Paying Attention to Our Depression

Depression isn’t just an illness.  It’s a messenger.

In his book, Unstuck, James Gordon, M.D., writes:

“Depression is not a disease, the end point of a pathological process.  It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we’re stuck.  It’s a wake-up call and the start of a journey that can help us become whole and happy, a journey that can change and transform our lives.  Healing depression and overcoming unhappiness mean dealing more effectively with stress; recovering physical and psychological balance; reclaiming parts of ourselves that we’ve ignored or suppressed: and appreciating the wholeness that has somehow slipped away from us, or that we have never really known”.

If we would but listen, we might find that our depression is trying to tell us something; important insights about our lives and the ways we live it that might be keeping us mired in a soupy gloom.

We often don’t heed our inner wisdom, but keep going full-speed ahead in the wrong direction anyway. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D. observed, “Depression is a vicious circle and we keep doing these destructive patterns because “we don’t how to do anything else.”

When we think of depression only as an illness, we oversimplify its causes and remedies.  No doubt, it has profound effects on our brains and bodies.  Surely, it runs in families and likely has a genetic component. But if it were only that, a blue pill would solve the problem.  And it doesn’t.

The pain of depression may be an impetus for sufferers to live a more authentic life.  Often people who suffer from depression are living from a wounded place within themselves.  Along the way, they learned that they weren’t “good” enough or were “bad people”.  As a consequence, they learned to hide their true needs and wants and live an inauthentic life; a life that may not work, but they don’t know how to change.

In this vein, folks can come to think of depression as some sort of punishment:  a recompense of some unknown sins from an undefined past.  Or, maybe the very real wrongs they may have committed are magnified, as they are prone to be in the mind of a depressive, by the process of generalization: a known cognitive trick of depression where we take a negative incident (e.g. “I lost this case”) and turn it into “Why am I such a failure?”

Depression doesn’t just happen to anyone. Rather, it is the accumulation of a lifetime of varying degrees of psychic pain suffered during a lifetime, often starting in early childhood.  In our early years, many learned that it was dangerous to live from a space of our true selves because of a parent who was an alcoholic, abusive or in some way emotional abusive or absent.

Ellen McGrath, Ph.D., writes:

“Scientists know that traumatic experiences such as child abuse and neglect change the chemistry and even the structure of the brain.  They sensitize the stress response system so that those who are abused become overly responsive to environmental pressures.  They shape wiring patterns in the brain and reset the sensitivity level of the machinery.   Eventually, even small degrees of stress provoke an outpouring of stress hormones, and these hormones in turn act directly on multiple sites to produce the behavioral symptoms of depression. They push the brain’s fear center into overdrive, churning out negative emotions that steer the depression’s severity and add a twist of anxiety”.

Our parents, acting out of their own wounded souls, unconsciously played out their unresolved pain with us during our childhood.  They did so because of their distorted way of seeing the world; a place that they found threatening, its problems unsolvable and against them at every turn.  This hardened them and led them to fail in life’s most important vocation: the nurturance of their own children.

I recall my mom saying to me as a child, “Well, what are you going to do?”  While one could say this was the innocuous lament of a middle-aged mother of 5 kids, later in life I learned it was mom’s worldview that there weren’t really solutions to life’s fundamental problems, that we are, at our core, helpless in the face of life’s thorny challenges. 

My mom suffered from undiagnosed and untreated depression for most of her life.  I now see how this passive, victimized way of seeing the world took root in my psyche as a young man.  And how hard I had to work to overcome it over the years; how I had to struggle to listen less to the inner voice and critic of my parents and incline my ears toward my true self which was always there waiting to be heard.

In Listening to Depression, psychologist, Lara Honos-Webb writes that depression is trying to tell us something: that we are on the wrong track in life.  In this sense, depression can be a teacher if we would only listen to it.

How can we come to see depression as a teacher?  Honos-Webb writes:

“Depression can be seen as a break-down in the service of offering the person an opportunity for a break-through.  In this way, depression can be a corrective feedback to a life with little reflection.  We only reflect on those things that break down in life.  For example, if life is going along smoothly you won’t spend time thinking about the meaning of life.  We tend to think deeply about life when something is not working.  When we identify a problem, we begin to reflect on what caused the problem and how to fix the problem.  If you are disconnected from your deepest feelings and impulses you may still manage to get through life without realizing it.”

I admit that it’s hard to see depression’s value when in the thick of it, the swamp through which we slog with little relief.  But there’s much to be said for seeing depression not just as a disease, but as a messenger that our lives need to change for us to heal.

 

 

Our Struggle with Depression

 

Everyone has had a taste of what depression feels like. Everyone feels the blues at times. Sadness, disappointment, fatigue are normal parts of life. There is a connection between the blues and clinical depression, but the difference is like the difference between the sniffles and pneumonia – Richard O’Connor, Ph.D.

Years ago:  I am walking down a Manhattan street on a grey day.  I am feeling so sad; beyond somber and without any external point of reference. I looked up at the grey buildings. I suddenly have the sense that I am a building; a tower with a cracked foundation slowly falling to the pavement below.

I step into a church I don’t know.  I try to pull myself together. “Please God. I need your help.” I have to be in Court shortly. I look at my watch. My suit feels tight against my skin. I struggle to make the sadness more manageable, more contained.  I leave because I must, not because I feel any better; but because I am an adult and have to move through my day, no matter the volume of pain ringing in my ears.

The sadness from that day would end.  I would feel better.    But a pattern was developing, even then.  A pattern of how I would respond to sadness in my life, both past and present.

The Struggle to Break Free   

Some folks have given up hope that depression will ever leave them alone. They’re just hoping for more good days than bad.  When it’s a relatively good day, when life is in flow and not stuck in the muck of melancholy, there is happiness, or perhaps, relief.  The depression gods’ hurtiling thunderbolts have missed them this day. But when they’re in the thick of it, they fight their sadness.  It’s as if they’re pressing on the gas trying to escape their pain while depression has its foot on the brake.

Sadness is not Depression – though they are cousins

First, let’s be clear: sadness is not depression, but it may manifest as persistent sadness that can be a symptom of clinical depression. When I developed depression ten years ago, my sadness was accompanied by lots of crying for no particular reason.

Paradoxically, Dr. O’Connor, in his book, Undoing Depression , wrote that depression is often the absence of despondency:

“We confuse depression, sadness, and grief.  However, the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality – the ability to experience the full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief.  It’s not sadness or grief, it’s an illness.”

Maybe this is why we don’t see – we don’t see how we react to our own sadness because we’re stuck in the vortex of depression where everything, like the perimeter of a tornado, is thrown together.

This relationship between sadness is troublesome for a depressive.  This is so not because there is anything wrong with sadness – it’s a normal part of the human experience and gives our lives depth and pitch.  It’s the bass tone you hear when B.B. King plays the Blues. In my experience, sadness has a bittersweet quality to it. As the great novelist Herman Hesse once penned, “It was if all of the happiness, all of magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flown away, becoming temporary and temporary once more.”

The Brain Knows How we React to Sadness

A recent study revealed that the brain’s response to sadness can predict a relapse into depression.  Faced with sadness, the relapsing patients showed more activity in a frontal region of the brain, known as the medial prefrontal gyrus.  These responses were linked to higher rumination: the tendency to think obsessively about negative events.  Patients who didn’t relapse showed more activity in the rear part of the brain, which is responsible for processing visual information and is linked to greater feelings of self-acceptance and non-judgment of experience. 

According to Norman Farb, Ph.D., who did the study:  “For a person with a history of depression, using the frontal brain’s ability to analyze and interpret sadness may actually be an unhealthy reaction that can perpetuate the chronic cycle of depression.  These at-risk individuals might be better served by trying to accept and notice their feelings rather than explain and analyze them.”

We keep trying to find the source of our sadness like squinting to find the bucket that has fallen in the deep well.  We circumambulate the hole, peering into the darkness, but don’t see the flashlight nearby that can help.  We can’t see that our attempt to break down and explain our sadness to ourselves isn’t helping – it’s hurting us.

A New Relationship to Our Sadness

In his book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher Germer, Ph.D., writes:

“This is an opportunity to move from mental work to heart work.  Self-compassion has a distinctly nonintellectual and non-effortful feel to it. If we can find ourselves in the midst of suffering and acknowledge the depth of our struggle, the heart begins to soften automatically. We stop trying to feel better and instead discover sympathy for ourselves. We stop trying to feel better and instead discover sympathy for ourselves. We start caring for ourselves because we’re suffering.”

Don’t always try to figure out your depression. Give yourself a breather from solving it, this boulder of sorrow. Instead, see that you – yes, you – are worthy of compassion from yourself because you suffer. If you don’t know how to feel this compassion for yourself, isn’t it about time to try?

 

 

How Stress and Anxiety Become Depression

Lawyers suffer from depression at an alarming rate.  I am one of them.

I have been a litigator for more than 22 years, and I didn’t suffer depression in the beginning of my career. But I did have trouble managing the stress of my practice. 

Over time, this constant stress developed into anxiety.  I started feeling like I couldn’t control everything.  I would go to bed fearing the problems and disasters to confront me the next morning.  After years of this, the pendulum swung from states of anxiety to states of depression.  Why did this happen?  It took me a long time to understand.

Recently, scientists have been focusing on the connection between stress and anxiety and the role they play in triggering and maintaining depression.  This is something that should be of concern to all lawyers, who carry high stress loads in their law practices.

Too Much Stress Can Lead to Anxiety

“Stress” is anything in our environment that knocks our bodies out of their homeostatic balance.  Stress responses are the physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablish balance.  Most of the time, our bodies do adapt, and a state of balance is restored.  However, “if stress is chronic, repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance,” warns Dr. Robert Sapolsky, an expert on stress-related illnesses and author of the best-selling book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress Related Diseases and Coping. “At some point, vigilance becomes over-generalized, leading us to conclude that we must always be on guard – even in the absence of stress.  And thus the realm of anxiety is entered,” writes Sapolsky.

About 20% of the population will experience some form of anxiety disorder at least once in their lifetime.  Studies show that law students and lawyers struggle with anxiety at twice that rate.

Anxiety and Depression

Stress went on too long in my life as a litigator.  I had, indeed, entered the realm of anxiety.  I felt like I had a coffee pot brewing 24/7 in my stomach.  I became hypervigilant; each file on my desk was like a ticking time bomb about to go off.  At some point, the anxiety made me dysfunctional, and I was unable to do as much as I had before.  I felt ashamed of this.  I denied it to myself and hid it from others, but the litigation mountain became harder and harder to climb as the anxiety persisted over a period of years.

Sapolsky writes, “If the chronic stress is insurmountable, it gives rise to helplessness. This response, like anxiety, can become generalized: A person can feel . . . at a loss, even in circumstances that [he or] she can actually master.”  Helplessness is one pillar of a depressive disorder that becomes a major issue for lawyers because we think of ourselves as invulnerable superheroes who are the helpers, not the ones in need of help.  Lawyers often don’t get help for their depression and feel ashamed if they do.     

Many lawyers do not appreciate the connection between their stress and anxiety and their risk for developing clinical depression.  But the occurrence of anxiety disorder with major depression is frequent; in fact, 60 percent of people with depression are also suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Maybe this connection helps explain studies that find such high rates of both anxiety and depression in the legal profession.

Depression “is stress that has gone on too long,” according to Dr. Richard O’Connor author of the book Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety, and 21st Century Illness.  Many people with depression have problems dealing with stress because they aren’t “stress resilient,” writes O’Connor.  It’s not some central character flaw or weakness, but a complex interplay bewteen genetics and one’s experiences over a lifetime.

How our bodies and brains deal with stress and anxiety hasn’t changed much in the last 10,000 years.  This wonderful defense mechanism, which is wired into our nervous system, is called the fight-or-flight response.  When confronted with a threat – – whether real or perceived – – this response kicks in and initiates a sequence of nerve cell firing and chemicals like adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol that flood into our bloodstream and propel us into action to meet a threat.  This was an essential survival device for our ancestors who lived in the jungle and would have to flee beasts or fight foes trying to kill them.

Lawyers don’t fact these types of real life-or-death threats.  But they perceive life-or-death threats in their battles with opposing counsel while sitting in a deposition or sparring in the courtroom.  Our bodies respond as if we were being chased by a hungry lion.  Accordingly, the stress response can be set in motion by mere anticipation, and when humans chronically believe that a homeostatic challenge is imminent, they develop anxiety.

Over time, this chronic anxiety causes the release of too much fight-or-flight hormones.  Research has shown that prolonged release of too much cortisol damages areas of the brain that have been implicated in depression: the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) and the amygdala (a fear processing hub deep in the brain).  Another area of the brain, the cingulate (an emotion-dampening center located near the front of the brain), in tandem with the amygdala, helps set the stage for depression.

Lawyers need to learn better ways to deal with stress and anxiety to avoid the multiple triggers that can cause or exacerbate clinical depression.  Turning and facing those things that make us stressed and anxious, and doing something about it, gives us the best protection against depression.

Up

 

The cure for unhappiness is happiness, I don’t care what anyone says – Elizabeth McCraken

Most folks describe depression as a weight they carry around: dumbbells lodged in their pockets that drag them down body, mind and soul into a stinking swamp.

There’s no humor in this bayou; no levity, no sense of the sweet exuberance life can bring. Instead, there’s a collapsing inward, an inertia in which we can’t imagine . . . well . . . anything good happening to us.

We have a yearning to be free of depression; a deep desire to cut our losses and spit in its eye.  It has cost us enough heartache – no more, we think.  We pine for a way out of it, but sometimes don’t know the way.

But if we are to recover, we need to think about a different kind of life for ourselves.  One where we take the “UP” to happiness escalator instead of the “DOWN” one to depression.

Imagining a Life without Depression

Envisioning freedom is part of the journey out of the dark woods.  So often, depressives imagine a future with uninterrupted bouts of depression.  This sorrow is what leads so many to a state of hopelessness. We need, with the help of wise others, to begin to imagine what our life would look like without depression and walk, step by step, that way. 

I used to say to my therapist when depressed, “Why am I being punished?”  It was as if I had done something “bad” and was a “bad person” (though I didn’t know and couldn’t articulate whatever that was) and now the Karmic Universe was going to dish out the punishment I thought I surely deserved. 

As depression author Dorothy Rowe writes,“Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.”  Start to see, just a little bit at a time, that depression is not just happening to you.  It’s an inside job too. This took me years to learn. Our thoughts and style of thinking help create and sustain depression.  When we feed it with negative ruminations, it grows larger – like an algae plume. Withhold this noxious nourishment — and it can, slowly, wither away or at least become more manageable. 

Happiness Skills Can Help

Before even imagine the promised land of happiness, however, we may need medication to lift the more onerous physical symptoms of depression to give us enough focus and energy. No doubt, antidepressants aren’t the only way to do this.  Many have accomplished the same results with exercise, nutrition and/or psychotherapy.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., writes:

“Even the most the most severely depressed individuals can improve by doing a simple daily happiness-increasing exercise such as taking time to recall three things that went well each day.  Although the exercises are not designed to ‘cure’ depression, if you are depressed, trying one or more of these activities affords a strong chance of lightening the burden and darkness of depression and producing positive feelings.”

We can also look back further than just what went right on a particular day to increase our sense of happiness.  There is a powerful connection between how we view our past and present day happiness says Rick Nubert, Ph.D. In a study of 750 people, he found that highly extraverted people are happier with their lives because they tend to hold a positive, nostalgic view of the past and are less likely to have negative thoughts and regrets than their neurotic counterparts.  Howell says that while it may be difficult to change one’s personality to being an extrovert, he found that savoring happy memories or reframing past painful experiences in a positive light could be effective ways for people to increase their life satisfaction.

Other ideas offered up by Dr. Lyubomirsky include avoiding overthinking – a big problem for lawyers: “Very happy people have the capacity – even during trying times – to absorb themselves in an engaging activity, stay busy, and have fun.  To practice this strategy, pick a distracting, attention-grabbing activity that has compelled you in the past and do it when you notice yourself dwelling [on the bad stuff and your problems]”.  Check out her other ideas in her blog.

You deserve to be happy.  You don’t have to keep riding the down escalator.  While going up to the second floor, just wink and wave at your depression as it goes down into the bargain basement.

 

My Desk, My Enemy: 6 Helpful Ways to Get Organized

I spend time – too much it – trying to keep my desk in check.

Like a taciturn child, it erupts with tantrums of disorganization. The fact that it’s a mess today seems unfair, as if a hole suddenly formed in the ceiling above me and dropped a cache of briefs, case opinions and half-used legal pads onto my workspace.

I shuffle the papers that lay before me. They look back at me.  Ten minutes go by.  I reshuffle everything all over again. Sound familiar?

Mind you, on the Clutter-o-Scale, my desk is only a 4 out of 10.  If so, why the grief?

Some of my angst comes from having trouble finding things.  But an equal measure comes from the sense that I should be more organized. We have made a religion out of organization in this country which has sprouted temples of crazed worship like The Container Store or Organize.com.  Maybe this growth industry is in reaction to how much stuff/junk/information we like or have to obtain and perpetually reorganize.  This mania has even spawned an inane reality T.V. show “Hoarders.”

Too many things compete for lawyers’ attention besides the usual culprits of returning phone calls, court appearances and last minute deadlines.  When you add a messy desk to an already stressed-out life, well, it becomes the enemy.

Desks are the pedestals of our productivity.  How we organize the stuff on them has a big effect on how well or if we get things done in a timely fashion.  But just as important as these practical concerns is the impact it has on our mental health.

What is your Organizational Style?

According to Kelly Lynn Anders in her book The Organized Lawyer, “Not everyone prioritizes about what the eye needs to feel relaxed. Some ideas work for some and not for others. That’s why it’s important to know your type.” She identifies four types of organizers:

Stackers organize by topic in stacks. They are visual and tactile and like to give the appearance of order. The busier these people are, the more stacks they have.

Spreaders are visual like stackers, but must be able to see everything they’re working on.

Free Spirits keep very few personal belongings around the work area. They like new ideas and keep reports, books, articles and magazines near.

Pack Rats have emotional ties to things. They like the feeling of fullness around them and like to tell stories about what’s in the office.

Which type are you?  She has a lot of useful suggestions, among them is color coding files. On her own desk, she keeps commonly used files close at hand. Because she identifies herself as a “stacker,” Anders avoids cabinets and other hidden spaces for her files.  “The reason I don’t have a lot of hidden storage is stackers have a tendency to squirrel things away,” she said. Check out some of her other suggestions at her website.

A Contrarian Point of View

Einstein considered his cluttered desk a help rather than a hindrance to his prodigious creativity.

While we don’t have his brain’s elephantine computing power, it’s worth considering that your desk mess might not be so bad after all.

Dr. Jay Brand, a psychology professor, argues that a squeaky clean desk doesn’t always equate with a productive employee. It can actually hinder personal efficiency because a person’s desk is an extension of his/her mind. That’s because our human memory has a limited capacity, or finite ‘cells’ available for storage and since most people do multiple things at once they almost immediately ramp their working memory to capacity. They need a place to park some of the information from their working memory into the environment and what more logical place than their desks?

According to Dr. Brand, “these cluttered desks that people use to store information from their working memory are called ‘cognitive artifacts’, and they expand a person’s capacity to think and utilize the environment”. He argues that companies with clean desk policies waste time by requiring workers to clean up their cognitive artifacts every night and re-clutter them the next morning. He points out that everyone has a different working style and piles can be organized topically, chronologically, or according to an individual system. As long as the pile means something to the person who made it, it is effective.

I’ve known plenty lawyers in this group.  But I ain’t one of them.  Maybe it has to do with my own depression over the years.  Or, as Kelly Anders suggests, it’s just my type that determines how I lay out the work space in front of me.

The Depressed Desk

When a lawyer has depression, motivation and organization are BIG problems.  A lack of energy blunts motivation.  We already know that it’s a good idea to keep our desk together, but there simply isn’t much neurochemical juice to get it done.    But, time or a court’s scheduling order waits for no one.  If we don’t keep the paperwork on the conveyor moving, we end up a casualty of our work days and add to the stress/anxiety/depression mix.

In her book Get it Done When You’re Depressed, Julie Fast writes:

“Many people equate depression with the inability to work. In reality, the problem is often the inability to feel like working.  People who are depressed assume that their lack of motivation is a sign of weakness, and if they could just buck up a bit, they would be more productive. But waiting until you feel like doing something is the single biggest mistake you can make when you’re depressed and need to get things done.”

Yes, we need to start working in spite of our desire not to.  Dr. John Preston, in the same book, elaborates further:

“Depressed people find it very hard to ignite this self-generated action due, in large part, to decreased metabolic functioning in the frontal lobes of their brain, which are responsible for initiating behavior.  So if a person waits a long time and not only not accomplish the non-rewarding tasks but also miss out on the big projects that can bring big rewards.”

So it appears that folks who aren’t depressed and are motivated people have ramped up brain metabolism.  I’m envious.  Yet, there is something we can do about it.  As I’ve written about before, consistent exercise helps boost the happy chemicals in our brains, jacks up metabolism and improves our motivation and focus.  Moving is motivating.

We must outfox depression.  It would have us do nothing.  So we must do something.   When I apply this simple wisdom to my day, I’m always pleasantly surprised at how my feelings catch up with my doing and how my doing affects my feelings.

My experience during bogged down moods, was that I’d get most things done, but it would take lots of energy.  When I’d come home from work, I’d be spent.

Six Simple Solutions

I agree with an observation made by Leo Babauta on his blog Zen Habits: “The most important thing to remember is that you must have a system in place, and you must teach yourself to follow the system.  Otherwise, you just clean your desk, and it gets messy again”.

Here are a couple of tried and true tips that have helped me:

1.   Get rid of all those pens. Only keep three or four.  More than that, and there’s too much ink in your work space.  If you love pen, keep your stash at home.  I often troll the pen aisle at Office Max — strange, but true. So I know how difficult it is to part with them.

2.   Take home any books that you don’t use on a regular basis. It’s just more clutter and keeps you from easily putting your hands on the important stuff you need to do your job.

3.   Hide cords – these are like a floating octopi with tenticles that seemingly go everywhere.  Use twist-ties or coil your cords up.

4.   Only keep on your desk what you need for that day. Then section off your desk and workspace so that everything has a specific space.

5.   Have a dump day.  Take everything off your desk and out of your drawer and then put it in a big pile. Then, sort through what is garbage and what you really need throughout the workday.

6.   Schedule a date and time to clean your desk.  Ideally, at the end of a workday.  Weather permitting, do it on Friday’s around 4 so that I start my Monday fresh.

99 Things About Depression

  1. Depression sucks.
  2. You know this if you suffer from it.
  3. You know this if you’ve suffered from it before.
  4. If you have it, you’re not alone.
  5. If you’re in the legal profession, you’re really, really not alone.
  6. 10% of Americans struggle with depression.
  7. 20% of lawyers struggle with depression.
  8. Do the math – 200,000 out of 1 million lawyers have the big “D”.
  9. Grad school is tough.
  10. Apparently, tougher law students.
  11. 20 to 40% of law students will become depressed at some point.
  12. Do more math – 30,000 to 60,000 out of the 150,000 law students.
  13.  Ok, ok, we get it.  Depression is a BIG problem in the law.
  14. I’ve felt lonely when I’ve been depressed.
  15. I’ve been bone-tired when depressed, but couldn’t sleep.
  16. People who struggle with depression are my heroes.
  17. If there are so many depressed lawyers, why do they stay in the law?
  18. Money?  For sure, what else?
  19. Status?  Yes.
  20. Very often, they’ve drifted into it.
  21. But, maybe they’d be depressed in or out of the law. Maybe.
  22. Many wonder, “What else could I do with a law degree?”
  23. Not getting help?  Not a good idea.
  24. Getting help?  Much better idea.
  25. We are people who happen to be lawyers.
  26. We’re not lawyers who happen to be people.
  27. Remember this.  Don’t forget it.  Write it down someplace.
  28. Depression changes your brain chemistry.
  29. You may need medication.  Maybe not.
  30. You’ll need to talk to someone about it.
  31. A friend?  Good start.  A therapist?  Even better.
  32. You’ll need to make changes in your life to get better.
  33. And stay better.
  34. What combination of changes those are different for everyone.
  35. You can start to feel better.
  36. I care about you even though I’ve never met you.
  37. This is so because I’ve been there and understand.
  38. You need to find people like this to talk to.
  39. Be realistic – it might take a bit of time to feel better.
  40. How long? Nobody really knows.  Just keep going.
  41. Some say, “I feel like killing myself”.
  42. Don’t do that.  Though, I understand why you might feel this way.
  43. This painful impulse is depression talking – don’t listen.
  44. Talk with a therapist about this pain – immediately – and listen to them.
  45. Take a good look at how you see the world.
  46. Take a good look at how you see yourself.
  47.  The Buddha once said, You are what you think.
  48. Psychologists say that too.
  49. True, but you’re more than just your thoughts.
  50. You are a child of God, however you conceive of Him, Her or It.
  51. You are precious beyond measure.
  52. Exercise isn’t just about losing weight.  It’s also about good brain chemistry.
  53. Don’t listen to people who say “Toughen up.” Simple ignorance.
  54.  Don’t try to handle this by yourself.
  55. It’s an illness. You’re not a bad, weak person.
  56. Depression tends to run in families.
  57. Your drinking too much might really be about depression.
  58. It’s okay to be scared.  There are millions of others who feel this way too.
  59. There are different degrees of severity with depression.
  60. Just like coffee at Starbucks – mild, medium and bold.
  61. Depression isn’t just in our heads, it’s in our brains.
  62. Does your job feel meaningless?
  63. If so, it’s no surprise that you feel unhappy – maybe even depressed.
  64. Chances are you didn’t have a healthy childhood if you have depression.
  65. Many with depression didn’t.
  66. “Nobody cares about me.” That’s depression talking.
  67. What do you really want out of life?
  68. Has anyone ever asked you that question? And really listened to your response?
  69. Have you ever asked yourself that question? What would that life look like?
  70. Most people with depression also have a problem with anxiety – about 60%
  71. Are you just unhappy or depressed?  Important question.
  72. Maybe you’re both?  You should talk to an expert.
  73. Maybe the hardest part of depression is feeling hopeless.
  74. Depression is a vicious circle.
  75. We keep behaving in ways that keep us depressed.
  76.  We keep thinking in ways that keep us depressed.
  77. As such, we keep getting depressed.
  78. What’s your greatest passion in life?
  79. Do you do enough of it?  Why not?
  80. Small children can be great antidepressants.
  81. Serving others can be as well.
  82. Depression isn’t just a sign of illness.
  83. It is a sign that you need to change your life.
  84. You need to educate yourself about what depression is.
  85. You need to educate your significant other about it also.
  86. A good book would help.
  87. When you’re depressed, you don’t feel like doing anything.
  88. That’s why you need to do things.
  89. You can’t wait until you feel like doing things.
  90. If depression had its way, you’d never feel like doing anything.
  91. For most, depression isn’t happening all the time.
  92. Pay attention to that.
  93. Are there things, people that trigger it?
  94. Are there things that help bring it down a notch?
  95. I’m no expert.
  96. I don’t have all the answers.
  97. I hope I have a few.
  98. Thanks for reading this.
  99. Adios.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Company We Keep

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose – Tennessee Williams, playwright

People in and out of the law often ask, “What causes such high rates of depression in the legal profession?”

I’ve written about some of the causes in law students (too much competition and too little feedback), lawyers (chronic stress which changes brain chemistry) and judges (loneliness that can contribute to and/or help cause a depressive episode).

There’s another dimension to it, though.  It’s the company we keep.  It’s not just the rough and tumble of fighting with opposing counsel that grinds on lawyers’ mental health.  It can also be more subtle forces . . . like our colleagues.

When we’re depressed, it’s like we’ve jumped out of a plane and are in free fall.  We lose our sense of perspective and hope as we speed towards the ground trying to untangle our chute.

Hanging out with cynical lawyers is like jumping out of that plane after they’ve just handed you an anvil.  This only adds more weight onto the backs of lawyers who may be already struggling to get out from under depression’s shoe. The grousing of other attorneys is unhealthy for a depressive because it only serves to reinforce their pessimistic view of the universe. 

Behind Closed Doors  

Over the years, my door has been a revolving one.  You know there’s trouble when a colleagues enter, give you a conspiratorial glance and silently shut the door behind themselves.  Often – too often – it’s to replay negative experiences they’ve had at work and how unhappy they are.  They’re usually not looking for solutions as much as collusions; confirmation that others don’t like their law jobs either and that everyones common fate in the law is misery.

A lawyer friend of mine, who used to meet me for coffee, would tell me how unhappy he was in his job.  “Most people are assholes in this field,” he would snort.  I’d then tell him about all of the positive experiences I have had — and still enjoyed — with other lawyers.   He looked like he was listening, but he had already tuned out.  It simply didn’t confirm his dreary conclusions about his professional life.  As if he hadn’t heard me, he’d just return to his diatribe about how much being a lawyer sucks.

I sometimes have difficulty saying “no” to people and setting appropriate limits.  Especially, when I sense they’re in trouble like my friend in the above story. But, I finally concluded that I wasn’t helping matters for my friend or myself.  He didn’t want to change his mind or explore options.  And the exchanges only served to bring me down.  I let the friendship go because I needed to set boundaries.  I just couldn’t spend more time with my friend.  I needed to spend time around others who, while they may be in distress, want to change and heal.  Or just hang out with others who enjoyed life and had never been despressed.

Lunchtime

Bitching about the law is common fare when lawyers break bread; a midday break which leaves one with a sort of indigestion of the mind.

These brothers and sisters in arms – those who we toil beside in the legal trenches – are usually good people.  But, that doesn’t change the fact that their inner discontent isn’t good for us.

We tend to hang out with the same people every day for lunch.  We do so because of flat-out inertia or we just don’t know what else to do with ourselves and, well, just drift into it.  I recall the times in my career when I did this too much.  My cadre of complaining colleagues ramped up my stress level to the point where I felt compelled to unload. This becomes a chorus of woe because complaining just breeds more . . . complaining.

In her book The (Un)happy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law, Monica Parker, a Harvard Law graduate, recommends  ditching your lawyer friends:

“I’m betting a lot of the people you know are lawyers.  How many of them are happy practicing law?  I can count the happy lawyers I know on one hand.  How many of them are successful at finding other opportunities?  Expecting these people to help you make a career change is the proverbial blind leading the blind.  The miserable leading the miserable blind, actually.”

Afterward my lunches, I’d walk back to my office feeling hollow and dispirited.  I kept making resolutions to not join in the negative banter.  When that failed, I just decided I had to begin to break away. This involved setting up a different routine – lunch with non-lawyers, the library, church or catching up of work at Starbucks.  They didn’t know why I had stopped going to lunch.  But, like everything else in life, they got used to it.  If I had to have lunch with them for some work-related problem, I tried to have it with only one person from this group.  It was less overwhelming when dealing with only one person’s negative views on reality and gave me a fighting chance to interject some positive elements in a way I couldn’t with the lunchtime crowd.  If all else failed, I e-mailed or sent memos.

Some Food for Thought 

Pick a person who you admire or who has a career that they like or love.  What do they like about it?  Are there some habits they have which make them happy at work, even small ones, which you can apply to your law career?  

Negativity feeds on itself.  Notice that when you don’t join in the gripe, how it brings down the fervor of your day a notch.  Moreover, when we don’t participate in it, we feel a little lighter than if we had.  Try it and see for yourself.

When we are depressed, we go into a default mode.  We don’t deliberate about going into a dark mood, so much as fall into it.  There are so many triggers that cause depression that we can feel we’re being shot at from all sides.  We commonly succumb.  The time to work our way through this swamp is not when we’re under depression’s spell.  We must prepare beforehand.  Write it out a self-care plan which includes positive people.

One thing that I’ve found particularly helpful is a reminder from my psychologist that we’re always observing ourselves as we behave.  For example, when we work out, we observe ourselves doing something good for our body.  Not participating or setting limits on colleagues dumping their negativity on us makes us feel more in control of our life and positive. This simple approach can dispel the hopelessness that so often accompanies depression. Another why of skinning the cat of depression – which requires more practice than getting to the gym for most of us – is to describe the good parts only when you are talking about situations.  In her book The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques, Margaret Wehrenberg writes:

“Get into the habit of reviewing what went right in any situation – observe what worked out fine despite stumbling blocks along the way.  For people with depression this may take some practice!  You are probably accustomed to instead focusing on what went wrong.  But ignoring what satisfies you can be a trigger to depressed mood. So learn to rate your experiences of what went right rather than on what went wrong.”

Finally, think about joining a depression support group.  While people can and do talk about difficult and sometimes painful things, the emphasis is a constructive one – learning to deal with your law job in a more constructive way so as not to facilitate a depressive episode or getting support in coming out of one.  It’s important to join one because depression can be so isolating.  Being part of a group teaches you that other people understand and truly care about you.   You can find a lawyer support group near you by contacting your state’s Lawyer Assistance Program.  If your community doesn’t have one, or you’d rather not go to a group with other lawyers, check out the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance website which has support groups all over the country.

Search out warm hearts and contented others whether in the law or not.  They’re out there.  Your happiness depends on it.

Finding Our Way in the Law

It’s in the darkness of men’s eyes that  they get lost – Black Elk

Graduating from law school is both exciting and frightening at the same time.  There’s a real itch to put our knowledge into action, to be a bona fide “attorney at law” and to start making some dough instead of spending it on tuition and books. On the other hand, we really don’t know a lot about the application of legal theory to legal combat, may have a heap of debt and pray that our first stab at competency doesn’t land us face first on the courthouse steps. 

Beyond all of these pragmatic concerns is the meatier matter of living a life in the law that matters; a life in accord with our inner core of what we truly value in life.  As author Studs Turkel once wrote:

“Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short for a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying.”

Lawyers, young and old alike, find it difficult to live out their values in the workplace, to search for “meaning as well as daily bread.”  There are challenges and compromises, some more difficult than others.  For example, we may really value spending time with our family.  But as the demands of our career mount, we become untethered from this life-giving sustenance as we spend more and more time toiling at the office.

Andrew Benjamin, Ph.D., J.D., a lead researcher in studies about the mental health of law students and lawyers, concludes that much of the dissatisfaction in the profession comes from a widening gap between the values we truly care about and the things we end up pursuing in in our jobs as lawyers.  This takes place over time and its effects are cumulative.  Many end up leaving the profession.  Or, if they stay, are mired in unhappiness, discontent and can’t see a way out.

Dr. Benjamin found that approximately 20% of lawyers – about twice the national average – aren’t just unhappy; they’re suffering from clinical anxiety or depression. We aren’t talking about everyday stress, sadness, blues or categorical grumpiness.  We’re talking rubber to the road clinical anxiety and depression; devastating diseases that cause breakdowns in every area of one’s life.  Put in perspective, Benjamin’s studies suggest that a whopping 200,000 of this nation’s 1 million lawyers are struggling – some very badly.

Certainly a gap between our values and the way we live as lawyers doesn’t cause depression.  But it’s one of many factors that include a history of depression in one’s family and emotional abuse and/or neglect during one’s formative years that make a person prone to depression. 

Lawyers also seem to have a particularly fearsome type of stress overload; a jacked central nervous system fueled by the adversarial nature of the trade.  Modern science now knows that there is a powerful connection between chronic and remitting stress and the development of clinical depression.  As I wrote in “How Stress and Anxiety Become Depression,” chronic stress and anxiety causes the release of too many fight-or-flight hormones such as cortisol which damages areas of the brain that have been implicated in depression: the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) and the amygdala (involved in how we perceive fear).

The point of all this sobering news isn’t to rain on anyone’s parade.  Law can and should be a noble calling and a satisfying way to make a living.  Rather, these warnings are meant to impart some thorny wisdom: living out your values and dreams are just as important as – to quote my brother Wally’s favorite expression, “carving out a living”.  Or, as Studs Terkel earlier surmised:  “. . . to have a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying.”

It’s scary when you sense that you’ve wasted a lot of time doing a type of law – or law at all – that fails to connect with your deeper values.  Part of the fear is driven by the growing sense as we age that we don’t have forever – we are finite beings.  When we don’t know the way, can’t find path to move our outer life closer to our inner life, we can experience a sort of existential terror.  We may be sitting in a classroom, at court or just wandering downtown during our lunch break and a visceral sense that we yearn for something else will hit us.  How many of us quickly dismiss such thoughts as minor meanderings that aren’t worth our time.  But, these thoughts may keep coming.  Listen to them.  If we don’t, we may risk greater peril.

Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, talks about the dangers of not following the murmurs coming from within us all:

“Of course, most people won’t follow a calling until the fear of doing so is finally exceeded by the pain of not doing so – pain that we appear to have an appalling high threshold for. Eventually the prospect of emotional and financial turmoil, the disapproval of others and the various conniptions of change, can begin to seem preferable to the psychological death you are experiencing by staying put.  Those who refuse their passions and purposes in life, though, who are afraid of becoming what they perhaps already are – unhappy – won’t of course experience the unrest (or the joy) that usually accompanies the embrace of a calling.  Having attempted nothing, they haven’t failed, and they console themselves that if none of their dreams come true then at least neither will their nightmares.”

So remember your values and where they are trying to lead you.  That’s realistic.  Our values are not set in granite; they can and will change over time.  Yet the only tuning fork you will ultimately have is trying to build a solid bridge between who you really are and what you are in the real world.  We can and will hit choppy waters as we sail our ships in our careers.  There will be many temptations – money, power.  This story has been played out for millennia.  As you go through your career, watch the currents and stir your ship bravely, with integrity and passion.

As Apple founder Steve Jobs wrote:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of other’s grievances drown out your own inner voice; and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.”

I’ll Be Eating Humble Pie on Christmas

Bow, stubborn knee — Shakespeare

I walked into an old church downtown yesterday.  Its edifice was old and craggy, its stones walls worn by a century of wind, pelting snow and acid rain.  I walked through its medieval-like doors, the smell of melted wax, a dollop of frankincense and recently fallen snow wrapped around my newly chapped face.

No one was there. I sat in a well-worn pew near the front.  I looked up at the vaulted ceiling full of stars, angels and saints.  I thought of the tens of thousands of souls over the past hundred or so years that had worshipped here, sought answers and sought peace.  Now here I was.  

A conundrum of faith is that we never really know.  That’s why we must rely on faith, I guess.  It seems like we’re given just enough light to see our next footstep in life, but never full illumination to see the entire journey ahead of us. It’s not reason to despair; it is reason to feel humble before the mysterious grandeur of all we don’t know.

It’s okay to have doubts.  One of Jesus’ disciples, a guy aptly known as “Doubting Thomas,” had his for sure.  But the opposite of faith isn’t doubt – it is fear.  We’re all on some kind of existential thin ice wondering if and when it’s going to crack and our lives fall apart.  It isn’t odd or strange to feel this way.  It’s part of the human condition. 

Henri Nouwen wrote:

“As we look at the starts and let our minds wander into the many galaxies, we come to feel so small and insignificant that anything we do, say, or think seems completely useless.  But if we look into our souls and let our minds wander into the endless galaxies of our interior lives, we become so tall and significant that everything we do, say, or think appears to be of great importance.”  

We have to keep looking both ways to remain humble and confident, humorous and serious, playful and responsible.  Yes, the human being is very small and very tall.  It is the tension between the two that keeps us spiritually awake.

I think real faith, is humble faith.  To be otherwise is great hubris; a belief in one’s certitude to the exclusion of others.

Sister Joan Chittister writes:

“The opposite of humility is arrogance, something we are all guilty of at one time or another.  Arrogance corrodes our awareness of the power of interdependence and leaves us to die incomplete.  It reduces the creation of others to dust. It makes it impossible for us even to see our own knees.”

Many, many people around the world – good folks – have no one, are alone or are living under very difficult circumstances. They are the poor, both in body, spirit or material goods. A man seeking a donation in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, says to the grouchy crank:

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. … We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

We should feel humble before such a reality; cognizant of all the blessings we’ve been given and maybe determined, perhaps for the first time in a while, to share our blessings with others in want as we speed toward the New Year.   

The bible is usually tough for me to read.  I don’t get a lot of the historical facts and how they play into what I am supposed to learn from the teachings. Maybe it’s in admitting that I don’t really know much that I become more open to everything.  The Zen call it “beginner’s mind;” a state where we let go and empty ourselves of ourselves. There is something authentic in our coming to life on our knees rather than our heads that try to figure everything out.  As U2’s Bono wailed, “If you want to kiss the sky you’d better learn how to kneel.”

It’s when I meet real people who have lived these words that I feel a greater sense of the reality of the in the bible – it’s the reality of word made flesh.  That was the whole point about Jesus, wasn’t it? It wasn’t enough for God to send prophets with plumes of grey hair firing out of their heads and scary wooden staffs.  No. God had to crank up the volume loud enough so we could hear. And the message was intimate and personal.  He sent Jesus into our troubled world so “. . . that the people who walked in darkness [could] see a great light.”

In my own brokenness, sometimes I listen too closely to the voice of depression; the sad parrot on my shoulder that tells me I will always feel crummy and never really feel good about myself.  Then I think about that part in the bible where Jesus says to one of his followers, “Who do you say I am?”  The disciple replies that he is the Christ, the savior.  Similarly, I think we can all ask Jesus “Who do you say I am?”  The response is surely not the one depression would con us into believing. It’s a loving and authentic voice, one that says we are cherished and belong.

Jesus’ birth was a humble birth, indeed.  As Thomas Merton once wrote, “There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.”

Sister Joan writes again:

“It is our need for one another that teaches us our need for God.  It is our down-deep incompleteness that cries out all the days of our lives to be complete – by those around us, by God.  We must pray for the humility it takes to find our wholeness in our littleness.”

Beyond the gifts, the feasts and the holly and the ivy, remember to be humble.  It is this humility, this lack of ego that allows us to be part of the healing mysteries at Christmas time.

As for me, I’ll sit around my Yuletide table.  And after the turkey and mashed potatoes, eat some humble pie.

Hangin’ With Depression

depressed_man-2

I’ve been living with depression for the past ten years or so – longer than I’ve known a lot of people! I’ve come to think of depression as a sort of troublesome companion; one I need to keep some distance from and yet, at some other level, recognize as a voice I need to care about and even listen to.

Not Letting Depression Define Who We Are

It’s helpful sometimes to think of depression as not “me,” but an “it.”

It’s so easy to get lost in depression; to wander into a compass-less night with no way home.  During these times we just don’t experience depression, we are depression. We can’t get any traction or relief from its withering pain. It rants and never raves; it’s negative thinking on steroids.

Dr. Richard O’Connor writes:

“Most tragically, this depressive thinking is likely to be turned on yourself. You remember all the times you failed, and all the times the other guy succeeded; you literally can’t remember your successes. You probably think of yourself as different from others: weaker, damaged, shameful, and inadequate. You don’t consider that you can’t get inside another person’s skin: the confidence you envy may be just a front; the skill you wish for is just practice and hard work; the success you covet may be bought at a high price.”

During the peaks and valleys of my depression over the years, I have learned to say to myself “that’s my depression talking.”  I’ve learned to put a little space between me and this formidable foe.

But I know, deep in my bones, that this companion will travel all of life’s pathways with me – it’s here for the long haul.  While it may not define me anymore, it wields a pointy pencil and shades in various features of my character, reality and moods.  There will be days when I’m better at seeing this, at cutting through the clutter of depression as I navigate my day.  And then there are still days when it bogs me done a bit, cuts into my productivity and colors my face a deeper shade of grey.

For some, like me, it may not be a question of ultimately curing depression, but containing it; of keeping it at the periphery of my life.  When it tries to wander into the center, the wise sentinels – my psychologist, psychiatrist and chums – remind me that it’s time to refocus and employ my self-care stuff to keep depression at bay.

You are not your depression.  It may be a part of your life, but it isn’t your life.

Listening a Little More Closely

Sometimes we fight our depression too hard.  In our attempts to extricate ourselves from its pain, we sometimes chew off a limb like an animal stuck in a steel trap.  Sometimes, we need not squelch the pain of depression, but listen to it because it’s trying to tell us something.  It can be a messenger from somewhere deep inside of us, not just an illness or a psychological malady.

I’ve often thought that part of depression is a lack of love for one’s self, whatever the reason.  This pain, through years of neglect can pathologize into real illness, like depression; it can grow into a giant monster that we’re just too scared to face.  So we hide in our work, our addictions and in all the many fronts we show to the world.  We kick the can down the road, hoping that things will get better, hoping that depression will just leave us alone.

We need to incline our ears to our pain.  As the poet and author Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives we fear are princes and princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants us to help.”

Somewhere in all us is that depression dragon, that part of us long neglected, abandoned and helpless.  We need our hearts to turn and love this part of ourselves that wants help from us, wants to be heard, wants to tell us that for us to heal and have a shot at happiness, we must listen – maybe as we never have before – to all that is truly in us and needs our attention.

Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., in her book Listening to Depression, writes:

“We only reflect on those things that break down in our life. For example, if life is going along smoothly you won’t spend time thinking about the meaning of your life. We tend to think deeply about life when something is not working. When we identify a problem, we begin to reflect on what caused the problem and how to fix the problem. If you are disconnected from your deepest feelings and impulses you may still manage to get through life without realizing it.

But if you begin to open to the possibility that there was something fundamentally wrong with your level of functioning before your depression, only then does the idea of depression as a gift begin to make sense. A breakdown can become a gift when it is in the service of increasing reflection on your life which will lead you to ask the fundamentally important questions: What is wrong with my life? What can I do to correct the problem? When you listen to your depression, you can heal your life.”

Depression feels different on different days.  Sometimes, try treating it as an “it.”  And during other times, perhaps when you’re feeling a little better, try listening to what it is trying to tell you.

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