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.

Stepping Over Depression

The currents of depression run fast and deep, indeed.  The water isn’t crystal blue, but a muddy green.  We can’t see the jagged stones, the severe topography that lay beneath.

We wake at the beginning of our days, knowing we must wade through our despair.  We must cross the river of depression, feel its force against our bodies.  We pray that we get to the other side; hope that we finish the day with some semblance of having felt productive, of having lived a “normal day.” 

Back in the days of my deepest depression — what seems like another lifetime ago — I would look in the mirror in my bathroom late at night when I couldn’t sleep.  My face ashen, my eyes lifeless, I felt I just couldn’t do it again – I just couldn’t face another day battling depression.  It wore me out.  I was tired.  I had had enough. Often, for comfort, I would turn to the faith which had sustained me and my ancestors in times of great trouble.  My grandmother, long since passed away, would read me this short prayer as a child:

May God support us all the day long

till the shadows lengthen

and the busy world is hushed

and the fever of life is done.

Then, in God’s mercy,

may God grant us a safe lodging,

and a holy rest

and peace at last.

I’d take peace, I thought.  A few crumbs would do.  I didn’t need happiness at those dark moments.  Merciful peace, yes, I could take solace in that.   The moon shone through the bathroom window one starry cold night.  I felt some peace, the memory of my grandmother’s sweet hands on my round face.

We don’t always have to fight the river.  We just have to find a way to get across.  We can’t step over the expanse of water all at one time. We need some steeping stones, pieces of rock that can take us over one step at a time.

One such stone of wisdom is to not look down at the water as we walk.  We can get mesmerized or paralyzed by depression’s swirling rapids.  It sucks us in to a garbled dialogue with our melancholy and we become paralyzed.

In his new book, Beat the Blues before They Beat You, Robert Leahy, Ph.D., writes:

Depression has a mind of its own.  When you are depressed, you think in generalizations (nothing works out), you don’t give yourself credit (I can’t do anything right), and you label yourself in the most negative terms (loser, ashamed, humiliated).  You set demanding standards that you will never live up to.  You may think you need to get everyone’s approval, or excel at everything you do, or know for sure something will work out before you try it. Your thinking keeps you trapped in self-criticism, indecisiveness, and inertia.

Yup, that pretty much captures depression . . . .

But it doesn’t always have to be this way.  Author Henri Nouwen, who suffered many bouts of depression in his life, in a piece called “Stepping over Our Wounds” from his book, Bread for the Journey, wrote:

Sometimes we have to ‘step over’ our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on.  The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there.  Then we become the ‘offended one,’ ‘the forgotten one’,’ or the ‘discarded one.” Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them.  It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.

If we’re not careful, we can get stuck in our identities as depressed people.  We don’t so much experience depression – – we become depression. 

Sometimes, yes sometimes, we just need to let go of it.  We need to let go of the darker emotions that often fuel depression’s fury.  We can’t do this all the time, I know; but this way of dealing with it, of not getting drawn into a an exploration of our depressive thoughts and feelings –“Why can’t I do anything right, Why doesn’t anybody care about me, when will this pain end?” – is a healthy alternative to the same old, same old approach.  For years, I would get sucked in by depression. Before I knew it, I had been depressed for weeks.  Depression, and surviving it, consumed me. 

Now, after years of hard work, I know I can often — allright, sometimes — just let it go. 

And travel on.

The $tress of Success

         

We avatars of the legal system, we hired guns who ride into town and shoot up saloons, measure our success by the notches on our dusty belts: Did I win or lose?  Or, perhaps more accurately, is it: Am I a winner or a loser? There is a thrill about winning and being successful, however we define it — but also a lot of stress.

Results, bottom-line bastards that they are, can spew toxic stress into our bodies like BP oil into the Gulf.  Many lawyers struggle to shut off their inner dialogue that pings between their ears as they lay awake at night and their family sleeps:  “Will I be successful tomorrow?  Will I bill enough hours this month?” We mash ourselves up like Idaho potatoes flopping around in our beds as the minutes click away on our L.E.D. alarm clocks.

 I wrote an article for Trial Magazine about the connection between stress, anxiety and depression.  Here’s a part of that article:

 “How our bodies and brains deal with stress and anxiety hasn’t changed much in the last 10,000 years.  A 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 floods our bodies with the powerful hormones cortisol and adrenaline, which propel us into action.  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 face 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 they were being chased by a hungry lion.  Over time, this chronic anxiety causes the release of too many fight-or-flight hormones.  Research has shown that prolonged release of cortisol damages areas of the brain that have been implicated in depression: the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory and the amydala (involved in how we perceive fear).”

Living in the jungle of our profession doesn’t involve warding off wooly mammoths, but it does involve a fight-or-flight from mental constructions in our heads:  the fear of missing a court ordered deadline can create panic in our nervous system every bit as real as a tangling with a beast that tried to kill our ancestors.

Lawyers are perfectionists and overachievers who are never content to give things their just their best try.  They believe in dumping large amounts of energy into each and every project. Such extraordinary efforts are stressful on our bodies and minds.  Yet, we know all of this, don’t we?  The truth is that many lawyers have already made the calculations in their heads and are willing to take the pounding for more dollars.  We come back to our abodes at the end of our days exhausted, peak at our mutual funds statements and turn on the T.V. too tired to think about the implications of living this type of life.

Lawyer Steve Keeva, in his piece Take Care of Yourself, wrote:

 “The dominant method of legal billing can, if you let it, subvert your ability ‘to claim a full and rich life   for yourself,’ as litigator John McShane put it.  Think about it. Billing by the hour is extraordinary in the way in which it so nakedly equates money with time.  It thereby offers no incentive at all to stop working. The taskmaster par excellence can reduce grown professionals to slavish piece workers.” 

When exploring the stress of success, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that depression happens in a context, a cultural milieu and a profession’s mores.  Too often, we put everything on the individual – her depressive thinking, his genetic makeup – as if depression in a person forms and takes place in a vacuum:  if it “takes a village to raise a child;” well, it takes a culture to create conditions for depression to develop.

We are social creatures that need support from our families, institutions and society.  These structures help mitigate stress and prevent depression.  Yet,  contemporary culture has largely failed us: the breakdown in families, the betrayal of cultural and political institutions, a grimy cynicism in people, vacuous and crass entertainment unmitigated consumerism and a legal profession which endorses the value of professionalism while lawyers say that levels of incivility between lawyers is at an all time high.  It’s become more of a business than a profession and calling, it’s become more mercenary in nature where lawyers forget that they are officers of the court and not just there to do the bidding of a well paying client.

Bruce Levine, Ph.D., author of the book Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic, writes about renowned psychoanalyst and social critic Eric Fromm’s commentary on the connection between our cultural values and depression.  Here is an excerpt from book about the dangers of a comsumerism driven culture:

“Fromm argued that the increase in depression in modern industrial societies is connected to their economic systems.  Financial success in modern in modern cultural societies is associated with heightened awareness of financial self-interest, resulting in greater self-absorption, which can increase the likelihood of depression; while a lack of financial interest in such an economic system results in deprivation and misery, which increases the likelihood for depression.  Thus, escaping depression in such a system means regularly taking actions based on financial self-interest while at the same time not drowning in self-absorption – no easy balancing act.

The idea that money and buying stuff and acquiring status = happiness isn’t treated for what it is – a paper thin myth.  Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with making money; buying things and wishing to obtain a certain level of success in our careers. It’s a healthy recognition of the limitations of our income and what it really can buy that makes all the difference and keeps us out of this downward spiral.

In the book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, author Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., concludes:

 “One of the reasons for the failure of materialism to make us happier may be that even hen people finally attain their monetary goals; the achievement doesn’t translate into an increase into an increase in happiness. Also, materialism may distract people from relatively more meaningful and joyful aspects of their lives, such as nurturing their relationships with family and friends, enjoying the present, and contributing to their communities.  Finally, materialistic people have been found to hold unrealistically high expectations of what material things can do for them.  One father confided to me that he believed that purchasing a forty-tow-inch flat-panel TV would improve his relationship with his son.  It didn’t.

A more spiritual take on the issue was penned by famed author and Trappist monk Thomas Merton.  In his classic work, No Man Is an Island, he writes:

 “One of the chief obstacles to a sense of wholeness in life is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drains every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us -whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need.

Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the ‘one thing necessary’ may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.”

For Merton, that one thing was God.  For some of us with depression, this may be our touchstone as well; a center around which to slow down the centrifugal force of our spinning lives.  For the others, it may be our family or friends.  But whatever it is, it must ground us and bring out, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “The better angels of our nature.”

To lessen the stress in your life, and the risk for developing or exacerbating your depression, try these tips from your friend Dan:

1.   Fast for a few days from the radio in your car, the newspapers or fooling around on your Blackberry.  Take a time out.  Think of it as an experiment.  Lawyers complain that they’re stressed out only to dump more information and stimulation into their craniums at every few moment they have.  Lawyers already read and think enough for a living – give your nervous system a break for crying out loud.

2.   Hand in hand with the above, incorporate some slice of silence into your life.  It doesn’t have to be a monastic experience.  I wear a runner’s watch and do a ten to fifteen minute period of silence a day.  If you don’t do something like this, you know what you’re stuck with – too much noise.

3.   Start asking yourself some questions.  What toll on your mental and physical health is your drive to succeed exacting on your life?  Make an actual list, take it out every day and read it.  The purpose is to try to become more conscious of the actual cost of your career to you.  People tell me they don’t have the time to do this, but then spend hours researching whether to buy a Lexus or Audi.  The irony of it all.We love accumulating things and experiences in our society.  Instead of adding something into your life, what can you drop out of it that would make you feel better? 

4.   Read something that would nurture you as a person and dump the rest of the crap.  Read only one thing at a time.  Maybe a book of poetry or the biography of a heroic person. 

5.   Reconnect with the humorous, whether highbrow or sophomoric.  Plug into it and have a gut-busting hoot.

6.   Remember, that life isn’t a dress rehearsal.  The time you’re spending at your job is a segment of finite time that you’re given.  Once it’s spent, it’s spent.  No one tells you how to spend it, despite what you might have gotten yourself around to believing.   Remember, you choose.  My priest once said that on every gravestone there are two dates:  the date we were born and the date we died.  We don’t get to choose those dates.  But between those dates, is a dash line: “—.” That dash is our life and what we have done with it.  Resolve to be a person whose dash is driven by substance and not solely by success.  As Mark Twain once wrote, “Let your life sing so that upon your death, even the undertaker will weep.”

7.   The notion of “quality time” for oneself or others is largely bullshit.  Richard O’Connor, Ph.D. once said that to overcome depression we need to start investing in ourselves like we’re worth it: exercising, sleeping enough, etc.   No matter how you slice it, there is no small amount of “quality time” in which you can achieve these basic self-care routines.  The reality is you will need to take whatever amount of time it takes because YOU are worth it.

8.   If you are locked in the success matrix as a lawyer, remember that it doesn’t have to stay that way forever.  Realistically, your life won’t probably change tomorrow.  But it can begin to change in small way that can lead you in a healthier direction.

Climbing Out of the Well of Depression

Depression feels like falling into a well.  We’re trapped at the bottom with no way out. We look up and see light at the well’s entrance, but it’s so far away.  It turns the soupy darkness surrounding us into a sluggish grey.

We long to feel the sun’s vitality again, a sense of motion in the rhythm of life.  It becomes clear that we won’t get out of the well by our own efforts. We’ll need help – serious help.

Out of the darkness above, a ladder appears.  Others might not see it, but we do.  It’s a ladder meant only for us, as if it were crafted with knowing hands.  Its railings and steps bring hope, a passage to another place above us.  Yet, we must climb each step ourselves, one at a time.

God drops ladders into our wells all the time, but we’re often not aware of them.  Sometimes they’re big, sometimes they’re small.  Sometimes they’re a new medication that brings solace to our pained bodies; sometimes they’re  in moments of mercy like when we share the shy smile of a stranger on the street.

We often can’t see these ladders because we’re on our hands and knees looking for a key to get us out.  But a key won’t work.  We don’t need to turn a lock so much as to rise from our knees. We can surrender our sadness, our weight as we go aloft.  “Come to me all you who are burdened and I will give you rest” said Jesus.  And in the depths of our depressed souls, that’s what we deeply thirst for – rest.

People with depression feel like it’s their constant companion.  In such a relationship, and it’s a relationship of sorts, we need not destroy depression.  We need to transcend it.  We do so by letting go of our relationship with depression and embracing another sort of relationship.

Yesterday, I went to Mass.  Often, I feel like such a dullard in those worn wooden pews.  I understand some of the readings, but much of it I don’t.  But, I often feel a quality of peace.  Maybe, on occasion, even a peace that “passeth understanding.”  I can’t explain this experience, but I appreciate it.  It’s a Mystery which calls to all of us by name. It seeks to give us a new identity and loosen our grip on an old one.  It asks us to let go of all the ways we limit our daily lives because of depression.

Jesus once asked Peter, as he asks each one of us, “Who do you say I am?”  I always understood this question one way: it doesn’t matter what others say about “who” Jesus is; it only matters who we say he is to us.

I now see another way of understanding this passage.

It’s just as important for us to ask Jesus, “Who do you say I am?”

For those suffering from depression, the illness usually responds to this question. It tries to tell us who we are: worthless, weak and undeserving. 

Are we willing to turn away from depression’s voice? Can we surrender it to find our true value as seen through the eyes of God?  He sees us as worthy and precious beyond measure. 

Are we willing to trade the noxious tirades of depression for the soothing and life offering voice of God?

As we climb the ladder, let’s leave the voice of depression at the bottom of the well.  It’s voice becomes faint as we leave it behind.  As we near the light, it infuses us with a true sense of our true value.  We are precious in His sight.  We can finally rest.

When we leave the well of depression behind, perhaps we find a different sort of well and a different kind of falling.  Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and author of the little book, “The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer”, writes:

“The purpose of prayer is the process of falling into God.  As the mystics say, we are beginning to learn that God alone is enough.  The truth is that none of us really knows where we are going and must never take it for granted that we do.  We can plan our lives but we cannot guarantee them.

When our prayers are not answered, we know one thing for sure:  The challenge of life now is to live it differently.  And it will be through prayer that we discover how to do that.  Seeing Jesus being driven out of town, we come to understand that we cannot expect more.  Seeing Jesus depressed is not the loss of faith, it is the moment of faith.  Seeing Jesus lose favor with the authorities, we learn that authorities are not the final measure of our lives.

Then we come to prayer free of the desires that bind us, free to live life in God, free to choose trust over certainty — which really means free to choose God over self.

The CEO of Depression

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I’ve read lots of books and articles about depression. What’s strikes me about most of them is how redundant they are. It’s as if there is a place called “Depression Town” where a lot of these authors live and reach consensus about what should be in these books

Most of the books I’ve read didn’t particularly help, some did.  Yet, I felt compelled to keep buying them.  I would show up on a regular basis at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble looking for new self-help titles or troll Amazon hoping –just hoping – that there would be a depression book written especially for me.  During the worst of my depressions, I didn’t read the books so much as use them as emotional tourniquets.

The titles would usually be great – “10 Was to Stamp out Depression for Good”; the content not so much.  Many of the books were boring.  How could this be true, I thought?  How could they be writing about depression – one of the most God-awful experiences you can imagine – and bore me? Most of the authors seemed never to have suffered from depression. If they had, they didn’t say.  If they had, I wished that they had told me so.  Maybe I would have felt a greater connection to what they were trying to say.

I think it’s easy to get lost in so much advice. And we’re all seeking pearls of wisdom; nuggets of truth that we can take back to our nest and ponder.  I think the best wisdom not only deals with the particulars of depression, but also connects us to the larger human condition and all humans search for meaning within suffering.

Sister Kathryn James Hermes, author of the book, “A Contemplative Approach to Depression”, writes that prayer and contemplation help us to deal with depression in a larger spiritual context:

“Both of these practices lead to vulnerability – the learned powerlessness of the truly powerful who can simply be: simply wait, simply be present, simply wonder, simply trust that much larger hands are holding us and knows for whom we work in view of a much larger plan that we cannot as yet understand.”

Absent this, I think many of our efforts to get better may fall flat.  Without such nurturance, advice becomes just another self-improvement project.  Not much really changes.  Oh, it might for a short while.  We feel better, and then one of the wheels of our lives starts to wobble as we try to traverse our days.  We feel like that is something about ourselves that needs fixing, and we get to it. Yet, there’s something very isolating and lonely about these Oprah-like projects to remake ourselves.  Often, it involves rejection of some important element of who we really are. 

That being said, we may come to the conclusion that depression is bigger than us, but it’s not bigger than God. A God –however you define Him/Her, who “holds us in His/Her much larger hands.”

When the turbines of depression were really churning in my life, dealing with it felt like a full time job.  I had two jobs really – working as a lawyer and trying to get better.  This often, in retrospect, would take on a grim earnestness that wasn’t very constructive.  Sometimes, or so it seemed, God would drop these moments into my life to remind me not to take myself or my depression too seriously.

My then 5 year daughter would say, “Daddy works for the Depression Company.”  As I tucked her into bed at night, and looked into those magical eyes that all small children possess, I said, “That’s right honey.  And I’m the CEO.”

 

10 Ways to Deal with Depression

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A lawyer with depression used to call me once a month.  He would tell me about the emotional problems in his life.  Many times, he cried.  This went on for a year.  I listened each time for about a hour and then the conversation would routinely end with, “catch you later.”  Yet, nothing changed for him.  At some point I said, “Bob, what are you willing to do to change your life?”  He seemed surprised by the question.  He never called back.  Perhaps a good starting place for you to think about healing, is what old behaviors are you willing to change or what new behaviors are you willing to try to help you get better?

In her book, Listening to Depression:  How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life , psychologist, Lara Honos-Webb, views depression not just as an “illness”, but as a wakeup call; a signal that we have been traveling down paths in our lives that have been unhealthy.  She encourages us not to see depression as just a disease, but as an opportunity to change our lives.  There is something in us, if we would only listen, that is telling us that we are killing ourselves. 

We often don’t listen.  So that voice turns up the volume until we get sick with anxiety and depression – or heart disease, hypertension and cancer. 

As lawyers, we are experts at looking at problems from an analytical angle.  When we turn that powerful lens on ourselves, seeking to “solve” our depression, it just doesn’t work.  That’s because much of our distorted thoughts and strategies that got us into trouble with depression, can’t get us out. 

After we have been diagnosed with depression, we can evade responsibility for our own recovery.   Some time ago, I was in a great deal of pain.  I told my therapist that my depression wasn’t going away despite my sincere efforts.   I felt punished by my depression.   He gently told me, “Dan, you haven’t done anything wrong.  You’re doing it to yourself.” 

This was a turning point for me in dealing with my depression.  When I stopped letting depression victimize me, I began to take responsibility for getting better and started behaving and thinking in more constructive ways.  That being said, what constructive steps can lawyers take to deal with their depression? 

1.   Get help

You can’t handle this by yourself.  It’s not your fault.  It is a problem bigger than any individual person.  There are Lawyer Assistance Programs in most states that can get you started in the right direction, provide resources and help you with referrals.  Click here to search by state for a program nearest you.  While this advice sounds self-evident, believe me, it is not.  Recent statistics reveal that eighty percent of Americans don’t get any help for their depression.

2.   Maybe you have to take medication

That’s okay.  You may have a chemical imbalance which you need to address.  For many, psychotherapy won’t help until they quiet down there somatic complaints (e.g. extreme fatigue, sleep problems) so that they can have the energy and insight to work on their problems. However, “one size doesn’t fit all.”  Medication can – and is – over proscribed.  I also have a problem with family physician diagnosing depression and recommending antidepressants.  Eighty percent of the scripts for antidepressants in this country are written by such doctors.  Better idea:  go to be evaluated by a well-regarded psychiatrist who specializes in mental health and doesn’t also treat stomach upset, fungus on the feet and the flu.  For a fair and balanced review of the pros and cons of medication, check out HELPGUIDE.org, a not-for-profit organization.

3.   Negative Thinking

Whether you will need medication or not, you will need to confront your negative thinking with a therapist.  You really can’t do this effectively with friends or family alone.  A lot of research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy is a particularly effective form of treatment for depression.  It teaches us that a large part of depression is made up of cognitive distortions.  One example is the all-or-nothing thinking approach.  Lawyers often think to themselves that they’re either “winners” or “losers” in the law. This is a distortion because the reality is that most lawyers both win and lose in their careers. Check out this excellent website article for a list of other cognitive distortions.  I recommend interviewing a couple of therapists before you settle on one.

4.   Exercise

The value of exercise is widely known:  It’s is simply good for everybody.  For a person with depression, it becomes not just about a healthy habit, but a critical choice.  In his book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Ratey devotes a whole chapter to the importance of exercise in treating depression.  Please check this book out.  Also check out this short article from the Mayo Clinic about how exercise can help with the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

5.   Spirituality

If you have a spiritual practice, do it.  If you don’t, think about starting one. This could include anything from a formal meditation practice, going to Mass or just taking a walk in the woods.  A lot of research suggests that people who do have a spiritual practice do better with depression.  If you believe in God or a higher power, you can avail yourself of help and support from Someone who is bigger than your depression.  If you do not believe in God, maybe you believe in some other form of spirituality you can tap into.  Spiritual growth and development, in my opinion, is an important pillar of recovery.

6.   Join a support group 

I started a lawyer support group in my community and it has been going strong for two years.  Such groups can be invaluable in helping you to see that you are not alone and that others share in the very same struggle.  Contact a Lawyers Assistance Program in your state.  If you don’t feel comfortable being in a support group made up of lawyers, there are plenty of other routes to go.  Check out the website run by The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.  They run depression support groups meetings in all fifty states.

7.   Get educated

Read some good books on the topic of depression.  As part of your education, learn about the powerful connection between stress, anxiety and depression.  I recommend you read Dr. Richard O’Connor’s, Undoing Perpetual Stress:  The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness.  Dr. O’Connor opines that depression is really about stress that has gone on too long.  The constant hammering away of stress hormones on the brain changes its neurochemistry.    This can and often does result in anxiety disorders and clinical depression.  I list a number of other great books on my website at Lawyers With Depression.  The site also offers guest articles, news, podcasts and helpful links for lawyers.

8.   Build pleasure into your schedule 

As busy lawyers, we have the “I will get to it later” mentality – especially when it comes to things that are healthy for us.   We have to jettison that approach.  We must begin to take time – NOW – to enjoy pleasurable things.  A hallmark of depression is the failure to feel happiness or joy.  We need to create the space where we experience and savor such feelings. 

 9.   Restructure your law practice

Nobody likes changes.  Lord knows, I don’t.  Yet this pointer falls into the category of “what are you willing to do?”  Maybe you will have to leave your job.  Is this stressful?  Yes.  Is it the end of the world?  No.  Maybe you will have to change careers.  I have spoken to many lawyers who haven’t been particularly happy with being a lawyer since day one.  But they kept doing it because they didn’t know what else to do, the legal profession paid a good buck, they didn’t want to seem like a failure, they were in debt, etc.  I am not trying to minimize these very real concerns.  However, your good health (as I learned the hard way) has got to reestablish itself as a top priority in your life.  I changed the nature and variety of my practice and am the better for it.  I do less litigation.  As a consequence, I have less stress which has been long known to be a powerful trigger for depression.  It can be done.

10.   Practice mindfulness in your daily life

A lot of attention has been focused on the use of mindfulness lately as a way to help depression.  In mindfulness meditation, we sit quietly, pay attention to our breath and watch our thoughts float by in a stream of our consciousness.   We habitually react to our thoughts (e.g. “I will never get this brief done”).  In mindfulness meditation, we learn – slowly – to let the thoughts and feelings float by without reacting to them.  If such an approach to depression seems far-fetched, read the compelling book, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, for an excellent primer on how you can incorporate mindfulness into your day. Check out this article written for my website by one of the book’s authors.

In closing, I often tell lawyers to remember to be kind to themselves.  When I say this they usually look puzzled – like many a judge who has listened to my oral arguments. They’ve rarely, if ever, thought about it and don’t know how to be kind to themselves.  I believe that it first begins with a conscious intention – “I am not going to treat myself poorly anymore.”  Such a simple refrain can help us. 

Depression is often built upon poor mental/emotional and physical habits.  Our inner pain can bring us to the point where we have had enough.  It begins to dawn on us that we are worthy of love from ourselves and others and that part of such love involves taking care of ourselves.  I hope these suggestions help you on your path.

 

Do Elders Have a Place in Helping Us Heal from Depression?

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Recently, an article about depression ran in the USA Today newspaper.  In essence, it repeated the oft heard formula about how to treat depression: recognize the symptoms, visit and be evaluated by a psychiatrist (and go on medication if needed) and see a psychologist.  I have lived out this trifecta of care and treatment and it certainly did help me recover from the worst aspects of depression.  But, there was always something missing.

Two weeks ago, I decided to find and commit to a spiritual director in my life.  This has taken the form of engaging a person to fill that role in my Catholic tradition.  When I first met with my director, I said that I’d lived quite a bit up in my head as a lawyer.   I didn’t want to read anymore books or facts about God.  I was looking for a relationship with an elder who could teach me about deepening of my relationship to God. 

In recent times, our society has called such a teacher-student pairing “mentoring.” Often, we think of it as an older person forming a relationship with a younger one centered on an activity such as school or sports. I believe that it can and should be more than that.  And it certainly doesn’t have to take a religious form nor does it have to be an older person imparting his/her wisdom to a younger person.  People can be our “elders” by virtue of their wisdom and/or special connection we share with them; indeed young people can be “old souls.” 

I did a search today for depression and mentoring on my computer and all of the search results concerned adults helping out younger people to recognize and treat their depression.  Yet, don’t we all wish that we had someone to guide us whatever our age?  How many times have I heard veteran lawyers tell me that they sorely miss that parent, grandparent or special friend that was there to affirm them and to whom they could talk about the larger issues of life. 

In contemporary society, psychologists (or more recently, “life coaches” or “executive coaches”) often fill the role of elders. My own psychologist (a true atheist whom I love and respect dearly), loved my idea of engaging an elder guide calling it “creative.” While depressive thinking does need to be confronted by healthier and more adaptive thinking, it may also require a larger dimension in which to examine and heal from it.  Therapy can and does help us to “deal with”, “overcome” and “adapt to” depression.  But for me at least, it doesn’t answer the larger questions of meaning.  What meaning does this depression have in my life, if any?  If it’s just the product of genetics, purely a disease, is there any meaning in it?  If it’s just a psychological malady, why would I even bother – or feel the need – to address the spiritual dimension?

Think about it. Think about an organic experience with someone who may provide you with spiritual insight into your depression and help move you in a healthier direction.  They can be like an old pine tree that you encounter during a long walk in the woods.  How do we find such an elder?  First, we have to be open to the idea and recognize that it could be of value to us.  Once we have reached this place, we can begin to think creatively about who could fill that role.  For me, it was a formal relationship with a spiritual director.  Talk with your friends, spouse or psychologist about who could be a good fit for you.  It’s true that when a student is ready, the teacher shows up.

Create space in your life for such a teacher and see who comes knocking on your door.

Spiritual Hope – A Postscript

 

I have been listening to a wonderful audio interview with author/educator, Parker Palmer produced by a company called, Sounds True.  Check out their website.  Its catalog of authors address wellness, meditation, spirituality and personal growth is simply amazing.

Parker is currently 70 years old and a Quaker.  In the interview, he recounts the three major episodes of clinical depression he went through during his life. He said some insightful things to say about those experiences.  He doesn’t believe in “formulas” or “How-to-Lists” to cope with depression.  He speaks about depression in the context of his spirituality:

“Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against even the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer.  ‘There are no foxholes,’ I guess, and depression is the deepest and deadliest foxhole I’ve been in.  It may be the ‘dark night of the soul’ that the mystics talk about but in depression it is not so much that one becomes lost in the dark as that one becomes the dark.  I have never been able to ‘do theology’ when I am in this state; the best I’ve been able to do is hang on.  Only later, in the light of day, am I able to understand that God walked with me in the darkness even though I could not feel God’s presence at the time.”

Later, he talks about how he survived his depression:  he “slogged through it.”  And maybe, sometimes, that’s all we can do.  While we may feel that a depression will never end, it’s important to remember that it always does and we can use that knowledge to slog through it.

A Spiritual Sense of Hope

 

bigstockphoto_Exulting_The_Sunset_300315In my previous Blog, I looked at hope from a psychological perspective. This writing will focus on the spiritual dimension of hope and the experience of depression.

Hopelessness is a common feature of depression. During the depths of my episodes, it was my constant companion.  I believe that hopelessness is strongly connected to a sense of helplessness:  no matter how sincere or noble our efforts to overcome depression, we don’t.  We hit a wall; a wall of spiritual darkness.  In this space, there is the sense that God doesn’t care about us, that he has abandoned us, or that he doesn’t even exist.  If he does exist, why would he allow me and others to suffer so?  It is the pointlessness of our suffering which seems so hard a cross to bear.

Barbara Crafton, minister and author of the book, “Jesus Wept,” captures this sense of sorrow:

“Religious people want there to be meaning in everything.  Randomness is hard on us:  that things just happen for no reason sometimes brings us closer than we want to be to the possibility that we’re not central to much of anything . . . .  And so we hope and expect the universe to have a message for us. Let there be something just for me, we pray and expect, something that will make it all make sense.  A plan.

And yet, the crushing weight of depression lies precisely in the meaninglessness that characterizes it.  A flat voice within contradicts every hopeful thought: live with it long enough, and the hopeful thoughts don’t even bother surfacing.  Muffled and parched, bereft of any vision that might ratify your journey or give it a reasonable goal, you trudge on and on for no particular reason other than that you know you’re supposed to.”

What is our spiritual response to this state of affairs?  As we drift out to sea, we long for a voice that will show us a way home.  We may go long periods of our lives with no such beacon.  And then, it happens.  We have a sense of God’s presence in the midst of our pain.  Jesus certainly understood such pain.  Contrary to the movement in some Christian circles to paint Him as a salesman of happiness, he was a man “well acquainted with sorrow.”   His life suggests that in a spiritual life we are not changed from some sad state into, necessarily, a happy one.  That’s not the point.  God doesn’t want some happy, well-adjusted and self-satisfied person per se.  He wants a real and authentic person.  Such authenticity often comes at a very high price.  We must walk through suffering.

The Twenty Third Psalm says:

Even though I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death,

I shall fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

In one form or another, all humans most walk through “the valley of the shadow of death.”  There is simply no escaping the profound experience of suffering.  Depression is one such form of suffering.  It is a valley; a trench from which we so often feel there is viable exit.  During depression we stop walking through that valley.  We are immobilized by our pain and can’t step forward.  The “rod and staff” of God, however, tells us that depression is a “shadow”.  It doesn’t have the final say.  God does.  We must not stay stuck in the valley, but keep walking.

As we walk through our days, what are rods and the staffs that comfort us?  If they are the false sirens of success – of money, status symbols and power – they may temporarily satisfy us.  But they won’t sustain us.  At some point – it is hoped – we will recognize them for the phantoms that they are.

Whatever our spiritual orientation, chose a spiritual sustenance that isn’t borne of your small sense of self with its limited plans and agendas.  But rather a grander hope and vision of which we are intimately connected to.  A view of ourselves not distorted by depression, but by how God views us.  We are indeed precious in his sight, His children.  We can hope in his vision and plans for us.

In closing, sustenance for the day from Saint Ignatius Loyola:

O Christ Jesus,

when all is darkness

and we feel our weakness and helplessness,

give us the sense of Your presence,

Your love, and Your strength.

Help us to have perfect trust

in Your protecting love

and strengthening power,

so that nothing may frighten

or worry us,

for, living close to You,

we shall see Your hand,

Your purpose, Your will through all things.

 Amen.

The Ladder of Success

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Many lawyers are consumed with the goal of becoming successful.  Often, traditional success means money, status and power.  According to veteran lawyer George W. Kaufman, author of the book, The Lawyers’ Guide to Balancing Life and Work, “For too many lawyers, the goal of success becomes the primary driver.  But surveys of working lawyers tell us that a great many of them are unhappy even when their planned goals are realized . . .”  This view was echoed by therapist, Alden Cass in an article on burnout in New York Magazine titled, Can’t Get No Satisfaction.  Cass, who treats Wall Street lawyers in New York City, says, “I can’t tell you how many people come into my office and ask, “How come I have this money and I can’t find happiness?”

Most lawyers are never taught about the problems and pitfalls of pursuing success without also combining it with the pursuit of meaning and purpose.  My parent’s only imperatives were that I go to college, get a good job and “be happy.”  I worked long hours, endured constant stress and moved up my old firm’s pecking order.  But somewhere along the way, I realized that something was terribly wrong with my life.  I wasn’t just unhappy; I was full of sorrow.  The great mythologist, professor and author, Joseph Campbell captured the irony of our common struggle for success: “You climb the ladder of success and when you get to the top you find it’s leaning against the wrong wall.” 

I fell off that ladder and into a well of depression.

I was never taught how to navigate the waters of difficult emotions.  When I looked around at my fellow lawyers, they all seemed so together — like a show room car that never got dented and was always polished.

Through my depression, I learned a lot about the darkness.  That it isn’t exactly an illness, but part of the human journey for all of us.  Educator and author, Parker Palmer, who went through and struggled with depression, wrote:

“Many young people today journey in the dark, as the young always have, and we elders do them a disservice when we withhold the shadowy parts of our lives.  When I was young, there were very few elders willing to talk about the darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had ever known.  As the darkness began to descend on me in my early twenties, I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure.  I did not realize that I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining the human race”.  Listen to a great podcast where Parker is interviewed for a show called, The Soul of Depression.

So much of the literature out there about success focuses on “work-life” balance.  The formula in many of these tomes is the same:  set limits, exercise and make time for family.  All of these are well and good, but seem to so often fail us.  There’s simply not enough gravity in them to keep us in orbit.  What’s lacking is a basic  truth:  Life is made up of struggles and losses and how we deal with them.  Such struggles can reach a crisis pitch in which we enter a sort of darkness.

In his book, Dark Night of the Soul:  A Guide to Finding Your Way through Life’s Ordeals, psychologist, Thomas Moore says: 

“A dark night may not feel like depression.  In a long illness or a troubled marriage you may be anxious, but not depressed.  On the other hand, a clinical depression might well qualify as a dark night.  Whatever you call it, the experience involves you as a person, someone with a history, a temperament, memories, emotions, and ideas.  Depression is a label and a syndrome, while the dark night is a meaningful event.  Depression is a psychological sickness; a dark night is a spiritual trial.

Many people think that the point of life is to solve their problems and be happy.  But happiness is usually a fleeting sensation, and you never get rid of the problems.  Your purpose in life may be to become more who you are and more engaged with the people and the life around you, to really live your life.  That may sound obvious, yet many people spend their time avoiding life.  They are afraid to let it flow through them, and so their vitality gets channeled into ambitions, addictions, and preoccupations that don’t give them anything worth having.  A dark night may appear, paradoxically, as a way to return to the living.  It pares life down to its essentials and helps you to get a new start”.

And maybe that’s what we all need – a new start.  To wake up to a new vision about what success really means to us and how we need to act in our lives as lawyers to meet that meaning.

I remember the words of Mother Teresa on the topic of success.  It’s worth mentioning that a book published in 2007, Come Be My Light – The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta,  says that Mother Teresa felt deep sorrow, despair and one could argue “depression” for the last fifty years of her life.  Yet, in the most profound sense –whether you are religious or not — wasn’t she a success?  She once said, “We are not called to be successful.  We are called to be faithful.”   In other words, we can’t control the outcomes.  But, we can live a life that is directed by our spirits.  And THAT is a life of success.

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