Depression doesn’t just happen. There are well known triggers that bring on depression. Learn about the most common ones. Read the Story.
10 Biggest Depression Triggers – and How to Turn Them Off
Running on Empty
From the site Undoing Depression, Richard O’Connor, Ph.D. blogs that professionals frantically run from one success to another because they’re afraid some unnamed demon will catch up to them. Read the Blog.
The Depressed Lawyer
Tyger Latham, Ph.D., a psychologist in Washington, D.C., writes here about his experiences treating lawyers with depression and how lawyers can heal from it. Read the Story.
“Life is Overrated”: One Lawyer’s Struggles with Depression
Great piece about lawyer Keith Anderson’s journey through depression. Read the Story.
Thriving Lawyers: It’s Not About the Money
Lawyer coach Dave Sheardon writes that there’s pretty compelling evidence that beyond a fairly modest base pay, money makes little difference how happy lawyers truly are. In this article, he talks about what it means for lawyers to thrive. Read the Story.
How Stress Can Shape a Life
The psychologist Richard O’Connor believes that we tell ourselves stories about our lives to control stress. Stress has a way of becoming a chronic condition. It wears down your body and damages your brain, especially when combined with depression.
Yet stress is a killer we often crave like a drug. We create stories that help us make sense of an unbalanced life.
Stories of Challenge
In my work, I often felt I wasn’t doing much if I weren’t insanely “busy,” meaning stressed out completely. As much as I swore to cut back and lead a more balanced life, I could never do that for long.
Unless I felt the edge of stress, I thought I was drifting and had little motivation. I didn’t think of it as stress. It was the excitement of challenge.
Like a lot of us, the people I considered the heroes of our culture and workplace could handle more stress than anyone. They could take the heat, drive themselves ceaselessly and thrive on the challenge of super-achievement.
Take this story that made the front page of the local paper where I used to live. An attorney was driving to work on a snowy day and saw a car ahead of him slide off the freeway, hit a rock, and crash-land on its side. He stopped, rushed to the scene, pried open a jammed door and pulled out the dazed driver.
Just then another car plowed into them and sent the lawyer flying into a ditch. He got up, brushed off the snow, stayed with everyone until help arrived, then drove to work where he had a great day in a high-stakes case. Wow, what a guy! The super-achiever who jumps into the challenge and feeds on the energy of each wild situation without a moment’s rest.
There’s an important story-line here. It’s the heroic control of stress. It becomes a challenge, a test of strength and endurance. It’s a story that hides the biological damage under praise and success.
Stories of Loss
The rest of us tell humbler stories about living with stress. We try to control it through schedules and medication, lists of priorities and days of relaxation. The tools usually don’t work because the world won’t let up its constant pressure to do more.
Stress is one of the connectors between the social world and our intensely private experience of depression. I’ve read a lot about the effects of broad social and cultural changes on our inner lives, but most of that is far too general to relate to what I feel right now in my little corner of the world.
OK, we’ve lost the old bonds of community and extended family, we’re on our own in a storm of information. We face the confusion of choice, confusion over identity, rootlessness – all that may be true. But it’s the immediacy of stress that helped me make the connection, not with big social changes, but with more immediate crises.
Stress hits us through tension and the fear that we can’t handle the most threatening problems. There isn’t enough money to pay debts. I could lose my job any day. We could lose our home to the bank because we can’t make mortgage payments. I’m sick – or my partner or my children are sick – and the health costs are staggering.
The fear of loss is always there – more and more loss until disaster hits or until we settle into a pattern of living in a diminished way. We’re trapped in a world of pressures that have pushed us down. Trying to get up is a constant struggle.
That’s the way the social dimension has combined with biology and my inner life. The constant stress has deepened depression.
Spiraling Down, Spiraling Up
The story I tell myself in depression is that all these dimensions of my life have proven too much for me. I’m not good enough to handle them. I’ve never been good enough. I’m stressed all the more by memories of failure – threats I’ve run from, challenges I couldn’t meet, self-destructive actions.
The person I am, I’m certain, continues to lose control to the pressures of living.
But when I’m not depressed, everything looks different. I feel I can live the story of victory over challenges. Stress is a stimulant, one I need to stay motivated, to live at the top of my game. I’m even afraid that if I lose the tension and excitement of constantly pushing myself, I’ll start to drift into emptiness again.
There’s always an imbalance, tipping me into a spiral. One spiral takes me deeper into depression until it spins itself out. From the bottom of the whirling storm, I start to spiral upward on the other side.
In both modes, the stress is a powerful force: stress from the world and stress from inside.
Awareness of the Story
These days I feel as close to balance between the spirals of excitement and depression as I’ve ever been. I believe I have a better chance now to sustain this balance because I’ve worked at learning skills to keep me going.
I think we all have the capacity to observe ourselves in action. Usually, I used the ability to detach from experience enough to tell myself the story of how I’m living.
That’s the basic tool. Today it’s known as mindfulness – the ability to see your life as your living it and accept its changing flow without being controlled by it. Then we have to work with that awareness to retell our stories.
I know everyone doesn’t live this way, but does it make sense as one explanation? It rings true for me. How about you?
Visit John’s award-winning website Storied Mind.
This article is reprinted with permission of the author and is copyrighted.
Speaking Up: Helping Law Students Break Through the Silence of Depression
In this article from The ABA Journal, the author explores what a law professor and foundation to help law students and lawyers with depression are doing to break the stigma of discussing depression openly. Read The Story
Why Do Lawyers Get Depressed?
This article from The Wall Street Journal explores why lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the general population. Read The Story
Life as a 1L can be Depressing
Katie has been married to her law student husband for almost four years. She has grown into a more compassionate and well-rounded Certified Health Education Specialist and Mental Health First Aid provider from her experiences with her husband’s mental health issues, and enjoys sharing information with others about health and wellness. Her husband is currently searching for a job. As such, Katie has only given her first name.
Last year, my husband became a first-year law student at a state school with an excellent reputation. After several years of waffling between pursuing medicine, law, military, and scientific research careers, he opted for law and was admitted to a number of schools, accepting his best offer. We relocated so that he could attend, moving from the sunny Southwest to the frigid winters of the Mid-Atlantic. He was excited at first, eager to begin a new chapter of his life and enthusiastic to embark on a learning journey; he loves to read and study politics,
economics, business, and law, and felt that this endeavor would help him fulfill his potential both personally and professionally.
Shortly into the first year, I noticed my usually calm husband – laid-back almost to a fault – was frequently stressed. He worried constantly about understanding the material, completing his assignments, competing for grades, getting an internship, and even being able to get a job upon graduating. Although this may seem natural for law students (1L’s in particular), it was a marked change in his personality that lasted for weeks on end, almost to the point of keeping him from being able to study, write, or prepare for his classes.
His friendly nature struggled with the intense sense of competition among the other students, and he was unable to form many friendships, leaving him feeling isolated and lonely. Furthermore, the mounting pressure to perform dominated his thoughts, paralyzing him and making him reach a point of hopelessness; he felt that even his best wasn’t good enough, and that there was no
point in continuing if he couldn’t get a good job at the end of it all.
The Loving, but Ignorant, Spouse
I tried to play the supportive spouse. To me, it seemed likely that many other students felt the same way as him but managed to focus more on the task at hand, not tying every tiny detail to future results. It even angered me that despite all the sacrifices we had both made for him to be able to return to school, he was risking it all because he refused to focus on anything but his potential for failure. I told him time and again that I was absolutely positive he would do just fine, that I wasn’t worried about his ability to succeed and get an excellent job, that his understanding of the material would mean more for his career than a grade on his transcript, and that his best efforts would surely serve him well. But my encouragement didn’t help.
In the past, my husband was an avid athlete. He still holds a state record for his high school swimming times, he trained himself to run a half marathon every weekend, and he completed the entire P90-X workout course. This all stopped when we moved and he started school, principally due to his lack of time. He snuck in a few workouts at the beginning of his first semester, but quickly traded exercise for sleep whenever he had a spare minute. His ambitious early morning study sessions from the start of the semester had disappeared by fall break, andas the sun went down earlier every night, so did he. He began sleeping as much as he possibly could – at times even falling asleep while studying or sleeping and skipping studying altogether. My usually upbeat, happy husband started making off-the-cuff remarks about how worthless he was and how stupid he felt, even tossing out an occasional comment about shooting himself so I wouldn’t have to repay his school loans, followed by swift assurances that he was “just kidding.”
Getting Serious About Depression
Even though I am a trained public health professional and a Certified Health Education Specialists, the signs flew right by me. I just assumed he was having difficulty adjusting to life in a new state, unhappy about having to make new friends and commit considerable effort to his degree. I missed the signs of depression that were staring me in the face every single day. To make matters worse, three visits he made to the student health center for check-ups and care for his asthma found nothing of concern.
I am ashamed to admit that several months passed wherein I did absolutely nothing, I suppose in a state of self-denial. I couldn’t convince myself that he was not right, not healthy, that something was seriously wrong despite the symptoms I tried to tiptoe around on a regular basis. A kindly older neighbor was good enough to give me a kick in the pants to help my husband get the help he needed.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked – no beating around the bush. “He’s changed – he used to be so bright and smiley, and now he just seems…unhealthy and sad. A sad, defeated man.”
I was dumbfounded, utterly shocked and hurt by what was the clear truth. My husband was suffering, he was miserable and I had neglected him. I tearfully squeezed her hand and marched straight home to make an appointment with a counselor for him. He went the following week and, after a series of visits, tests, and consultations, was diagnosed with major depression. I was heartbroken and embarrassed at my failure to notice his cries for help earlier in the year, but I was relieved that he would be getting the help he needed.
Living With – and Healing From – Depression
I am happy to report that with exercise therapy and regular talk therapy, he has been able to manage his depression without medication, although he still has some terribly painful bad days. We are starting to see what we hope is the light at the end of the tunnel for him. He is still pursuing his degree, and although he won’t be at the top of his class when he graduates, he has come to realize that a life-long career is built on more than where you fall on the grading curve. He has rediscovered his passion for running, and his sunny disposition is again bringing joy to both of our lives.
I wanted to share this story with any lawyers and law students potentially suffering from depressive symptoms to let you know that sometimes the people who most want to help you are not totally aware of what is going on in your head. Whether you think your behavior makes your pain obvious or you think you are hiding your emotions successfully, your loved ones are probably waiting for a wake-up call to push them into action. Be open with them about your pain, anxiety, and especially any suicidal thoughts. Sometimes a few words about how serious your troubles are may be the impetus for positive change – having a helpful friend to walk the long and difficult road with you can make it easier for you to get the help you need in a timely and effective manner.
For me, it took an old lady with a keen skill for observation to spur me into helping my husband get the treatment he needed; if you don’t think old Mrs. Wilson down the street will be doing the same for you, have a conversation with someone today about what you are experiencing, and let them know you don’t want to keep feeling that way. Help is available. You can get it, and a friend or family member will be happy to assist. Don’t wait – lawyers and law students are in unique positions to help others, and life is too short to spend time battling a mental disorder that steals your talents from you and the world. So go on, tell someone, and start feeling better soon.
The Ghosts of Depression
Pharmaceutical wonders are at work, but I believe only in this moment of well-being. Unholy ghosts your are certain to come again – Jane Kenyon, Having It Out with Depression.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite times of the year. A time for remnants of Snickers bars still stuck between your teeth the next morning, carved pumpkins of the edge of decomposition and a chill in the spooky night that reminds you Winter is to come all to soon. As a child growing up in the country, my hooligan friends and I relished the chance to go knocking on the doors of neighborhood mothers’ in aprons doling out nocturnal goodies.
When satisfied with our sugar-laden sacks of booty, we would scamper to our local graveyard full of old tombstones. Once there, we would dare each other to run through as fast as we could, each privately fearing the claw of a bony hand that would pop out of a grave to drag us to some subterranean place where the dead lived and ate small children.
Walking home, we would walk by a neighbor’s house and swear that we’d seen Edgar Allen Poe looking out the window at the full moon.
A Paranormal Force
Ghosts don’t strike us as happy beings, unless it’s Casper The Friendly Ghost. They frighten us, haunt us. Depression has been referred to as a vile creature, an entity of sorts in our popular imagination. You have to look no further that the National Book Award winner, “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression” by Andrew Solomon. When I had depression years ago, I was told by a friend he understood that I had to “fight my demons.” As if I were the little girl possessed by Satan in The Exorcist. But he didn’t understand, really.
Depression is like a paranormal force, not something inside of our brains, but something outside of it. In a way, depression is a world inhabited by ghoulish ghosts that haunt us. They sporadically interrupt our lives and won’t leave us alone.
Ghosts are always people that have passed away. Often, these ghosts are haunting others because they’re not at peace. Maybe because they left something unsolved in this world. Or, maybe, because we have not let them go.
The Ghosts of Our Childhood
I think this is a crucial aspect of depression: the trouble letting go, the problem of forgiveness of those who have wronged us in the past.
Depression is a pressing down of sadness. A strategy doomed to failure if ever there was one. While many think of it as only as disease born solely of genetics, its archeological origins seem to have begun in the ghosts of our childhoods.
Researchers now know that many with adult-onset depression have had troubled childhoods of neglect or abuse. The nervous system is spooked by trauma and/or neglect which changes our neurochemistry and even the structure of the brain. Ghosts take up residence in the attics of the brain where they lounge around sipping tea cups of neurochemicals that we all need to feel happy. But just as importantly, trauma creates a well of sadness, terrible loss and wounding of the spirit that lives on with us into our adult lives.
Children who come out of such childhoods often spend a lot of their adult lives feeling like a part of them is missing. It’s a leak in their soul which can’t be plugged.
Elizabeth Wurztel, in her best-selling book, Prozac Diary, describes the difference between sadness and the zombie-like state major depression can create:
“That’s the thing I want to make clear about depression: It’s got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal—unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.”
Psychologists can act as mediums at seances, seeking to welcome the dead into our presence so we can have it out with them and heal. We can finally let their voices go and live a life that is uniquely defined by the choices we make rather than the ones’ thrust upon us.
Psychiatrists strike me as more like Ghostbuster’s with ray guns of medication designed to blast the depression out of us.
In her book, Unholy Ghosts: Writers Write on Depression, Nell Casey has assembled various writers who write about their experiences with depression. The theme running through many of the writings is the dark, blank state of depression where the pain of it is actually the absence of feeling. One psychologist wrote that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s vitality. It’s the capacity to experience the full colorful palette of emotions that make up a normal human life.
For those who’ve experienced depression, they often run from it because they themselves fear becoming unholy ghosts.
But it’s ultimately in turning and facing the ghosts of depression that these phantoms lose the capacity to scare us, to truncate our emotional vibrancy. We can learn to see them for what they are: voices that aren’t true. Voices that can be left for dead.
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