Coping with Summertime Depression: The Light of Gratitude

July’s heat and the sun have made it pretty hot.

It’s steamy outside. But that’s just fine with me.  My feet aren’t cold, dark clouds don’t threaten snow, and everyone’s outside watering yards, humming a tune, and going for walks at night.

As we look over the horizon, August is almost here.

Author Natalie Babbitt captures some of the summer’s magic when she writes:

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noon’s, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

The Grace of Good People

In the rough and tumble world of the law, it’s easy to become jaded; our classmates and colleagues are competitors for grades, jobs or victories. Clients can be tough and demanding; judges unyielding.  Life being what it is, things can and do go wrong despite our most valiant efforts.

Not surprisingly, lawyers are pessimistic thinkers – problem solvers extraordinaire. People come to them in some sort of trouble and want solutions.  Dr. Martin Seligman writes that the law is one of the few professions where pessimistic thinking is rewarded.  We are trained to see potential problems and pitfalls lurking around every corner and cubicle. And this skill helps us to plan, prepare and strategize — good stuff. But we often take it too far.

In an article he wrote for Lawyerswithdepression.com, Dr. Richard O’Connor states:

Because of their experience with the law, most attorneys have lost their rose-colored glasses some time ago. (Or else they never had them and chose the law as a career because it suited their personality). Attorneys know that life is hard, and doesn’t play fair. They’re trained to look for every conceivable thing that could go wrong in any scenario, and they rarely are able to leave that attitude at the office.  They see the worst in people (sometimes they see the best, but that’s rare). They tend to be strivers and individualists, not wanting to rely on others for support. They have high expectations of success, but they often find that when they’ve attained success, they have no one to play with, and have forgotten how to enjoy themselves anyway.

Pretty glum assessment, don’t you think?  It’s unlikely that we can change the difficult nature of our craft, but we can mitigate its stressful effects on our bodies and brains.

We must take time to reaffirm the goodness in our lives.  It’s just as important to recovering from depression as a hot bowl of chicken soup on a frigid day or lexapro in your lunch pail.  There are lots of books on gratitude.  To me, this is a reminder that all of us –some more than others – are ungrateful much of the time.  I am not so sure that we can be taught to be grateful.  But I do believe we can be reminded.  I believe that we all have within us a deep need to express thankfulness – we just need to open the shutters.

It’s hard –very hard—to be grateful when one is depressed. In a deep depression, it’s not only unlikely — it’s impossible. Let me be clear, this piece is not written for those in a biochemical free fall.  It’s writte for those who want to prevent relapse, remain or get healthy, or for the lawyer who is simply stressed and unhappy.

Depression can obscure our vision and prevent us from seeing the goodness in our lives – especially the kindness and decency of other people.  This may be colleagues and friends, or maybe family members. We need to identify these people and cherish their goodness.  Their lights are like homing beacons in the fog of our struggles.  Like a good laugh, they are like salves that can heal our wounds.

The humorist Garrison Keillor, in his book We Are Still Married, wrote:

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

The goodness of others is grace. It’s the universe’s way of reminding us not to fret too much, that things will work out, that our important jobs are just a part of life and not all of it and that uplifting fortune cookie messages sometimes do come true.  If I could, I would stick this quote by author Anne Lamott on one of those skinny wrappers:

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it greets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Think of the kind people you’ve had in your life from your past and today; the everyday saints who were dropped into your life for no other reason than to remind you that life can be good, that you are special and that life is worth living.

These people always leave us feeling better than when they found us.

Nobody’s Perfect

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfectionism is demoralizing — Harriet Braiker, Ph.D.

Nobody’s perfect – that’s why we have erasers.  Yet nowhere on this sweet blue orb are there more people driven to perfection than attorneys. 

It’s really not surprising, after all. We work with laws, rules and regulations: ancient tomes, incantations and idealizations about how our society expects folks to behave.  When one acts outside the proscribed rules, one’s in violation, negligent or culpable.  When this happens, people turn to a lawyer and expect him or her to get the job done – and flawlessly.

It’s easy to calm our fears with the wilted wisdom, “Well, everybody makes mistakes.”  But things can and do go terribly wrong when we make mistakes – and we can and do make them.  Things can go quickly awry despite our best efforts and work.

Lawyers are on edge because they feel if they’re not perfect, they’ll fall over the edge.  Besides the inner stress, there is the outer pressure to keep a calm and cool façade lest our clients and colleagues lose faith in us.

I’m a perfectionist to the core.  In a sense, it’s great because I take pride in my craft as a lawyer.  I love the look and feel of good work well done.  I can take it too far though – I can get so keyed up about churning out a masterpiece that I lose perspective; I lose sense of the possibly that the judge and his clerk might skip over seventy-five percent of my brilliant delineations of a statute’s historic origins, that the seventh draft of a motion isn’t always much better than the fourth and that there’s real value in not deliberating too much, but simply getting things done.

In a great piece in the A.B.A. Journal entitled, Three Deadly Ps: Perfectionism, Procrastination, and Paralysis, Rebecca Nerison, Ph.D.  maps out why too many cracks at perfection can lead to procrastination and then paralysis, a veritable seizing up of our work motor:

Procrastination is an occupational hazard for lawyers. Procrastination robs lawyers of peace of mind.  It’s difficult to feel happy, healthy, and successful when you are forever putting off what needs to be done.  We procrastinate when we feel anxious about a task, when we’re bored with it, or when we’re tired.  In any event, procrastination is about avoidance.  Avoidance allows us to temporarily escape the fear, boredom, or fatigue we anticipate as we contemplate the task.  We are immediately relieved from the unpleasant feeling.  We get to feel good instead of bad.

A dilatory dodge of our work just leads to more problems down the road.  We need to take stock and see perfectionism for what it is: avoidance behaviors that rob us of energy and a sense of competency that comes from getting things done.  My psychologist, a wizard of the human psyche, once observed that it’s critically important to observe ourselves engaging in healthy behavior.  We build a sort of healthy resume of concrete things we do on a daily basis so that we can confidently say to ourselves, “I’m a person who get things done.”  Just as procrastination is a vicious circle, not procrastinating is a healthy one.

We really need to let perfection go and let our humanity seep into our daily work; a humanity that while imperfect, is full of good humor, irony and outright silliness.

When we ignore this essential truth, we press down too hard on the gas pedal and our – and our secretary’s lives – are made miserable.  Anne Lamott, author of the wonderful book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith wrote:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun. 

What would the opposite of perfect be?  Maybe just human – and that’s humbling.  When we try to be perfect, we are too locked into a view of ourselves as the center of the Universe. 

We’re not gods, but in reality vulnerable creatures. 

I wonder if God has a sense of humor. How could he not given this goofy planet.  Even Jesus knew how to party when he turned water into wine at a wedding. 

We lose perspective with depression – we forget to play.  Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., once observed:

Most of us have to learn to take better care of ourselves.  One way is by spending more time in play.  The perfectionist, the depressive, the person who thinks he doesn’t deserve to feel pleasure, believes that he’d better never let his guard down, always busy, always productive.  But it’s a joyless if all we care about is getting the work done.  Something as simple as playing catch with the dog for a few minutes after work connects us with a part of ourselves we can lose only too easily – the child who can laugh, who can enjoy silliness, mindless physical activity. Tomfoolery is just as much a part of life as our lamentable laments. It’s uncomplicated, mischievous good fun that puts us into contact with our ageless inner child who wants to come out and play.  He or she is there – if you just look inside. We need to open that door; we need to let some fresh air in.

William James once wrote “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” 

So kick off those Oxford and Manolo Blahnik shoes . . . and start to rumba.

 

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