic level we apply this same principal to mental health as well. If a person states (unequivocally) that he/she is going to hurt him/herself or others, they are held (usually for a very short period) until they can be examined and either sent on their way or hospitalized.

This flaccid approach to protecting individuals and the public stems from the deinstitutionalized of mental healthcare several decades ago. The “expression of specific harm” is employed to prevent people being hospitalized against their will. One only need sit with the preceding sentence a bit to see the absurdity of this approach. People struggling with mental health issues rarely are clear and conscientious enough to seek hospitalization on their own. We leave it to the ill to state clearly their intentions to do harm before highly trained professionals are allowed to intervene. That’s a problem.

Adding to that little issue is the fact that we are freaked out by mental health issues. Yes, we’ve been Oprahfied enough to (sometimes) toss around the right terms. But we are glaringly uncomfortable dealing with real life mental health. If we see someone, day in and day out, who we consider odd, what do we do? Maybe we mention it to a friend, but beyond them who would we actually tell? And what is exactly do we say? Is the guy who only comes out at night and keeps his door covered in aluminum foil a danger to anyone? Are his odd behaviors actually highly honed coping skills for his illness? Maybe he sees a psychiatrist every day and is adequately medicated. Maybe he’s just eccentric (versus ill.) More often than not, we say nothing and just hope to avoid someone who makes us uncomfortable.

There is somewhere where aluminum foil should send an observer directly to the phone, and that’s at a university. Most students (graduate and undergraduate) are under 30 years of age; a primetime for the onset of very serious mental illnesses. Students are often sent away to school already presenting symptoms and perhaps fully medicated. The beauty of a controlled environment (like a university) is that elaborate and accessible systems are in place. A professor who observes disturbing behavior knows exactly how to report it immediately. No doubt, they sometimes do. But too often we err too heavily on the side of our own discomfort (which we shroud in “patient privacy” rhetoric.) It’s very unsettling to be the person who may upend someone’s life. However it’s far worse to be the one who stayed silent.

When we stop seeing mental health issues as being somehow shameful we will be a safer and more humane society. When newsreaders no longer intone (in sotto voce;) “He even spent time in a mental hospital” we will be further ahead. When a political candidate gains sympathy points for a spouse with a physical illness and looses popularity for one with a mental illness, we will be further ahead. When we stop using the word “rehab” (invoking images of large sunglasses and hangovers) as a euphemism for mental health facility, we will be further ahead. And when celebrities stop claiming to be suffering from “exhaustion” (as if it’s the 1900s) versus having depression, we will be much further ahead. There is no shame in illness of any kind. The only shame is silence.

 
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Posted by on August 27, 2012 in Cultural Critique, Education

 

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We Got Trouble*

17 Jun

A study has been conducted which examines depression and computer usage.  The researchers evaluated participant’s indications of depressive characteristics and correlated those to computer usage.  People who viewed email compulsively, or viewed a lot of videos on-line also showed signs of depression.  The report concludes with recommendations for a software to alert users of depressive behaviors.  Any intervention or awareness regarding mental illness is a good thing.  But before we start organizing a keyboard awareness day or choosing a color for our ribbons and rubber bracelets, let’s consider this study.

Isn’t the very crux of depression that of an inward orientation?  Are we at all surprised that people who are depressed are not out in the world socializing?  Isn’t the desire to turn on the computer actually a positive sign?  (Versus drawing the curtains and taking to one’s bed?)  Virtual connections are virtual, but sure beat cutting off all contact with the world.  Why would the researches make such a concerted effort to ignore the possibility that increased screen time leads to depression?  I’m not trying to start a rumor or anything, but could it be that they were funded by a mental health software company.

In the end, all this internet sound and fury is reminiscent of the Great Television Scare or Video Game Scourge of years past.  Comic books, dime store novels and packs of sen-sen conjured these same fears once. None of these trends/novelites have the power to ruin.

Depression is an illness it is not an allergic reaction to circumstances.  Do people enter a depressive state due to cataclysmic life events?  Certainly.  But that is a depressive state not depression.  Potato Potahto?  Not exactly.  There are many serious differences between a normative response to sad and/or traumatic events and that of a state of being.  For one thing a depressive state has a beginning, middle and end and a cause.  Knowing there is a cause to feeling so bad is the difference between night and day.  Having your world close in and become gray and fuzzy for no discernible reason is both frightening and self-perpetuating.  Our natural inclination is to move towards pleasure and away from pain.  If you can not see pleasure, if everything you see and feel is dark and thick and unrelenting, you’ve no reason to believe that there is a different world.  The darkness is the reality and it can be difficult to claw your way towards something you can’t detect.

Social isolation can certainly exacerbate depression.  Humans (even the most anti-social of us) are meant to interact.  (As a species we would perish without the desire to mingle.)  However people with depressive tendencies are a diverse group.  Their depression can be triggered or worsened by physical changes (hormonal transitions, illness, sleep deprivation, etc.) by life changes (moving, job changes, marriage, divorce, etc.) by nature (cycles of the moon, seasons, etc.) or by a myriad of other triggers/events.  That said, as an illness whose hallmark is inward focus, forced external interaction can be very effective.  Volunteer work can alleviate symptoms of depression.   It would seem that the very act of doing something for someone else, gives the brain a break from its persevering.

Living in a culture which extols the virtue of self above all else is powerful nourishment for the growth of depression.  If we were to pay attention to all the messaging, we should be painstakingly obsessing over every body part/function and moment in our lives.  We are to chronicle every; party, meal, trip, pee stick, grade promotion, softball game, and sonogram to the world and thereby give us the patina of great significance (Because It Happened To Us.)  We are encouraged not to experience life and its many moments, but to “create memories.”  So much self-consciousness is not good for the self.  Isn’t it a culture of; “your special day” “best snack provider-friendliest-rookie-player trophy” and general sense of entitlement that is far more socially isolating than technology?

When the first books were mass printed, the townspeople were up in arms.  What would happen to communal oral storytelling traditions.  There goes the neighborhood!  The first home radios caused some anxiety no doubt.  Families were now holed up in their living rooms staring at a box.  Little did they know, that box-staring was just beginning.  Television took people out of communal movie theaters (which were/are communal only in the sense of shared germs, smells and noise, not in any actual ‘communing’)  Personal music devices were said to be bad, yet I have never seen a campaign to bring back the boom-box, and I’ve never quite understood how the iPod affects behavior any differently than transistor radios did.

Invention and innovation do not come from the sky to do evil to our land.  They are not the flying monkeys.  Products/progress succeeds because there is a hunger that it satiates.  The fact that consumers represent the population and are thus diverse and include those with mental illness, is expected.  How one behaves, with or without technology will always be a lens into an individual’s inner workings.  Unfortunately it will always be far more tempting to design research or blame which looks to demonize the new and inanimate.  Mental illness, criminal behavior, gambling and pornography obsession are real issues.  Spending our valuable resources to shout; “No, no, look over here, the internet is to blame” does not seem wise.

*The Music Man – Meredith Wilson (1957)

 
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Posted by on June 17, 2012 in Cultural Critique, Media/Marketing

 

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A Bully Plan

04 Jan

There is nothing good to say about bullying.  The very definition (picking on those weaker) is anathema to humanitarianism.  Exposing bad behavior is almost always a good thing.  However there is a fine line between discussing an issue responsibly and throwing a buzz word (in this case “bullying”) over everything.

Tossing buzz words around is irresponsible.  We saw this happen with the word “stress” about a decade or more ago.  Stress became synonymous with anxiety and is now only deemed as negative.  “I’m stressing” became an actual expression.  Between us, there is nothing negative about stress.  Positive excitement is stressful to the body and mind as well.  Is bullying ever good?  Certainly not to my mind.  But suggesting that an adolescent girl killed herself because of bullying…on Facebook, is absurd.  It diminishes her troubles and pain (whatever their genesis) and demonizes the abstract.  Suggesting that she was a victim of her computer and that her screen drove her to death is a wretched portrait to paint of a troubled teenager.  In fact, suggesting that anyone was driven to end their life due to bullying smacks of complacency.

No doubt, as adults we may not remember the turmoil of adolescence.  Everything was Very Important and permanent and fraught with drama.  Rarely were we our best selves.  Our identities only existed as they were reflected back to us by our cohort.  What an awful time it was.  Adolescents (particularly girls in the middle school years) can be pretty nasty as they claw their way to relevance. When we layer this anthropological phenomenon with the current social climate, things can get dire.

Most of us did not grow up in an age of digital cameras and instant (permanent) exposure.  We probably did not grow up in a world of celebrity (for no apparent reason) suggesting we should all live in the spotlight, behave badly, always be styled and airbrushed and party like it’s…you get the idea.  We probably didn’t grow up during a time when college was seen as a given, and the only path to income, yet was academically and financially unattainable to many.  Many of us did not grew up with parents simulating aircraft above our heads.  We were independent-ish and expected to manage our own social and even academic world.  (Note: personal responsibility is the key ingredient for self-esteem.)

Adolescence+increased external pressure+diminished internal resources can add up to a troubled teen.  Luckily, their world is populated by adults.  Teachers, nurses, administrators, coaches and guidance counselors see the good, the bad and the ugly.  Parents are in the best position to see the unhappiness in their child.  Many do and struggle with how best to care for their child.  Depression, either clinical or non-clinical sadness, is frightening in a population known for their lack of impulse control.  A teenager who has lost interest in pleasurable activities, and/or has changed his/her sleeping/eating patterns should be seen as in crisis.

Bullying can most certainly push a vulnerable teenager over the edge.  So can a bad grade or a romantic break-up.  However, when the media hauls out bullying experts our limited attention shifts to the external.  It is the at-risk adolescent that warrants the attention, not the behavior of others.  A healthy and supported teenager will not log on to Facebook if it brings unhappiness.  A healthy and supported adolescent, no matter how quirky, will not be driven to self-harm by the comments of others.  Bullying will always exist, empires were built on it.  Where we need to focus is on those adolescents who need support.

 
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Posted by on January 4, 2012 in Childhood, Media/Marketing

 

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