Listening to Depression Archives - Lawyers With Depression

Listening to Depression

Those of us who suffer from depression tend to think of this state of mind (and being) as an obstacle to moving forward. Is there a useful purpose to be found when we are depressed?

Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., thinks so. Her book, Listening to Depression, is full of stories and examples of showing that depression is not only not a mistake, but can yield powerful messages that unlock our life purpose. The central themes she explores are: Depression symptoms are communications to you from yourself, about yourself.  Depression is a time-out to re-vision and re-figure your life.  Depression is a signal that something new has to come into your life.    I met Lara almost three years ago, when she came for coaching. At that time she was working as a clinical psychologist and professor. Since then she has added author and mother to her resume.

Lara’s passion for this subject was fueled by her own struggle with depression in college—which led to getting back on track with her life’s work. “I came from a family which was not at all stable financially. Because of that I wanted to choose a career that would be sure to give me financial security, so I was planning to major in business. However, before long I started feeling very depressed. I had lost interest in business very quickly. Luckily, I decided to take some psychology classes. I found psychology is where my real interests lie, and this is my life path. I still thank God for that depression, which I now see as a signal of being out of alignment.”

After developing her own clinical practice and supervising hundreds of cases on depression, Lara’s skills and mission came together. She says, “A lot of the time, clinical psychologists don’t take into consideration that depression may be an accurate reflection of what’s going on with a person. Ironically, a person’s friends can easily point out why they are depressed, but clinicians sometimes miss the obvious! In most cases, I believe that depression is not a mental disorder, but a reflection of choices that people are making that don’t fit.”

Lara makes it clear that, in cases where depression is severe or the person is suicidal, he or she must be stabilized before addressing the roots of their depression. Similarly, anyone dealing with depression resulting from external problems and situations, such as addictions, on-going physical or emotional abuse, debilitating ethnic or gender discrimination, or poverty and homelessness must first address these conditions. Depression is a Wake-up Call About How You Are Living your Purpose . According to Lara, our feelings of depression are a call to bring our life into alignment with our own needs, values and desires. How do people get off track in the first place?

Operating from a sense of loyalty.

While loyalty allows people to belong and feel connected, it could hamper our individual choices. Think of people who just slide into a family business because it’s there. If you are depressed, notice where you might be conforming in order not to rock the boat. To get back on track, differentiate between how you genuinely agree with your family or social milieu, and where your dreams and interests are different.

Not believing in yourself

Many people feel they are not “good enough” to go for their dreams. For example, someone may want to be a doctor, but comes from a working class family. The message from their parents and milieu might be, ‘Who do you think you are?’ Adding unconscious loyalty to self-doubt builds a powerful justification for not going further than their parents or friends.

Lack of reflection

If we never take time to ask ourselves what we really want, or to notice how we may be different from those in our upbringing, we never take time to get on track.  Need for security. Is our choice of career based solely on the financial reward? We build real security by investing in ourselves, learning new things, and being willing to take on new challenges.

Fear of the unknown

To move past fear, we have to have a compelling reason to move forward—such as, a creative urge that won’t go away, a desire to have our own business, or an urge to live according to our own values. If those compelling urges are suppressed, depression follows. If we don’t listen to our inner voice, we sink deeper into depression, or even find that we have an accident or illness that amplifies the message that something has to change. Lara quotes the philosopher, Heiddegger, “‘Breakdown is always in the service of breakthrough.’”

When It’s Dark Outside Follow the Inner Light of Life Purpose

Lara writes in her book, “Depression feels like all the lights have gone out. When the lights are out, the only thing you can see is that which is lit from within. And that which is lit from within is your life purpose.” One story describes Jamie, a young man who is married with children, thirty-five, and deeply depressed–almost suicidal. Through counseling (though not with Lara), he came to recognize that the only thing truly lighting his path was his desire to be a comic-book artist—though he had experienced no success so far, and did not believe that he could support his family from his creativity. He got the idea to start an on-line comic book, and was the first one to start such a site ( www.wantedhero.com.)

His is a good example of translating one’s personal pain into creative channels that help others. The site became a success, and is not only entertaining, but healing. His topics have individually and socially inspiring messages–the gift, so to speak, of his depression. “His original issue was being indiscriminately loyal,” says Lara, “Jamie had to learn to separate himself from what others think, and set boundaries that allowed him to do what he could do best”

Use The Four P’s to Heal Depression

According to Lara, depression can be healed by letting your life be guided by pleasure, presence, power and permission.

Increase Pleasure.

So many times depression is a call to re-enter life—instead of just going through the motions. Instead of focusing all your time on performance demands—which ultimately is one-sided and draining—be sure to give yourself a few simple pleasures, like browsing in bookstores, walking with a friend, playing with your child or bicycling.  Lara notes, “Since I wrote the book, I would add that having more pleasure in your life is actually very practical. Taking pleasure in something automatically brings its own sense of fulfillment. You don’t have to wait to “make it someday,” to feel happy. When in a good mood, you also perform better in everything. You attract people and opportunities because you are operating at a higher energy level. You have the energy to see more possibilities and take more chances.”

Make a point of being present in the moment each day. It’s the difference between being and doing–performing. Lara says, “Presence happens when you are just having lunch with your child, just watching him make a mess, and not being concerned about it. Ironically, the work of depression pushes you into being, not doing. Some people who survive suicide attempts say that they learn that just being is a great gift. Therefore, the failure of one of your ‘doing” goals could be the thing that connects you to your being in this moment.”

Power reminds us to be the author of our own life. Lara says, “I call this re-writing the rules. For example, women often think motherhood has to be a sacrifice, but there’s power in making authentic choices instead of simply conforming to a life that doesn’t work for you. You can re-write the rules for yourself and say, ‘I don’t have to solve everybody else’s problems.’ Or, ‘I don’t have to make every single choice based on security.’ Re-write the rules about having to get together for toxic family holidays; make taking care of yourself the highest priority.   Another example is a man who really wanted to work in a pet store. “ His main obstacle between himself and his life purpose,” says Lara, “was that he believed that men didn’t do those sorts of jobs. He found that he had the power to change his thinking.”

Permission.

Practice giving yourself permission to see life a different way. For example, some of us have to learn that life doesn’t have to be a struggle (despite our past experiences.) The future doesn’t have to be a repeat of the past. Give yourself permission to explore something, or simply to be happy (despite others who want to draw you into the misery-loves-company conversation.).

Healing Tragic Loss

Deep depression from loss takes us on a journey. How do we ever recover from the loss of a loved one, of losing our home, livelihood, or health? Lara says, “Finding meaning in a tragic loss is essential if you are to recover. For example, I have a story about a woman who survived a car crash caused by a drunk driver, in which her parents and sister were killed. She brought that tragic loss into her life purpose and became a lawyer and an inspiring public speaker about drunk driving. Sometimes these events are, mysteriously, a stepping stone to revealing a life purpose.”

 By Carol Andrienne, Ph.D.

10 Ways For Lawyers to Deal With Their Depression

A lawyer with depression used to call me once a month. He’d sometimes weep as he told me about the myriad of ways that his depression was disrupting his work and personal life.

I’d listen each time, for about fifteen minutes or so. I thought I was helping him by offering a compassionate ear.

The conversation would always end with, “catch you later.”

This went on for six months.

During our talks I’d make suggestions about things he could do to help himself. It seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Despite all the pain in his life, absolutely nothing changed for him.

I finally got to the point where I said, “Bob, what are you willing to do to change your life?” He seemed surprised by the question. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

He then said, “Catch you later.” And he never called again.

Making a Choice to Change Things in Your Life

A hallmark of depression is that those afflicted feel that they have no choice: they victims of their depression and powerless to change it. In the final analysis, that’s what happened with Bob and why things never changed for him.

In her book, Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life , psychologist, Lara Honos-Webb, takes a somewhat unique view.

She maintains that depression isn’t just as an “illness”, but as a wakeup call; a powerful warning that we have been traveling down paths in our lives that have been untrue to who we really and, as a result, have gotten sick because it. She encourages us not to see depression as just a disease, but as an opportunity to change our lives. There is something in us, she writes, if we would only listen, that is telling us that we are killing ourselves.

But depressives, like my friend Bob, often don’t listen to the early warning signs. So that inner voice just turns up the volume until we get sick with anxiety and depression – or heart disease, hypertension and cancer.

I would like YOU to challenge a conclusion that you might have reached about yourself: that you can’t change.

I believe if you’re going to heal and grow, however, you’ll need to come to see life as a series of choices rather than inertia. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D. once said, “While you’re not to blame for your depression, you are responsible for getting better.”

What old behaviors are you willing to change or what new behaviors are you willing to try to help you get better?

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 that you need to address. For many, psychotherapy won’t help until they quiet down their 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. In fact, such doctors write eighty percent of the scripts for antidepressants in this country. Better idea: go to be evaluated by a well-regarded psychiatrist who specializes in mental health. Check out HELPGUIDE.org, a not-for-profit organization, for a balanced overview of the pros and cons of medication.

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 seven 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 yourself.” 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.”

Depression is often built upon poor mental/emotional and physical habits. Such inner pain can bring people to the point where we they’ve had enough. As one friend of mine said, “You get sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Best Depression Quotes

Others imply that they know what 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. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re “not at all like yourself but will be soon,” but you know you won’t. Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come – – not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. William Styron, Darkness Visible

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’ can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. David Foster Wallace

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has the sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. Leonard Cohen

They flank me-Depression on my left, loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show their badges. I know these guys very well. …then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts. Penelope Sweet

Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression’s actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it. Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me. Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare. Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable. Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast

Depression is melancholy minus its charm. Susan Sontag

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn’t a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon

Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different. J.K. Rowling

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. Pope John Paul II

The absolute worst part of being depressed is the food. A person’s relationship with food is one of their most important relationships. I don’t think your relationship with your parents is that important. Some people never know their parents. I don’t think your relationship with your friends are important. But your relationship with air-that’s key. You can’t break up with air. You’re kind of stuck together. Only slightly less crucial is water. And then food. You can’t be dropping food to hang with someone else. You need to strike up an agreement with it. Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito. Christopher Moore, Bite Me

So why am I depressed? That’s the million-dollar question, baby, the Tootsie Roll question; not even the owl knows the answer to that one. I don’t know either. All I know is the chronology. Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity. Oliver Sacks

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon

We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don’t kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, “He fought so hard.” And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong. Sally Brampton, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir Of Depression

It’s so hard to talk when you want to kill yourself. That’s above and beyond everything else, and it’s not a mental complaint-it’s a physical thing, like it’s physically hard to open your mouth and make the words come out. They don’t come out smooth and in conjunction with your brain the way normal people’s words do; they come out in chunks as if from a crushed-ice dispenser; you stumble on them as they gather behind your lower lip. So you just keep quiet.” Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

A loss of focus can be the most debilitating of depressive symptoms, rendering a person unable to work effectively or plan for the future, which seems desolate, devoid of the possibility of redemption. John Nelson, M.D.

The depressed person is constantly chewing on himself. He needs to find something else to chew on. The form of diversion is not important, but the act of diversion is. Penelope Russianoff, When Am I Going to Be Happy?

Depression is not only an experience in the mind; it is also an affliction of the body. There is a lack of energy, a painful heaviness; sadness and a grief that permeate to our marrow. Philip Martin, The Zen Way through Depression

In an age of hope men looked up at the night sky and saw “the heavens.” In an age of hopelessness they call it simply “space”. Peter Kreeft

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality – the ability to experience a full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief. Depression is not an emotion itself; it’s the loss of feelings, a big heavy blanket that insulates you from the world yet hurts at the same time. It’s not sadness or grief, it’s an illness. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., Undoing Depression

Depression can be set off by a variety of stressors: sexual abuse, housing problems, illness in one’s child, and the other common problems you might imagine. To suggest that depression arises from loss is to skew the argument in the direction of the metaphor . . . , the one that likens apparent depression to ordinary bereavement. Likewise, “sadness” does not capture the essence of depression, which is a marked disruption of brain and mind characterized by painful apathy. Not only in degree but also in quality, sadness and depression are different. Peter Kramer, M.D., Against Depression

One of the features of depression is pessimistic thinking. The negative thinking is actually the depression speaking. It’s what depression sounds like. Depression in fact manifests in negative thinking before it creates negative affect. Most depressed people are not aware that the despair and hopelessness they feel are flowing from their negative thoughts. Thoughts are mistakenly seen as privileged, occupying a rarefied territory, immune to being affected by mood and feelings, and therefore representing some immutable truth. Hara Estroff Marano

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were felt by the whole human race, there would not be one cheerful face left on earth. Abraham Lincoln

My hunch is that the disease/defect model of depression, is unwittingly contributing to the ongoing stigma of depression. Through the lens of the disease model, the legions of the formerly depressed are a “broken” people who need lifelong assistance. I would like to see a more revolutionary public education approach, with campaigns that emphasize the unique strengths that are required to endure depression. Even if a person is helped by drugs or therapy, grappling with a severe depression requires enormous courage. In many ways, a person who has emerged from the grip of depression has just passed the most severe of trials in the human experience. If we acknowledge that surviving depression requires a special toughness, we will not see formerly depressed people as a broken legion, but as a resource who can teach us all something about overcoming adversity. Jonathan Rottenberg, Ph.D.

Where’s the big national foundation leading the battle against depression? Where is the Jerry Lewis Telethon and the Annual Run for Depression? Little black ribbons for everyone to wear? The obvious answer is the stigma associated with the disease. Too much of the public still views depression as a weakness or character flaw, and thinks we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And all the hype about new antidepressant medications has only made things worse by suggesting that recovery is simply a matter of taking a pill. Too many people with depression take the same attitude; we are ashamed of and embarrassed by having depression. This is the cruelest part of the disease: we blame ourselves for being weak or lacking character instead of accepting that we have an illness, instead of realizing that our self-blame is a symptom of the disease. And feeling that way, we don’t step forward and challenge unthinking people who reinforce those negative stereotypes. So we stay hidden away, feeling miserable and yourselves for ourselves for our own misery. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., Undoing Depression

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

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

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. Lara Honos-Webb, Listening to Depression

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality – the ability to experience a full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief. Depression is not an emotion itself; it’s the loss of feelings, a big heaving blanket that insulates you from the world yet hurts at the same time. It’s not sadness or grief, it’s an illness. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., Undoing Depression

When we ruminate, we become fruitlessly preoccupied with the fact that we are unhappy and with the causes, meanings, and consequences of our unhappiness. Research has repeatedly shown that if we have tended to react to our sadness or depressed moods in these ways in the past, then we are likely to find the same strategy volunteering to ‘help’ again and again when our moods start to slide. And it will have the same effect: we’ll get stuck in the very mood from which we are trying to escape. As a consequence, we are at even higher risk of experiencing repeated bouts of unhappiness. Mark Williams, The Mindful Way through Depression

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

We only reflect on those things that break down in our life. For example, if life is going along smoothly you won’t spend time thinking about the meaning of your life. We tend to think deeply about life when something is not working. When we identify a problem, we begin to reflect on what caused the problem and how to fix the problem. If you are disconnected from your deepest feelings and impulses you may still manage to get through life without realizing it.But if you begin to open to the possibility that there was something fundamentally wrong with your level of functioning before your depression, only then does the idea of depression as a gift begin to make sense. A breakdown can become a gift when it is in the service of increasing reflection on your life which will lead you to ask the fundamentally important questions: What is wrong with my life? What can I do to correct the problem? When you listen to your depression, you can heal your life. Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., Listening to Depression

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. Robert Leahy, Ph.D., How to Beat the Blues

Depression is the inability to construct a future. Rollo May, Ph.D.

Every time a person gets depressed, the connections in the brain between mood, thoughts, the body, and behavior get stronger, making it easier for depression to be triggered again. At the earliest stages in which mood starts spiraling downward, it is not the mood that does the damage, but how we react to it. Mark Williams, The Mindful Way through Depression

The Failure of Will theory is popular with people who are not depressed. Get out and take your mind off yourself, they say. You’re too self-absorbed. This is just the stupidest thing you can say to a depressed person, and it is said every day to depressed people all over this country. And if it isn’t that, it’s, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’ These attitudes are contradictory. Conquer Your Depression and Everything Can Be Fixed by the Miracle of Science presuppose opposite explanations of the problem. One blames character, the other neurotransmitters. They are often thrown at the sufferer in sequence: ‘Get out and do something, and if that doesn’t work, take pills.’ Sometimes they’re used simultaneously: ‘You won’t take those pills because you don’t WANT to do anything about your depression, i.e. Failure of Will. Susanna Kaysen, Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression

Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer. ‘There are not 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 one becomes the dark. Parker Palmer

Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem. David D. Burns, Ph.D.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward. Ernest Hemmingway

One description of depression is that it is like the shapeless sagging of a rubber band that has been kept too taunt for too long. When feelings have been strong, stressed, unprocessed, or held captive over a period of time, we just stop feeling altogether. Persons and events no longer have the power to enliven us; we operate on a low level cruise control. Usually we keep functioning, but there is no positive or creative affect toward persons and things, and even less toward ourselves. We basically stop living our only life. Ron Rohr

All of us feel shamed by life. All of us consider ourselves failures of some kind, screw ups in something really important to us. Notice how shame, consciously or unconsciously pulls us away from risk, ratifies our negative sense of worth through self-sabotage or compels us into frenetic efforts of overcompensation or yearning for the validation from others that never comes; how much each of us needs to remember one definition of grace as accepting the fact that we are accepted despite the fact that we are unacceptable James Hollis, Ph.D., What Matters Most

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

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 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 merely a troubled person to someone who has mental illness. Daniel Karp, Speaking of Sadness

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the grey drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. William Styron, Darkness Visible

Is Depression a Habit?

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time,” wrote Mark Twain.

Bad habits are made up of repetitive behaviors done over and over again. In part, this is how depression comes into being. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., in the documentary A Terrible Melancholy: Depression in the Legal Profession, says “Depression is, above all else, a vicious circle. People keep depressing because they don’t know any other way.” A vicious circle is nothing more than vicious behaviors and thoughts done over and over again. Depression has a self-perpetuating momentum that’s difficult to stop, even when sufferers try and try again to not get caught in depression’s snare.

Those with depression do not often see the way out of the depression because that can’t imagine what not being depressed feels or looks like.

Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., author of Listening to Depression, writes:

“If you have been depressed for a long time, you may encounter the obstacle that you forgot what it feels like to be not depressed. Paradoxically, healing from depression may be uncomfortable to you because it may represent new territory for you. In this way, depression becomes like a habit, and may be hard to break. One way to prepare for this obstacle is to remind yourself that you deserve to be free from this habit and that you would rather be afraid than depressed. As in the fear of losing control, even positive changes will bring with them fear and a sense of losing control. As you bring awareness to the threat of changing your life, the choice you would make between comfortable depression and the unknown will be obvious.”

“Comfortable”? How dare she call depression comfortable. But the habit of depression is comfortable in the sense that some would rather stay stuck in their own pain than risk the stress and anxiety that comes from trying to change depressive thinking and behaviors.

You can also think of depression as not so much one big habit, like smoking or eating fat-laden foods, but as a series on small-habits that congeal into depression; a concrete-like state where a life formerly lived now feels lifeless.

A lawyer I know said one of his small habits was to be well-groomed and dressed when he walked out the door in the morning. Now, this might sound a little superficial. After all, what does neurochemistry have to do with sartorial style? Moreover, there are lots of depressed folks in the world who dress impeccably. But what he was trying to say was that, for him, letting himself go, not shaving and not caring what he wore, was a small a habit that made him feel worse about himself – a no-no for those who are prone to depression. It a way, it was one of many small triggers that help trigger his depression.

Well-known author Deepak Chopra writes:

“Once it turns into a habit, depressed people no longer need an outside trigger. They are depressed about being depressed. A gray film coats everything: optimism is impossible. This defeated state tells us that the brain has formed fixed pathways. A small incident like a flat tire or a bounced check leaves no room for deciding, ‘Is this going to bother me or not?’ Instead, the depressed response is already wired in. Depressed people can even feel sad about good events (they are always waiting for the other shoe to drop) because they are trapped in the habit of depression at the brain level.

Depression also has its addictive side, in that sadness and hopelessness take charge. ‘I can’t be any other way’ is the common cry of the chronically depressed. In every case, there’s a ‘good me’ and a ‘bad me’ warring against each other. For the depressed person, the ‘bad me’ is sad and hopeless while the ‘good me’ is happy and optimistic. But, in truth, both sides are the ‘bad me’ because it casts its shadow over everything. The best moments are a prelude to a relapse. The ‘bad me’ is going to win in the end; the ‘good me’ is merely its pawn.”

Turning It Around

In a fascinating new book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes that the key to changing habits is to stop fighting them. Albeit Duhigg’s book does not specifically address depression, it is instructive. “We all have habits,” says Duhigg. “The key is to shift habits to the behaviors that I want.” How in the world do we do that? Duhigg elaborates:

“Most people think of habit as a routine, but it’s actually a cue, a routine, and a reward. Let’s say you want to create an exercise habit, like running. Study after study has shown that the best way to do this is to choose a cue – a certain pattern of behavior, like putting on your running shoes next to your bed each night – and then to give yourself a reward. So as so as you get home from running, eat a piece of chocolate. The cue and the reward become interrelated, so when you see that cue, your brain begins expecting the reward. In fact, it’s going to start enjoying that reward even before it’s delivered, and that’s what will push you into the behavior.”

But it isn’t quite that simple. The book goes onto explain that this simple cue, routine and reward is only the beginning of a process of change. To take the example of running and chocolate above, as we keeping running over time, we exchange the reward of Ghirardelli dark chocolate squares for the more the deeper and more psychological reward of proving to yourself that you’re the type of person who habitually runs.

My routine to get me to exercise? I put my gym bag in my truck the night before. I then get up the next morning, don’t shower or shave and drive off to the gym. I can’t go directly to work looking like a slob so I now have to go to the gym. Simple as this sounds, it really does work. And I see myself as a person who takes care of himself and gets things done. I’ve used the power of habit to build a good routine instead of a bad one.

Good habits make us feel empowered. This is important for a person struggling with depression to learn or remember because they so often experience themselves as disempowered, lazy or incapable of doing something positive for themselves.

Starting new, constructive routines and rewards is just one way to climb out of the well of depression. But an important one. Get started today building your own positive habits and routines.

Need some ideas about good habits to help you heal from depression?

Check out Dr. Andrew Weil’s excellent webpage which addresses healthy habits to develop or his more comprehensive book Spontaneous Happiness in which he writes about his own struggles with depression. Also pick up Get It Done When You’re Depressed by Julie Fast.

Dan’s Top Ten Depression Books

Undoing Depression – Richard O’Connor, Ph.D.

This is the best book I’ve read on depression. Perhaps it’s more compelling than most books on this subject because Richard O’Connor, a therapist in New York City, has gone through major bouts of depression himself. Depression has often been compared to heart disease; an illness fueled by complex and interrelated factors: genetic, biochemical, environmental. In this book, O’Connor focuses on an additional factor often overlooked: our own habits. Unwittingly, we get good at depression. This book teaches us how to replace depressive patterns with a new and more effective set of skills. We already know how to “do” depression. And we can learn how to “undo” it. With a truly holistic approach that synthesizes the best of the many schools of thought about this painful condition, this book offers new hope, and new life, for sufferers of depression. Go to Dr. O’Connor’s website

The Noonday Demon – Andrew Solomon

Winner of The National Book Award following its release a decade ago, this is a beautifully written book by depression sufferer, Andrew Solomon. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policy makers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease. With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, he not only helps us understand depression, but also the human condition. Go to Andrew Solomon’s website to read a chapter

The Mindful Way through Depression – J. Mark Williams, Ph.D.

Mindfulness, a simple yet powerful way of paying attention to your most difficult emotions and life experiences, can help you break the cycle of chronic unhappiness once and for all. It seems like every few days, there is a new book or article out on the power of mindfulness. Here, four uniquely qualified experts explain why our usual attempts to “think” our way out of a bad mood or just “snap out of it” lead us deeper into the downward spiral. Through insightful lessons drawn from both Eastern meditative traditions and cognitive therapy, they demonstrate how to sidestep the mental habits that lead to despair, including rumination and self-blame, so you can face life’s challenges with greater resilience. Jon Kabat-Zinn gently and encouragingly narrates the accompanying CD of guided meditations, making this a complete package for anyone seeking to regain a sense of hope and well-being. Go to a review and summary of this book

Listening to Depression – Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D.

I first read this book five years ago and was struck by its originality: depression isn’t just a disease to be fixed with medication and therapy, but a warning signal that our lives are off track and needs to be healed. In this sense, depression and its painful symptoms is a sort of unwelcome wisdom. Dr. Honos-Webb argues that we too often try to cut off or numb our feelings of depression instead of listening carefully to what they are telling us about our lives. Listening to Depression offers insightful ways to reframe depression as a gift that can help you transform your life for the better. Go to an interview with Dr. Honos-Webb

Lincoln’s Melancholy – Joshua Wolf Shenk

I am a little biased here. I am a lawyer and Lincoln is my hero. He not only was a great trial lawyer, but also struggled with depression his entire life. Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln’s adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president’s character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President’s coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil. Go to the author’s excellent website about the book

Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression – James S. Gordon, M.D.

One of our country’s most distinguished psychiatrists and a pioneer in integrative medicine, Dr. Gordon believes that depression is not an end point, a disease over which we have no control. It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we’re stuck. It’s a wake-up call and the start of a journey that can help us become whole and happy, one that can change and transform our lives. Unstuck is a practical, easy to use guide explaining the seven stages of Dr. Gordon’s approach and the steps we can take to exert control over our own lives and find hope and happiness. Unstuck is designed for anyone who is suffering from depression, from mild subclinical depression (“the blues”) to its severest forms. Go to this PBS television intereview with Dr. Gordon

Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression – Nell Casey

The only book of its kind, Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of noveliest William Styron’s Darkness Visible. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness. With an introduction by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Unholy Ghost allows the bewildering experience of depression to be adequately and beautifully rendered. The twenty-two stories that make up this book will offer solace and enlightenment to all readers. Go to an excerpt of the book

Depression is Contagious – Michael Yapko, Ph.D.

Dr. Yapko has identified the types of relationship patterns that lead to negative ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to others and culls from the latest findings in neuroscience, social psychology, epidemiology, and genetics to provide a practical, proven plan for developing the skills and insights you need to forge stronger, healthier social connections and enjoy an enriching, interconnected life. While commonly prescribed drugs address some of depression’s symptoms, they cannot change the social factors that cause and perpetuate the disorder. By treating a social condition as though it’s a disease, the problems compound rather than diminish. The foundation for recovery is to build a healthy social life based on understanding what to expect from our relationships, what we should give, and how to relate to and accept others — skills that have been neglected by modern society. Dr. Yapko’s groundbreaking plan of action — filled with skill-building emotional and mental exercises, anecdotes, and illuminating explanations. Go to an article written by Dr. Yapko about his approach to treating depression

I Don’t Want to Talk About It – Terrence Real

Depression is a silent epidemic in men who hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s “un-manliness.” Problems that we think of as typically male — difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage-are really attempts to escape depression. And these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children. Real reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. He mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his own experiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons. Go to a video of Terry talking about men and depression

What to Do When Someone You Love is Depressed – Mitch Golant and Susan Golant

There are few circumstances in life as hard and at the same time as important as being a friend to a person who is suffering from depression. What to Do When Someone You Love Is Depressed offers guidance to the friends and family of a depressed person on how to keep one’s own spirits up and at the same time do what is best to help a loved one get through a difficult time. Read an excerpt here

HONORABLE MENTION

The Zen Path through Depression – Philip Martin

Extremely accessible to people with little or no Zen experience as well as to longtime students of Buddhism, The Zen Path through Depression shows how the insights and exercises of Zen offer relief for those suffering from depression. Read an excerpt here

Beyond Blue – Therese Borchard

In this part memoir/part self-help, Therese Borchard, who blogs about depression at her site, Beyond Blue, endears herself to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone. Go to her popular depression blog now

Get it Done When You’re Depressed –Julie A. Fast and John Preston, M.D.

When a depressed person can’t meet the expectations of society, the depression becomes worse and a vicious cycle begins. The goal of Getting Things Done When You’re Depressed is to break this cycle. Readers will learn how to prepare themselves mentally for working while depressed, how to structure their environment so they can work more easily, how to work with others and how to prevent depression. Go to an interview with the author

The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques – Margaret Wehrenberg, Ph.D.

What I like about this book is that it provides an overview of the some of the best techniques out there that scientists and therapist are using to help and heal people from depression. As Margaret Wehrenberg explains, you must first understand your brain. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience research presented in a reader-friendly way, Wehrenberg skillfully describes what happens in the brain of a depression sufferer and what specific techniques can be used to alter brain activity and control its range of disabling symptoms. Containing practical, take-charge tips from a seasoned clinician, this book presents the ten most effective strategies for moving from lethargy into action, taking charge of your brain, and breaking free from depression to find hope and happiness. Read an excerpt here

Listening to Depression

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb blogs about her book “Listening to Depression” where she writes that depression isn’t just a disease, it’s a warning signal: it’s a way for our true selves to tell us that our life has gone off track, that we’re not living an authentic life and that we should listen to what our depression is trying to tell us rather than try to eradicate it. Read the Blog.

Hangin’ With Depression

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

Not Letting Depression Define Who We Are

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

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

Dr. Richard O’Connor writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Listening a Little More Closely

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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