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Listening to Our Depression

Any dialogue about the warp and woof of depression should include something about its value in our lives. That sounds like a bugged out thing for me to say; all the more so when you consider that much of the national dialogue has been dominated by main stream medicine that tells us that depression is an illness – just like diabetes or heart disease. I have, in fact, been part of this choir at different times.

Leading this charge is psychiatrist, Peter Kramer. He’s the author the best-seller, Listening to Prozac and followed up recently with, Against Depression. His conclusion is that we need an all out war, a full fledged armada, against depression which he maintains is “brain damage” which we must stop from occurring in the first place or progressing once it has gotten a foot-hold.

I think Kramer’s arguments oversimplify the complex malady that is depression. More than just a biological illness, depression is also a dying of one’s soul. Indeed, one’s inner self – that which is most vital and true about us – is a casualty of depression.

What if by medicating our depression, or replacing its jagged thoughts with “clearer” or “more constructive thinking habits” (As defined by whom?), we are moved in the wrong direction? What if medication doesn’t so much result in full remission (i.e. the goal of psychiatry) of depression as a “draw” with the gun-slinging opponent that our melancholy can seem like?

What if we’re not supposed to mute our depression with medication or straighten out our uneven thoughts with a flat iron? What if we are killing the messenger?

In his book, The Swampland of the Soul, psychologist, James Hollis, sees depression less as a biological phenomenon, than as a psychological one. Here’s his description of its causes:

“Depression can feel like a well with no bottom, but is a well with a bottom, though we may have to dive very deeply to find it. Think of what the word means literally, to de-press, to press down. What is “pressed down”? Life’s energy, life’s intentionality, life’s teleology is pressed down, thwarted, denied, violated. While the etiology of such pressing down may or may not be discernible, something in us colludes with it. We might even say that the quantity and quality of the depression is a function of the quantity and quality of the life force which is being pressed down. Life is warring against life, and we are the unwilling host.”

What is pushing down our life force as attorneys with depression? Is it just the long hours, stress and adversarial nature of our craft? No doubt such factors play a role, just like our biology and genetics. But clearly much of the foundation of adult onset depression has been layered, brick by brick, in our childhood experiences for it is here where we learn how much to value ourselves and others. If we learn to value ourselves in a healthy way early on in life’s journey, there are fewer impediments in the future to de-press our life’s energy which is trying to express itself.

If we have grown up in a dysfunctional home, as the majority of adults with depression have, it will be much harder to feel good about ourselves and build a healthy life without depression. This is so because we have learned to devalue our inner experiences and give too much weight to what others expect and think about our life’s value and future course. After all, all parents are giants to small children. In a child’s world of magical thinking, there is no way of filtering out parents’ toxic messages about a child; no way of seeing these voices as a reflection of the parent and not a child’s fledging sense of identity.

This was certainly the case with me. My alcoholic father, who had gaping holes in his psyche and soul, couldn’t nurture himself let alone his five children. The eldest of five children himself in an era of WWII veterans, his feelings were alien to him. As time went by, he crumbled under the weight of his disease and growing awareness, on some level, that he was a failure at work and home. My mother, an equally damaged person who grew up with an alcoholic father, never learned the basic law of reciprocity in love and nurturance.

No wonder I ended up as a young man after a successful undergraduate career; without an internal sense of who I was or what I wanted to be. Like many others without a deep relationship to self and my feelings, I “chose” the law because of one thing I could be sure of – it was a chance to serve others, be a professional and make money. This is, to be sure, why many young people go into this strange business we call the legal profession.

I was estranged from something essential in me for many years, so powerful was the pushing down of my own inner instincts and life force. I felt defined and limited by who I had been in my rocky childhood, whether I was aware of it or not. I always felt a gnawing sense that something was missing – that piece turned out to be nothing less than my essential self.

Dr. Hollis frames the developmental task before us after we have come to sense this elemental truth:

“The task implicit in this particular swampland is to become conscious enough to discern the difference between what has happened to us in the past and who we are in the present. No one can move forward, psychologically, who cannot say, “I am not what happened to me: I am what I choose to become.” Such a person can come to recognize that the early deficit was not inherent in the child, but the result of circumstances beyond the child’s control. One can then begin to tap the energy for life that was previously walled off.”

And so begins the journey out of the well of depression for all of us. We must learn to regain our inner authority – regardless of our biology. This doesn’t mean one needs to quit the law – though some may need to do so to follow their true path. It may be a more modest shift in perspective or a reshuffling of our life’s deck.

Hollis has a great analogy that captures the value of modest changes. He writes that steering our lives is like a pilot using his navigation instruments while flying. A one degree shift here or there will determine where he ends up landing; in Africa or in Europe.

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. In one interview, she summarizes the five greatest gifts as follows:

– It propels you on a search for the meaning of life

– It’s nature way of pushing you out of your comfort zone. Depression reminds you that you are losing your life while not risking

– It’s a breakdown in the service of offering you an opportunity for a breakthrough

– It means it’s time to reclaim your power to author your own life

– It alerts you when you have gotten off course and guides you towards self-healing.

How do we come to see these truths? Honos-Webb says:

“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 without relief. But there’s much to be said for seeing depression not just as a disease, but as a diminishment of self which makes our world too small. We don’t have to keep colluding in our own victimization. And remember this:

You are not what happened to you – You are what you choose to become.

Springing Out of Depression

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. – Rainer Maria Rilke.

Spring is a time of renewal. If we follow nature’s lead, it’s a time for rebirth. During the long nights of winter, depression can have a vise-like grip around our throats. The increasing sunlight and warmth seem to make this black dog recede back into the shadows.

Spring cleaning is a perennial happening in this country; people tossing out and cleaning up in every zip code imaginable. This feels good because it gets our bodies moving, we feel productive and somehow lighter. Depressives have a lot of dross in their drawers; layers of junk strewn haphazardly throughout the pockets of their days.

Today, I’m cleaning out that most sacrosanct of male domains – my garage. Laugh you may, but I really enjoy it. I love the productivity of it all, the manual labor that gets things done without relying on my ability to think and analyze problems. It seems to bring my life back into some sort of momentary harmony; a clarity where there used to be only the mildew of depression.

It puts me back in contact with nature, with the fresh air that blows and the ground where life is murmuring and waiting to come forth. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes, “In Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” I don’t know about you, but that’s my plan for the day.

Yes, Spring is a time of change; a transition from the hibernation of winter. It’s a good time to go back to the drawing boards of our lives and look at what is and isn’t working for us; what is and is not contributing to our depression. If something works, keep it; if not, chuck it.

Springtime is a great time not only to clean out garages, but also our minds that get gooey with too much depressive thinking. Too often, depressives are immobilized by . . . well, depression. Because they think that they can’t get anything done, they . . . get nothing done. That sort of thinking needs to be tossed to the curb along with the rest of the trash.

Depression seems to add 50 pounds of psychic weight to our bodies. We drag ourselves around the block like a broken wagon, never feeling that we have enough energy to do anything. Yet, it is profoundly true, that energy begets energy in this corner of the Universe; hence, my assault on the garage.

Depression is hard-headed and stupid. For some reason, this thought pops into my head as I watch my dog Sherman chewing on an old toy, slobber running down his brownish coat.

Depression can make you feel like that best thing for you to do is sit on the couch and watch Brady Bunch reruns while sucking down a Coke. But what’s really needed to make you feel better is movement.

That’s why I’ll be hanging out in my garage today. It’s such a simple thing to do. No game changer in the grand scheme of things. Just an ordinary thing, in an ordinary life, that makes me feel great.

Getting Things Done While Depressed

In my last blog, I wrote an article about the importance of goal setting for those in the legal profession with depression. I went looking for some nifty quotes on the topic; true nuggets of insightful wisdom. Instead, I found a lot of boorish material which just rehashed what we already know – it’s important to get your act together.

That being said, I hope to humbly offer up my own take on goal setting for those hampered by the drag of depression.

Depression is full of waffling and meandering through the wastelands of our somber thoughts. We are, of course, seduced into all of this by such thoughts — as if this were a productive way to live one’s life. The thoughts gather strength and become ingrained cognitive habits as we repeat them millions of times with several variations on the same theme: “I’m no good”, “nobody cares about me,” “I can’t do anything right” or what’s wrong with me?” Listen, thinking these thoughts occasionally are normal for anyone who has been smacked around by life’s trials and tribulations. After all, we are all jerks at different points of our lives . . . . . speak for yourself Dan, you may retort!

The problem comes in when such thoughts aren’t a sometime-sort-of-thing, but an all-the-time-sort-of-thing. They take up residence in our minds and make a mess of the kitchen.

Depressive thoughts become one of the reasons we avoid, forget and/or just can’t seem to set healthy goals. It’s as if in the midst of a depression, we simply don’t care because we can’t see anything good happening in the near or far future to us whatever we do. This self-talk is a script right out of the movie, “How Depression Took over My Life.” (Not a real movie)

There are two ways to approach this issue of goal setting for the depressed professional. Though they aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s helpful to pull them apart.

Goal Setting with Depression

There will be different things you’ll be able to realistically get done depending where you fall on the depression continuum. However, some ideas which should help everybody:

Structure Your Day – Please.

People with depression can feel scattered and overwhelmed. The strain of being so exacerbates their depression because of the stress chemicals released in their bodies. As such, go through your day first thing in the morning and decide how it might play out in your mind. Try to be constructive about it. Watch the language you use in your self-talk. Instead of your stated goal being, “Not to feel like crap today,” try something like, “Today, I’m going to do my best to take care of myself.” The shift in perspective can and does make a big difference.

Keep it simple.

I keep a stack of 3 x 5 index cards in my laptop case and use one per day. On it, I write 3-5 things on the left that are priorities and 3-5 things on the right that I’d like to get done. I used to have a variety of notes scattered across piles of legal pads. You can still do that if you, like me, are a “To do” list junky. But, try the index card approach. It’s cheap and simple to do. Keep it in your shirt pocket with a pen so you don’t have to search for it. Psychologists tell us it takes 21 days for a habit to stick so give it three weeks.

Goal Setting at Work

Managing and Delegating

You must corral your work. If you don’t, it’ll sink you when you’re dealing with depression. If you have a secretary, lean on her heavily to organize your day and your desk. Sit with her every morning and go over the day. Many lawyers are control freaks and aren’t good at delegating. You have to break that habit and let go of this compulsion.

Regrouping

Many lawyers bring their all-or-nothing cognitive approach to the workday. Either they have to get everything done (“Yikes!”) or nothing done (e.g. they blow the whole day because they don’t feel well at the beginning of the day). A good cognitive tool to use is regrouping. I would sometimes have a crappy morning and think that the day was then ruined. I’ve since learned to regroup at different intervals of the day, take stock and tell myself that just because the morning was crummy (or even the past hour) that doesn’t mean that I can’t zoom in the afternoon.

Watch Your Depression Patterns

Learn the patterns of your depression as they relate to your work day. If you pay attention, depression takes on a certain pattern. For me, I felt my worst in the morning. This was often related to trouble sleeping. I would begin zooming around 10 in the morning. As such, I planned my day around this. Other lawyers find that their depression hits around 2 p.m. Keep a journal for about a week and pay attention to when this happens to you. A good idea is to wear a sport watch with a timer. Then set it to beep at one or two hour intervals. Write down your mood at that time and rate it between 1 and 10. I think you’ll be surprised to see how your mood changes during the course of the day.

It is not impossible to set goals while depressed. It’s important to watch yourself getting things done. Zoom.

Goals, Depression & Work

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

There are different concerns at different stages of one’s depression journey. Lawyers who are in the throes of it, perhaps for the first time, need education about what depression is, understanding, medication, support and psychotherapy. After they’ve started to feel better, they’ll need to turn their focus to their livelihood and how they’ll work at it in a way, hopefully, which takes into account their mental health so as prevent and/or mitigate any future depression. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., author of the best-selling book, Undoing Depression, has this interesting insight about depressives in the workplace:

“Sometimes when I have spoken to business organizations, I have surprised them by advocating for hiring the depressed; but aside from taking more sick days than others, depressed people can be the best employees. We’re [Dr. O’Connor has long struggled with depression] good at being responsible. We are good soldiers, honest and industrious. We have high standards and want to do any job well. We have too much guilt to pad our hours or take home office supplies. Treat us decently, and we’ll be grateful and loyal. Unfortunately for the depressed individual, however, we discount these virtues and have a difficult time enjoying the world of work.”

I think that’s a great insight because overcompensating, even if it makes us miserable, can make us great workers. God knows lawyers have high standards. In essence, many of these people don’t fundamentally value themselves. They may fervently chase other measures of success – money, power and status. Yet, inside, they often feel broken, sad, stressed or depressed. Here’s what Dr. O’Connor said in an interview I had with in New York City about a depressive’s need to value him/herself:

We tend to think of lawyers as colossal egos bent on being Masters of the Universe; and there probably a good chunk of those people out there — who I never could stand anyway. But, in my experience, there are many accomplished lawyers who suffer from depression who are of different ilk; “good soldiers” who bust their asses and don’t give themselves much, if any, credit.

I was doing a walk-a-talk with a friend of mine [a real non-lawyer type] recently in Central Park in New York City. I stopped to munch on some peanuts that were a real disappointment. He was baffled when I told him I didn’t feel that I’d accomplished much in my professional life. “You were just named to that that publication, ‘The Best Lawyers in America’. For Christ’s sake, count your blessings!”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to take credit. It was because I couldn’t — I just didn’t know how to. And, as Dr. O’Connor said, not taking credit doesn’t often have much to do with our professional success, but it has a lot to do with our satisfaction with our jobs.

There are emotional bridges that connect us to various aspects of ourselves and our environment. For depressives, there often isn’t an east-bound bridge connecting their good work to their emotional selves. Others may slap them on the back and plaques may parade across their office wall. No matter, there’s still a disconnection; a sense that their accomplishments were an accident or a recent run of Lady Luck. They often have a sense that they’ll be found out; that all of their success is a put-on. They think they’re imposters who truly don’t deserve such accolades – especially from any genuine place inside of them. No matter how distorted this vision is, they’ll insist that it’s true till the cows come home. I know because I’ve banged these drums a few times over the years.

Then there’s the other bridge pointing west-bound. It connects their goof-ups, mistakes and bad decisions to themselves. You see, lawyers have an exaggerated sense of responsibility for bad things and an underdeveloped sense of ownership for the good stuff they do. This take on life isn’t about taking responsibility for our mistakes. Rather, it’s the toxic self-impugning; the inner critic run amok spraying bullets from an AK-47 at our self-esteem.

I’ve come to learn that feeling a sense of satisfaction and pride in my work because of my efforts is a skill that I have to work at – and I’ve come a long way. One of the ways I’ve chosen to do this is by setting goals. For many years, like all lawyers, I swam upstream into the time currents of my day. I didn’t have to set goals about when to get things done because the Court, my firm and other various incendiary devices did that for me. Finishing a set of interrogatories or successfully arguing a Summary Judgment motion, wasn’t a goal that I set for myself – it was simply another deadline in a litany of other deadlines.

Setting goals for ourselves that we’ve personally reflected upon is important step for those who wish to recover from depression. It counters the sense of hopelessness and the confusing lack of direction characteristic of a depressive’s attempts to navigate through life. Goals give us a Garmin for our game.

Even though setting goals would be a healthy thing for someone with depression to work at, they often don’t. Again, Dr. O’Connor:

“Depressed people, pessimistic [a hallmark of lawyers thinking style] and lacking confidence, tend to avoid setting goals as a way to protect themselves from disappointment. They don’t realize that the absence of goals leads to a completely different and frequently worse set of problems. Even if you miss your target, you grow and benefit from the practice of productive activity. But depressed people, who don’t trust their ability to adapt to bad news and hence avoid setting conscious goals, find lives that lack direction. Your goal becomes just getting through another day. In the depths of depression, that may be all you can manage, but it doesn’t take you anywhere.”

Or, as the great Indian Chief Seneca once wrote: “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Setting simple, realistic and concrete goals improve both our performance of the activity and our actual experience of it. My Catholic take on it from Mother Teresa helps me put this in the context of my part-time faith: “We can’t do great things; only small things with great love.”

Work isn’t just about what is thrown at us by our jobs. It’s also about the passion we bring to it. In this vein, it’s not just the immediate task before us that hooks us, but how we’ve set it up in our own minds. Again, Dr. O’Connor:

“Making a commitment [to a goal] focuses our attention on where we want to go and helps us focus our thinking on getting there. People feel happier as they progress toward their goals; they have a sense of involvement, they feel productive and useful, and they give themselves ego strokes for being good and industrious. Because we’re so adaptable, however, those good feelings don’t necessarily last once we’ve got to where we are going. We have to make a deliberate effort to savor and appreciate our achievements.”

The key words are deliberate effort. The word “deliberate” comes from the Latin word “deliberates” which means to weigh carefully. It requires us to reflect on our course of action and think about what actually works and what doesn’t for us on the job.

In my experience, depressives are often lacking the goal-setting skills they need to be happy and content in their work lives. What’s the consequence of not setting goals is a sense of meaninglessness; ennui that won’t go away. Depressed lawyers have an inner dialogue that goes something like this: “I have all this paperwork to get to today, but I have to be in court all morning. And . . . oh shit!! I forgot to call the judge back on that motion.” And so it goes as these worrisome thoughts pour out of our noggins. We’re just jumping around putting out fires and surviving our days. Is it really any wonder that we draw little or no satisfaction from our work with this approach?

When I talk to depressed lawyers about this and suggest that they think about their goals and what they really want to achieve, you would have thought that I asked them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge: “Are you kidding? You want me to spend time thinking about my goals? When the hell do I have time to do that? I have no time during work and then when I get home I either want to (a) forget about my day and enjoy my family, (b) pass out on the couch and forget about everything in front of the T.V. or (c) do anything that doesn’t involve thinking about my job.

There’s no problem in using these ways to decompress after a day’s warfare at the office. But if these activities, albeit pleasurable, avoid the important questions raised by work, and our connection to it, we may to rebalance the tires.

In my next blog, I will address some practical ways lawyers can set goals and draw pleasure from accomplishing them in their everyday work lives.

Mindful On The Job

Work is about a search for daily 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 through Friday sort of dying – Studs Turkel, author

Sunday night rolls around all too quickly. The weekend, if we actually give ourselves a break from our jobs, can’t often prepare us for the frenzy of the week’s activity at the office that awaits us. If we like our jobs as lawyers – and granted there are alot of us who do – we still may feel it’s half-baked- “it still could be better” we think to ourselves.

Michael Carroll, author of the book, Awake at Work, was employed at such places as Shearson Lehman, American Express and The Walt Disney Company. More recently, he has been a consultant and coach to such companies as Starbucks and Proctor and Gamble. His comments, into what workers really want out of their jobs, is insightful to the lives of lawyers on the job:

“In my role as a business consultant, I regularly ask my clients to complete the following sentence with the first word that comes to mind:

At work, I want to be. . .

While my survey is not scientifically reliable, I can report there are some patterns to the responses. Here are the four most frequent answers:

Successful
Happy
Rewarded
Stress-free

Such responses come as no surprise. Given the demands, risks and relentless pace of our modern-day workplace, it is little wonder that most of us would like a little stress-free happiness on occasion. Rewards and success-isn’t that what we are all looking for at work?”

Who can’t relate to that take on the legal profession? Whether we are happy in our jobs or not, we all think about how we can embrace more of these intangibles while at the office.

Carroll, in addition to being in the business world for the past forty-four years, is a long-time meditator and proponent of mindfulness meditation. Here’s a great introduction to what Mindfulness is about:

You don’t have to be a Buddha sitting in a lotus garden to appreciate this fundamental and simple way of approaching your day. It’s not so much a different way of doing and accomplishing stuff; lawyers are great at that. Rather, it’s a different way of seeing at work. Moreover, seeing via a discipline of mindfulness meditation, seeks to plant our feet directly on the carpet. It’s not so much about being alert and wired to the swirling stimuli peppering us from every angle. It’s taking a time-out and leaning against the wall; it’s about letting the other half of our brain complement our eagerness to get things done.

Coming back to Michael Carroll’s survey about what people want out of their work, he opines that it’s not really success, happiness, being reward and a stress-free work-life:

“My survey indicates that most of us think we want to happy, successful, and to be stress-free at work, but we also know that such aspirations are wishful thinking. We all know work offers both success and failure; happiness and angst. We know that work, indeed all of life, unavoidably presents both rewards and penalties; joys and disappoints. So, while most of us wish to be happy and successful at work, what we really want, from my vantage point, is to be confident: confident that no matter what work offers up, we remain self-assured and at our ease.”

In my experience, truer words were never spoken. As lawyers, there is a wonderful sense we get about our craft when we achieve a certain level of competence and feel that we can handle whatever down the pike. We can acheive this sense of competence not just through the nuts and bolts of accomplishments in the courtroom, but through practice as sense of presence in our daily lives.

Explore how mindfulness meditation can help you at the office. Also, for those so inclined, check out the wonderful book, which I’ve previously raved about, The Mindfulway Through Depression. It’s not only for those with depression, but suitable for anyone who struggles with a sense of dissatisfaction and/or unhappiness at work.

Walking in Bigger Shoes

Lawyers are an earnest, disciplined bunch. They love evidence – the “show me the money” approach to life. They’re hard-bitten pessimist, yet love the latest self-improvement projects pitched to them by the legal establishment. You know — graphs, charts and the Oprah-like cattle call to “Change Your Life in Five Easy Steps!” The goal of all these books and slogans is Happiness, as if it were a commodity for sale. There was a snappy piece yesterday in the New York Times Review of Books entitled, “The Rap on Happiness.” It’s a great take on this country’s obsession with finding the veritable Oz of bliss.

“The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; its happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in transience. It is deep but often brief (as the poet Robert Frost would have it), and much great prose and poetry make note of this. Frank Kermode wrote, ‘It seems there is sort of a calamity built into the texture of life.’ To hold happiness is to hold understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.”

Lawyers walk in shoes that are too small for them, living lives that are too confining, unimaginative and which fail to challenge them to be their best. They need to switch from pinching wing-tips to cushy loafers. This switch gives a vital bounce to their steps rather than a lugubrious gait. The opposite of depression isn’t happiness; it’s vitality. It’s like a Swordfish bounding out of the ocean’s waves in defiance of gravity or B.B. King playing a blues riff on his guitar. They have a vibrancy that can’t be contained; they express themselves in a space where great stuff happens.

Part of the equation involves not so much pills or therapy, as the lifting up of our individual imaginations. Putting aside what’s possible in a concrete sense ( you know, the mortgage or student loans), have you ever looked out your office window and imagined the life you’d like to have? This is not the same as rumination; a constant churning of negative thoughts in our cranium which a depressive is prone to.

Rather, it’s an exercise in lively engagement with our Self. To engage in this effort, we have to pop our life’s stick shift out of “Neutral”, the frozen state that depression and/or anxiety can keep us stuck again. Locate the “Drive” on your shift and engage.

In this exercise, it might be helpful to think about the choices we make in a different way. Not in a self-recriminating way, but in a fashion that moves us in a constructive direction. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff in our lives; to decide what reduces or enlarges our spirits. Quality questions can help in regard. Not the common lament of depressives, “What the hell is wrong with me?” That’s a dreary question that goes nowhere because the answer we give ourselves is – – “Everything!” James Hollis, Ph.D., in his wonderful book, “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life” offers us a keen approach ourselves to view ourselves:

“Ask yourself of every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure to commit, ‘Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?’ Do not ask this question if you are afraid of the answer. You might be afraid of what your soul will require of you, but at least you then know your marching orders.”

Incline your inner ear. Listen to your response to this challenging question. Enlargement of one’s self isn’t so much about happiness, as meaning. Deep down, we all want a life of purpose; where we feel our lives have a point, or many points of light for that matter. You don’t have to look far. It’s right beneath your bouncing feet.

Turning Your Life Around

Lawyers often sense that their lives have gone off track; they just don’t know how to fix them. They’re hit by daily demands that make it difficult to find their true north.

There are the demands that hurtle at them from the lives they occupy – the boss that’s yammering for more billable hours, families that feel upset by all the hours they spend at work or you-name-it-crap from this frenzied world.

Then there are the demands that emanate from somewhere inside of them; the part of themselves – their true selves – that wants a life with less stress, more meaning and a sense of connectedness to other people. While they pine for such a life while looking outside their law office windows, such reverie gives them a brief respite from the grind. But after the moment has passed, there’s an abiding sorrow. A sense that something has been lost that can’t be found.

Perpetual stress can keep lawyers from ever dealing – in a constructive and persistent way – with what they really want in life. They check their Blackberry’s more than check in with themselves. They don’t really know what they want most of the time; they just know that it’s not this. Emotional pain may be leaking out of them; for some lawyers, this has been going on for years. The pain might be mitigated in healthy (e.g. exercise) or unhealthy (e.g. drinking, drugs) ways. But, it will not go away – until they turn around and face themselves.

Lawyers need to become conscious of the choices they’re making during their waking hours. Of course, there’re exceptions, but the majority of lawyers have choices. They aren’t victims that are being forced to stay at their jobs. They’re choosing to stay at their jobs and do the work they’re paid to do.

Most lawyers, however, just don’t see it this way. They feel stuck in their jobs and lives with few viable alternatives. As odd as it may sound, they feel like victims. Friends of mine who aren’t lawyers scoff at my observation: “Lawyers victims? Give me a break.” Nonetheless, it’s true on an emotional level for many lawyers.

Lawyers can feel this way because (a) the “golden handcuffs” in which they’re just making too much money to quit; (b) they’re in too much debt; (c) they’d rather complain than face the abject fear that comes with making tough changes; or (d) they’re simply paralyzed by stress, anxiety or depression.

However, by turning from a stuck-victim status to a choice-maker posture they can begin to awaken to their true potential. They might have to make small changes in their lives or maybe a closet full of whoppers. Perhaps they’ll have to go back to the drawing board of their lives and sift through and separate what’s really important versus what’s trivial. This will take time; let nobody fool you on this one. People in our country are basically impatient; we want relief from our distress NOW. But, meaningful and realistic changes never seem to unfold this way. That’s just the facts-o-life.

Turning your life around may come down to this: What are you willing to do to change your life? Lots of people — not just lawyers — know that their lives aren’t working. The same group approaches their lives with all the right intentions of changing it for better. Most, however, will not change despite the chorus of voices from within telling them to do so.

I had a friend who would call me once a month and lament how unhappy he was. I’d listen for thirty minutes and then he, having discharged his discomfort, would say goodbye only to repeat this weather pattern about thirty days later.

Finally, six month in this telephonic waltz, I said “Tom, what are you willing to do to change your about life?” The question must have stunned him like a taser because there was silence — a dead silence — on the other end of the line. He evaded the question, said we would have to get together soon for lunch and hung up. Tom never called again.

Tom didn’t really want to change – – he wanted to bitch, a common past-time for many lawyers. He wanted my sympathetic ear to appreciate just how much he’d been screwed over by opposing counsel, an irate judge or his cranky wife. I had sympathy for Tom, but also a good deal of frustration because I realized that I wasn’t really helping him.

I would ask you the reader: “What are you willing to do to change your life” Are you willing to the feel the free floating anxiety that’s inevitable if you are to start changing your life? The longer the discontent goes on, the bigger the changes will have to be. The longer we delay, the bigger the kick in the pants from Life to wake us up.

Yes, work is only a part of life and many lawyers no doubt find outlets of meaning and joy along other avenues. However, as Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, such sizing up of our days miscalculates the energy and time we must invest in our daily jobs:

“Work is merely one of the arenas in which you play the game – the one the Gods are watching from the press-box atop Mount Olympus while sipping mint juleps. It is only one of the arenas in which you express your humanity, search for meaning, play out your destiny and dreams, contribute your energies and gifts to the world and spend your precious nick of time. It is also an arena in which you spend two-thirds of your waking lifetime and it is legitimate to love your work! Life is a thousand times too short to bore yourself. If someday your life does flash in front of your eyes, the very least you want it to do is hold your interest.”

Rear-ended by Depression

The abject pain of clinical depression is magnified expontentially when one considers that sufferers usually blame themselves for their plight. “What’s wrong with me?” is a common refrain. Most people with depression feel “bad” to their core. They can’t always articulate why this is so, but they know that they can’t shake their own self-condemnation. There is no place to hide from it, no true rest for the weariness it brings. We lay awake at night and hope that tomorrow it will be better.

I had a conversation last week with a mental health professional who asked me, “What in the world do lawyers have to be depressed about? They’re rich and powerful. Lawyers should stop complaining and realize how good they have it.” Yet a lack of gratefulness has little to do with depression. I used to recite a list of things I had to be grateful about – and there were many – but it all fell on depression’s deaf ears.

When others tell us to “snap out of it,” we may buy it hook, line and sinker and even believe that they know what they’re talking about. Well-meaning friends may try to reign in our sorrow by suggesting that they can identify with our suffering.

In her book about her own depression, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Mood and Madness, psychiatrist, Kay Redfield Jamison writes:

“Others imply that they know what is it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable.”

Such attempts by others, even when well intentioned, always brought about a deep sense of loneliness in me. I had, like most people, gone through my fair share of difficult experiences in life like losing a job. But this experience – this blast furnace of melancholy – was not that. We get over losses in our lives, we adapt. We can’t just “get over” depression.

There is a sense that we have been rear-ended by depression; out of seemingly nowhere, our lives are crashed into and changed forever. In a very real sense, we will never be the same. Some will recover from their depression, many will not. That’s not a very popular thing to say, but it’s been my experience from talking with hundreds of lawyers from around the country who I’ve been privileged to share with. For many, recovery will be an on-again off-again sort of affair. They will have to work hard to recover and make lots of effort to stay healthy.

Part of the reason why too many lawyers don’t get better is simple: most don’t get any form of treatment for their depression. A study by the National Institute of Mental Health revealed that as many as 80% of people in this country get no form of help whatsoever. Looking out a window, I wonder how high the rate is for lawyers. It’s most likely a mixed bag. While it’s true that people from a higher socio-economic class tend to get treatment – mostly because of their access to good medical care – most attorneys still don’t because of the stigma associated with mental illness.

Such shame – dumped on people from others and the self-inflicted variety – is particularly deep for lawyers. This is so because of the myths surrounding their internal world. Lawyers feel like they’re supposed to be veritable Supermen able to bend steal and solve all manner of a clients’ problems without wrinkling their power blue suit. If they’re in pain, they’re told to “suck it up.” We live in a nation of winners where, deep down, many feel like losers.

This sort of mentality, in part, explains the epidemic rates of depression in the law. Studies have concluded that lawyers suffer from depression at a rate of twice the national average or about 20%. This means that 200,000 out of the one million lawyers in this country suffer from depression.

What’s a depressed lawyer to do? First, one must stop blaming oneself. This is tough because most people with depression have been living with this cognitive distortion for a long time – maybe their whole lives – and this corrosive self-talk promotes the viscous cycle that is clinical depression. If one can’t stop blaming oneself for having depression, it’s tough to get better. Little by little, we need to learn to let that bullshit go and start walking a healthier path.

The poem, The Journey, by Mary Oliver, captures some sense of this path for me. I hope it will for you.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice – –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do – –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

One Nation Under Medication

Clinical depression’s analogy to illnesses like heart disease or diabetes has been helpful to de-stigmatize it in our society. It is a physical illness, regardless of its causes, and requires medical care and treatment. But, in a very real sense, it’s much more than that.

Heart disease and diabetes do not affect our minds, personalities and emotional worlds like clinical depression. Taking antidepressant medication, unlike other meds to open sinus congestion or plaque-filled arteries, changes how we see ourselves as well as how others see us.

Much about what drives how we feel about taking medication is driven by stigma; the dark cloud of shame which says that we’re weak or somehow “bad” for taking such drugs. This nonsense continues despite the fact that 350 million people suffer from depression worldwide and that it’s the leading cause of disability on the planet.

In the book Undoing Depression, Dr. Richard O’Connor captures some of the irony of stigma:

“If [all of the statistics] are true, if depression is as dangerous and prevalent as I’m saying, you may well ask: Where’s the big national foundation leading the battle against depression? Where’s the Jerry Lewis Telethon and the Annual Run for Depression? Little black ribbons for everyone to wear?”

Looking back on my journey with medication, it was a rough ride but one in which I am glad I took. I have been on medication for the past eight years and it controls my depression. I don’t think that it’s the only reason why I’ve gotten better; I’ve done a lot of healthy stuff to recover too (e.g. psychotherapy, exercise and change in my diet). But, at least for me, medication brought about a profound stability that I might not have otherwise achieved.

The fact that medication helped me and continues to do so doesn’t mean I don’t have my fair share of ambivalence about taking them; on the contrary. Besides the unknown long-term effects on our brains from using these potent concoctions, there is also a change of identity that takes place when we start using them.

I sometimes miss the old, pre-antidepressant Dan that was wired and edgy. When anxiety and depression really lit up my nervous system, it was as if too much wattage was flowing through the power grid of my body. The medication seemed to calm things down and even things out. As I grew calmer, I was able to think through things more clearly – especially my depressive thought habits. But there’s a struggle which waxes and wanes within me, even as I give the medication its due, about whether becoming a medicated person has been a good thing entirely.

In his book, “Is It Me or My Meds?” Boston College Professor, David A. Karp writes:

“[P]eople’s self-esteem and sense of integrity are deeply connected to their ability to control their personal problems The people I spoke with had difficulty accepting the idea that emotional illnesses are no different from physiological problems such as heart disease or diabetes. It may be comforting to hear that antidepressant medications correct chemical imbalances in the brain just as insulin controls diabetes. But most of those I interviewed assigned different meanings to mental and physical conditions. When asked directly, they affirmed that psychiatric drugs are far more likely than other medications to make them feel bad about themselves . . . .”

There is no doubt in my mind that we become different people on these drugs; there is the pre-antidepressant person and the post-antidepressant person.

In an article Dr. Karp wrote for the Lawyers With Depression website, he writes:

“While direct-to-consumer advertising has likely fostered an easier acceptance of these pills, most of the people I interviewed who suffer from major depression embark on a psychiatric drug career with great reluctance. Typically my respondents turn to medications only when desperation leaves them without alternatives.

This is understandable in terms of the identity line that one crosses by seeing a doctor, or seeing a diagnosis of depression and filling the prescription for anti-depressants. One person poignantly expressed her identity dilemma by saying that, ‘When I swallowed that first pill I swallowed my will.’ Beginning a regimen of psychiatric medications is part of the traumatic transformation from person to patient; from being a merely troubled person to someone who has mental illness. Crossing that boundary is hardly an easy step to take.”

I think Dr. Karp captures a good deal of the angst that goes along with taking meds. Most people I know who take them can identify with what he says. There is often a sense of shame attached with taking medication because we feel that we should be able to kick depression’s ass all by our sweet old selves. What that blows up and we are left stumbling on depression’s playing field, we often turn to medication. In my own life, I felt shame for a period of time. But as my understanding of depression grew, I knew I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. It wasn’t my fault that I had depression, but it was my responsibility to get better. Medication was part of that for me.

A New Year to Kick the Depression habit

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning – T.S. Eliot

With the New Year comes new choices; we can choose to leave behind ways of being in the world that cause and maintain our depression and embrace healthier and saner approaches to our days. Or we can simply do nothing.

Why do lawyers with depression keep repeating behaviors that prevent them from feeling good about themselves? Why do they relentlessly drive, isolate and unmercifully think of themselves as the biggest piece of crap this side of the Mississippi?

In his revised and updated book Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn’t Teach You and Medication Can’t Give You, Dr. Richard O’Connor offers this insight: “People persist in self-destructive behavior because they don’t know how to do anything else. I’m convinced that the major reason why people with depression stay depressed despite therapy, medication, and support from loved ones is that we are simply unable to imagine an alternative. We know how to ‘do’ depression. We are experts at it.”

Lawyers can’t envision healthier alternatives because depression shuts down their capacity to creatively imagine themselves productively engaged in the world. We simply have no reference point for that. So we stay in our offices with the doors closed looking out the window as the birds fly by and one season changes into another.

Our brains love habits — even when they stink and hurt us. It’s a more predictable way to go through life because we don’t have to rethink everything and change. We become used to depressive habits as we cruise through life on auto-pilot. Many lawyers with depression usually view their jobs as the sole source of their depression; surviving “it” becomes the focus of their lives. They use depression habits at their jobs that might work for awhile, but at a very high cost to their physical and emotional well-being. These aren’t stupid people; they just can’t imagine doing their jobs any differently. As educatior Parker Palmer once wrote about his depression, “It wasn’t so much that I was in the darkness as I became the darkness.”

Dr. O’Connor writes:

“We depressives become shaped by our disease as well; the skills that we develop with depression in a vain effort to save ourselves pain – skills like swallowing our anger, isolating ourselves, putting others first, being over-responsible – prevent our recovery. We have to give up the depressed habits that keep us down and make us vulnerable to relapse.”

Deepak Chopra wrote: “A habit is a frozen interpretation from the past that is applied to the present.” I think that’s why depression can have such a deadening sensation associated with it. In a sense, depression warps our perceptions about events happening in real time and pulls us under the frozen river of our past. People and events happening in real time trigger old interpretations of how life works. Since most people with depression come from dysfunctional or abusive childhoods, a current conflict with others becomes a ride back to their traumatic past.

For me, this distortion has often revolved around anger. I not alone on this one; how we handle anger is a big issue for most lawyers. As lawyer and psychologist Andy Benjamin wrote and studies have concluded, there is a strong connection between hostility and depression. Anger seems to be situational, while hostility is an overarching and aggressive approach to life. Anger that is repeatedly stuffed or inappropriately expressed becomes hostility. Many lawyers don’t want to be assholes, but feel they have to do so to survive in the shark tank of the law. Most lawyers I’ve known feel deeply conflicted about this and if they’ve had problems with depression, it just compounds it all.

In my childhood home, my alcoholic father had a volcanic temper – you knew to scram when you saw lava cresting at the rim. I learned that anger was painful, “bad” and always unjustified. As such, I used to avoid conflict and stuff my own anger because it was dangerous. Instead, I became a people pleaser. I developed exquisite antennae to read clients, colleagues, opposing counsel and judges’ reactions for any signs of aggression, anger or conflict. I molded my behavior to their behavior rather than living out of a core of my own reality. This distortion gave others too much power and myself too little. It is, as psychologist James Hollis once wrote, an emotional conclusion in which we tell ourselves “the world is big and I am small.” Most depressives think this way and feel overpowered by the events of their world and lapse into a state of helplessness.

As we enter a new year, let’s start leaving some depressive habits behind and embrace some new ones. This will take work on your part. No one is going to save you from your depression. While you are not to blame for your depression, you are responsible for getting better. Dr. O’Connor writes:

“Overcoming depression requires a new set of skills from us. But now we are recognizing happiness is a skill, willpower is a skill, health is a skill, successful relationships require skills, emotional intelligence is a skill. We know this because practice not only leads to improvement but also to changes in the brain. This is a much more empowering and adaptive way of understanding life than assuming that these qualities are doled out form birth in fixed quantities and that there’s nothing we can do to change our fate. The skills required to undo depression will permeate your entire life, and if you keep practicing, you can go far beyond mere recovery.”

Happy New Year!