The Mindful Way through Depression Archives

Dan’s Tips for Weaving Together A Recovery Plan to Heal Your Depression

What will make the pain of depression stop?

Sometimes the ache is dull, other times sharp. It can last a few hours, days, or weeks.

This is ground zero for depression sufferers. What can I do to feel better?

The answer is often elusive. Many don’t know where to get help, let alone walk the path of healing. Recovery starts and sputters for others: they feel better on a med, then it stops working. Or, they start a bold new exercise regimen, only to see it fizzle.

What to do?

There is no one-size-fits-all cure for depression. That what makes it so exasperating. It isn’t like having a bad cold where Nyquil will do the trick for most. Rather, depression is an illness of the body, mind, and soul that doesn’t lend itself to simple fixes. Because we’re all humans with bodies and brains, some things will generally work for everyone; exercise comes to mind. But because we’re also unique, we need a tailored recovery plan to get and stay better.

We need a quilt of healing.

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Dan’s Top 10 Video Picks on Depression

Films can teach us a lot about depression. Not only can they provide information. They can also move us emotionally by drawing us into the subject with interviews, animations, and other techniques that aren’t amenable to books. Here are my favorite videos that address the topic of depression.

Living with Depression

I came across this short video recently. And was very moved. It captures, with sublime music and moving images of a young woman, her struggles with clinical depression and the loneliness she endures. Powerful. Over four million people have viewed it. Running time is 3 minutes and 22 seconds

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11 Great TED Talks About Depression

TED conferences have been presenting “Ideas Worth Spreading” since the 1980s. Here are eleven talks dealing with depression, happiness, mental health and related issues. Read the Blog

Judges Struggling With Depression: More Common Than You Think

I’ve written a lot on stress, anxiety and depression in the legal profession, but not about the judiciary. There has been much commentary, research and Law Journal articles about what ails law students and attorneys — but not about judges.

I guess that’s not surprising. In my work, I have spoken with scores of judges from all over the country. It’s a noble, important calling in life. But it’s also very stressful, demanding and . . . lonely.

Isolation, Loneliness & the Judiciary

In an article for Judicature magazine, psychiatrist Isaiah Zimmerman culled through twenty years of notes he accumulated from treating state and federal judges. Here are the voices of the judges in their own words:

“Before becoming a judge, I had no idea or warning, of how isolating it would be.”

“Except for those very close, old friends, you cannot relax socially.”

“Judging is the most isolating and lonely of callings.”

“The isolation is gradual. Most of your friends are lawyers, and you can’t carry on with them as before.”

“When you become a judge, you lose your first name!”

“It was the isolation that I was not prepared for.”

“After all these years on the bench, the isolation is my major disappointment.”

“The Chief Judge warned me: ‘You’re entering a monastery when you join this circuit.’”

“I live and work in a space capsule – alone with stacks of paper.”

“Your circle of friends certainly becomes smaller.”

“Once you get on the appellate bench, you become anonymous.”

These weren’t isolated comments or small pockets of pedestrian sadness. Dr. Zimmerman notes that about 70% of the judges he interviewed came up with these observations on their own.

There are several things that contribute to a sense of judicial loneliness. The Code of Judicial Conduct imposes restrictions on judicial behavior both in and out of the courtroom. Judges must avoid the appearance of impropriety and thus must be cautious and keep an appropriate distance and bearing at social and bar events. There are good reasons to have these restrictions, but if a judge isn’t careful to live a balanced life, they can help trigger a profound sense of lonesomeness.

Loneliness isn’t just emotionally painful; it’s also dangerous to your health on multiple levels. According to an article by psychologist, Hara Estroff Marano, writes:

“Evidence has been growing that when our need for social relationships are not met, we fall apart mentally and even physically. There are effects on the brain and on the body. Some effects work subtly, through the exposure of multiple body systems to excess amounts of stress hormones. Yet the effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.”

Given the pressures and isolation of the job, judges need to recognize the dangers associated with loneliness: unhappiness, discontent, health problems and perhaps . . . depression.

Judges and Depression

Judges are supposed to be problem solvers in black robes; not human beings with psychological problems of their own.

Given the position that judges occupy in our society, the stigma around disclosure to others –and perhaps getting treatment for clinical depression — is much, much greater.

One psychiatrist I know who treats judges told me that judges request very early or very late weekday or weekend appointments. Moreover, they ask not to be scheduled before or after another lawyer or judge and pay in cash so as not to attract attention or leave a paper trail.

For the first ten years of my career, much of my practice was spent litigating cases in state and federal courts in New York City. One of my best friends from those days is now a judge. When I decided to go public with my depression eight years ago by writing an article for Trial magazine, my friend called me for dinner to catch up on things. He wanted to know how I was feeling and expressed concern about my plans to go public about my depression.

“Dan, why can’t you write the article anonymously,” my friend said. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I replied. “Why should I have to write such an article anonymously? What do I have to be ashamed of? Depression is an illness no different than diabetes or heart disease. Would I write an article about those illnesses . . . anonymously?”

We kept in contact with dinners and phone calls over the next eight years, but over time our conversations centered less on my depression and well-being and more on his. You see, my friend the judge disclosed to me that he was suffering from depression and had tried to commit suicide some years before.

I think he felt he could trust me. Moreover, I think my disclosure gave him implicit permission to talk about his pain and struggles; a hurt only his therapist and wife knew of. He spoke of the loneliness of his job and how he missed the collegiality of his old large firm. But, he said that on the balance, he’d rather be a judge and didn’t regret his change in vocation; a move from the courtroom to the chamber. He liked his job, enjoyed the intellectual challenge and the chance to do justice.

The statistics on lawyer depression are deeply troubling. They suffer from depression at a rate twice that (20%) of the general population. As such, about 200,000 of this nation’s 1 million lawyers are struggling with depression right now. No studies have been done on judicial depression.

There are 1,774 federal level judges in the U.S. Were you to plug in the 20% depression rate we see with attorneys to the number of judges; approximately 350 judges across America are suffering from depression. Even though there haven’t been any studies of judicial depression, why would we expect the 20% rate to be any different than that found with attorneys?

I couldn’t find any statistics on how many state judges there are in the U.S. New York State has 1,250. Were you to plug in the 20% depression rate we see with attorneys to the number of these judges, approximately 250 of the Empire State’s judiciary are suffering from depression.

This isn’t sadness or burnout, but true clinical depression. Sometimes, we confuse being down in the dumps with depression. They’re really not the same thing – not even close. Here’s how psychologist Richard O’Connor, best-selling author of the book Undoing Depression, distinguishes it:

“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.”

Nobody’s Perfect

Perfectionism is also an indicator for depression. In his article Even Judges Get the Blues, Judge Robert L. Childers writes:

“Because of the weight of public expectation, judges generally feel that they should be perfect. Not only do they feel that they should be fair, impartial, and make the right decision 100 percent of the time, but the public expects this of judges as well, as do the lawyers who practice before them. This can create undo pressure for judges and, consciously or unconsciously, keep judges from admitting or recognizing the signs of debilitating disease.”

An article from the ABA Journal, Perfectionism, Psychic Battering’ Among Reasons for Lawyer Depression, states: “Lawyers [and judges] are taught to aim for perfection, to be aggressive and to be emotionally detached. They ‘intellectualize, rationalize and displace problems on others’ . . .. They don’t take direction particularly well. They tend to have to have fairly elaborate denial mechanisms. And they tend to challenge anything they’re told.” In another article from the ABA Journal, it notes that when combined with depression, perfectionism makes it harder for a person to seek help. And in the worst case scenario, leads to suicide.

Loneliness & Depression

Depression is a multifaceted illness that has several different causes – some genetic, some physical and some emotional. In the depths of my depression, I felt very alone – like I was trapped at the bottom of a dark well.

Many with depression isolate themselves because it’s painful to be around others. I would hang out at Starbucks and do my work. I didn’t want others I knew to engage me; I didn’t want others to see the pain I was desperately struggling with.

I’ve found that loneliness and depression often travel the same road. This creates a lot of problems because the two can feed off one another.

According to psychologist Dr. Reena Sommer:

“Depression is a problem that often accompanies loneliness. In many cases, depressive symptoms such as withdrawal, anxiety, lack of motivation and sadness mimic and mask the symptoms of loneliness. In these cases, people are often treated for depression without considering the possibility that loneliness may be a contributing and sustaining factor in their condition.”

Generally, the debilitating symptoms of depression can usually be managed with antidepressant medication. But when the underlying loneliness is ignored or overlooked, the depressive-like symptoms will probably continue. Unless the reasons for loneliness and depression are separated out, it can easily turn into a ‘chicken and egg’ situation where depression leads to loneliness, and loneliness leads to depression.”

Turning It Around

While depression might not be our fault, it is our responsibility to get better. We need to start behaving and thinking in constructive ways. Here’s some food for thought for those on the bench:

Get help. You can’t handle this by yourself. It is a problem bigger than any individual person. The ABA’s Commision on Lawyer Assistance Programs created a Judicial Assistance Initiative. Reach out to them and they can get you pointed in the right direction.
You may have to take antidepressant medication to help you. That’s okay. You may have a chemical imbalance that you need to address. For many, psychotherapy alone won’t help until they quieted down their somatic complaints — e.g. fatigue from sleep problems – so that they can have the energy and insight to work on their problems.
Whether you need medication or not, you will need to confront your negative thinking with a therapist. A lot of research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy is a particularly effective form of treatment for depression. Interview a couple therapists before you settle on one.
Exercise. The value of exercise is widely known: It’s simply good for everybody. For a person with depression, it becomes not just about a healthy habit, but a critical behavior and habit – they absolutely need to work out. In his book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey devotes a chapter to the importance of exercise in alleviating depression. Please check this book out.
If you have a spiritual practice, do it. If you don’t, think about starting one. This could be anything from a formal meditation practice, going to Mass, or walking the woods. A lot of research suggests that people who have a spiritual practice do better with depression recovery. If you believe in God or a higher power (I am Catholic), 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, are very important pillars of recovery. Two books from my tradition include Seeing beyond Depression by Father Jean Vanier and Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach by Sister Kathryn James Hermes.
Get educated. Read some good books on the topic. As part of your education, learn about the powerful connection between stress, anxiety and depression. On this subject, I recommend Dr. Richard O’Connor’s Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness. Dr. O’Connor suggests 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/or depression.
Build pleasure into your schedule. Judges, like all those in the legal profession, are busy and have the “I will get to it later” mentally – especially when it comes to things that are healthy pleasures. We have to jettison this approach to how we live our days. We must begin to take time – now – to enjoy pleasurable things and people. A hallmark of depression is the inability to feel happiness or joy. We need to create the space where we can experience and savor good experiences and feelings.
Practice mindfulness. In mindfulness meditation, we sit quietly, pay attention to our breath, and watch our thoughts float by in a stream of consciousness. Normally, we immediately react to our thoughts (e.g. “I am losing my mind with all of these deadlines”). With mindfulness practice, we can begin – slowly – to let the thoughts and feelings float by without reacting to them. If such an approach to depression seems far-fetched, read the best-selling book The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, for an excellent primer on how you can incorporate mindfulness into your day.
Remember to be kind to yourself. It sounds so simple. I tell this to depressed lawyers and judges all the time and they usually look puzzled. They often admit that they have rarely, if ever, thought about it and don’t know how to be kind to themselves. I believe that it first begins with a conscious intention – “I am not going to treat myself poorly anymore.” Such a simple refrain can help us. Depression is often built on poor mental, emotional and physical habits. We must learn to acknowledge that we are worthy of love from others and ourselves and that part of such love involves taking better care of ourselves.
Spend time outside and in nature. We humans forget that we are part of nature and the animal kingdom. We need fresh air and sunshine. Even more so when the darkness of winter strikes. If you live in a part of the country with long winters, load up on vitamin D and consider using a light box to help you.

If you or a judge you know might be suffering from loneliness and/or depression, please forward this article to them. Here’s a list of depression’s symptoms and a self-test from the Mayo Clinic.

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.”

7 Things Lawyers Can Do to Break the Bonds of Depression

Helplessness and hopelessness.

Two pillars of depression. And they’re tough to topple.

Helplessness

Lawyers, when in the vise-like grip of depression, feel helpless. Despite their best efforts to pull out of it, they still feel depressed and all endure the consequences that flow from their chronic melancholy: a lack of productivity, chronic fatigue, falling behind on work projects because of procrastination and a pervasive sadness or feeling dead inside.

Hopelessness

This sense of helplessness, if not addressed, often leads to a profound sense of hopelessness about the future. Sufferers’ conclude that they doomed to feel depressed for the rest of their lives. They just can’t envision good things happening to them in the future. They have a type of tunnel vision: they only see a crummy future ahead of them and on-again, off-again skirmishes or battles with depression.

Lawyers breaking the bonds of depression

But many lawyers not only survive depression; they pull themselves out of it. They break the bonds of the depression that have shackled them to a life sucked dry of joy, wonder and vitality. If you’re a lawyer who struggles with depression and can’t see any light down the road ahead of you, remember that you too can not only survive it – you come out the other side, thrive and grow.

To do so, you’ll have to leave some negative things behind and grab onto some positive ones. Here are some kernels of wisdom that I’ve learned over my decade-long journey of helping depressed attorneys recover:

Learn to let go. Depressed lawyers tend to nurture wounds inflicted by clients, judges and other lawyers. The wounds can be the result of an opponent’s downright nasty behavior, a cold and unsympathetic judge or a badgering client. Lawyers take all of this too seriously and personally by magnifying these exchanges. They churn infractions and insults over and over in their head. This type of ruminative thinking not only wears them out, but feeds their depression. The truth is that a lot of the bad behavior we see in the law really isn’t really about you. It’s usually the product of the ignorance and unconsciousness of others. Remember this. AND LET IT GO.
Let go of hanging around other negative lawyers. It’s easy to gravitate to other attorneys who, while that might not be clinically depressed, are extremely negative about law and life. Hanging around these folks will only feed your negative view of your law practice and life. It fosters a corrosive and cynical view of the world. You have a choice to make. LEAVE THESE PEOPLE BEHIND.
Let go of surfing the net. I know many lawyers that are on the web for big chunks of time during their workday. It’s a maladaptive stress, anxiety or depression management behavior and, in the short or long term, destructive. They surf for everything under the sun during work: music, porn, Facebook, YouTube, etcetera. Deep down, they feel like they “deserve” these breaks because law takes so much out of them. In their minds, these surfs are something pleasurable they crave because it distracts them from the pain of too much stress, unhappiness or depression. But it comes at a cost. They waste precious time, procrastinate and then beat themselves up for it for being unproductive. Beating one’s self up only leads to low self-esteem, which chips away at self-worth. They don’t make positive changes. They just don’t think we’re worth it. But, you are worth it and you need to start acting as if you are. LET GO OF THIS TIME WASTER.
Embrace a sense of hanging around more positive lawyers. Yes, they are out there! And there are more of them than you think. I know because I’ve met and developed friendships with them. Finding others, who are doing more than just complaining about the law and are trying to do something constructive about it, will help you gain some sense of hope about the future and a more positive direction. IT’S IMPORTANT TO LET NEGATIVE PEOPLE GO.
Find silence wherever you can. There’s something profoundly healing about silence, wherever you may find it. The practice of mindfulness meditation to cope with the stresses and strains of modern life has become widely popular. It has found a powerful foothold in the law. Mindfulness has been studied and found to be a powerful antidote to everyday unhappiness, too much stress, anxiety and depression. What makes it so powerful? The practice of unhitching our wagons from the constant stream destructive thoughts and feelings that batters our brains that are accomplished by following one’s breath and not buying into troublesome thoughts or emotions. Basically, we get “out of our heads” and drop back down into our bodies and short-circuit the negative rumination that fuels depression. An excellent book on this topic is The Mindful Way Through Depression. If mindfulness mediation isn’t your cup of tea, I know many who find solace in their local church or synagogue. There’s lots of research to support the theory that people who have a regular spiritual practice cope better with their anxiety and depression than those who don’t. FIND SOMEPLACE TO DRINK IN SILENCE.
Find a way to be more organized. Researchers have found that chronic stress is a powerful trigger for depression. Realistically, there are some things we’ll never be able to change about the demanding nature of the legal profession. But, it’s equally true that there are many steps we can do that significantly lower our stress load. One of the most powerful things you can do to help yourself is to be better organized. If you have trouble with this issue, and most depressed lawyers that I know do, delegate it to someone else to help you with this. It may be your secretary or even an outside consultant who are pros. Also, check out my prior blog, My Desk, My Enemy: 6 Helpful Ways to Get Organized.
If you can’t go to the gym, walk. I’ve resolved so many times to go to the gym, but often don’t. I have come to accept that sometimes I will and sometimes I won’t. Even when I know it would really help my mood. Sometimes it’s because my day is full of too many commitments, I’m feeling lazy or I’m unable to find the one-hour block of time to do it.

You can break those bonds. One link at a time. And be free.

5 Truths About Depression

A common misconception about depression is that it is something people can just “snap out of.” Unfortunately, for those people who experience major depression disorder, it’s not that simple. While depression can be serious, it is far from hopeless. There are effective treatments and actions people can take to overcome this disorder. There are certain truths about depression that are important to understand; as we target this debilitating disorder that often spans generations.

1. Depression is a more than just a bad mood.

As I’ve mentioned above, it’s important for friends and relatives of those struggling to understand that people who suffer from depression can’t just feel better. People experiencing a major depression really need professional treatment. Depression is a mind/body issue and should be treated with the same self-compassion and treatment seeking with which we would treat any major illness. Different forms of therapy and/ or medications work for different people. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), psychotherapy can benefit depressed individuals by helping them uncover the life problems that contribute to their depression, identify the destructive thinking that makes them feel hopeless, explore the behaviors that exacerbate their depression and regain a sense of pleasure in their lives.

2. Mindfulness helps with recurrent depression.

There are a lot of great treatments out there that have proven effective for dealing with depression. Research by psychologist Mark Williams, co-author of The Mindful Way Through Depression, has shown that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can have a positive effect on preventing relapse in recovered depressed patients. His research indicates that if you teach people with recurrent depression mindfulness skills, such as meditation and breathing exercises, it reduces their chances of having another depressive episode.

Mindfulness practices don’t change our feelings or thoughts, but they do change our relationship to our feelings and thoughts. This enables a person who has a tendency toward depression to not get swept up in the thoughts and feelings that contribute to his or her depression. Another way mindfulness skills can benefit people struggling with depression is by helping them to be better able to regulate and tolerate emotion.

3. Anger often underlies depression

Often, one strong emotion behind depression is anger. Anger can be a hard emotion to deal with, but it is actually a natural human reaction to frustration. Getting angry may seem like it would only make you feel worse, but when you don’t deal with anger directly, you tend to turn it on yourself. It is important to allow yourself the freedom to fully feel your feelings, but at the same time, to control yourself from acting them out in any way that is harmful. You can recognize and accept your anger in a healthy way that releases the emotion without allowing it to fester or be turned into an attack on yourself.

4. Depression is fueled by an inner critic.

We all have an inner critic, what my father, psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone, refers to as your “critical inner voice.” For people who are depressed, this critical inner voice can have a powerful and destructive influence on their state of mind. It may be feeding them a distorted commentary on their lives: You are too fat to leave the house. You are so stupid. No one will ever love you. You aren’t capable of being happy. You will never succeed at anything.

The critical inner voice may then persuade you to act in destructive ways: Just be by yourself; no one wants to see you. Have another piece of cake; it will make you feel better. You shouldn’t even try for that job; you’ll never get it. Finally, once you’ve listened to its directives, the critical inner voice will attack you for your actions: You are such a loser, staying home alone on a Saturday. You messed up your diet again. What is wrong with you? You’ll never get a decent job. You’re so lazy.

5. There are active steps you can take to alleviate depression.

One of the worst symptoms of depression is a feeling of hopelessness. This very feeling can inhibit someone suffering from taking the steps that would help them combat their depression. In my blog “Eight Ways to Actively Fight Depression,” I outline a series of actions people can take to fight depression. These include:

• Recognizing and challenging your critical inner voice • Identifying and feeling your anger • Engaging in aerobic activity • Putting yourself in social or non-isolated situations • Doing activities you once enjoyed, even when you don’t feel like it • Watching a funny movie or show • Refusing to punish yourself for feeling bad • Seeing a therapist

For people struggling with depression, it’s important to have compassion for yourself and to take actions to overcome this state, including seeking help. Remember that no matter what your critical inner voice may be telling you, the situation is far from hopeless.

Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, author, and the Director of Research and Education for the Glendon Association. She studies suicide and violence as well as couples and family relations.

Firestone is the co-author (with Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett) of Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion, and Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships.

Firestone speaks frequently at conferences including the APA, the International Association of Forensic Psychology, International Association of Suicide Prevention, the Department of Defense and many others. She has also appeared in more than 300 radio, TV, and print interviews including the BBC, CBC, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Men’s Health and O Magazine.

Copyrighted, Lisa Firestone, 2013

Why We Can’t Think Our Way Out of Depression

In the book, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness, four experts explain why our usual attempts to “think” our way out of depression or “just snap out of it” lead us deeper into a downward spiral where depression only worsens. Through insightful lessons (and an included CD with guided meditations) drawn from both Eastern meditative traditions and cognitive therapy, they demonstrate how to sidestep the mental habits that lead to depression, including rumination and self-blame, so that one can face life’s challenges with greater resilience.

The authors explain how our trying to outthink depression is problematic:

“When depression starts to pull us down, we often react, for very understandable reasons, by trying to get rid of our feelings by suppressing them or by trying to think our way out of them. In the process we dredge up past regrets and conjure up future worries. In our heads, we try this solution and that solution, and it doesn’t take long for us to start feeling bad for failing to come up with a way to alleviate the painful emotions we’re feeling. We get lost in comparisons of where we are versus where we want to be, soon living almost entirely in our heads”

Lawyers, by the nature of our work, are required to live in their heads a lot. Not only that, our thinking habits are prone to pessimism –we look for problems everywhere and try to fix them. We are the ultimate “fixers”. This can get us into trouble, however, if we are prone to or suffer from depression. The authors point this out:

“Once negative memories, thoughts, and feelings, reactivated by unhappy moods, have forced their way into our consciousness, they produce two major effects. First, naturally enough, they increase our unhappiness, depressing mood even further. Second, they will bring with them a set of seemingly urgent priorities for what the mind has absolutely got to focus on – our deficiencies and what we can do about them. It is these priorities that dominate the mind and make it difficult to switch attention to anything else. Thus we find ourselves compulsively trying over and over to get to the bottom of what is wrong with us as people, or with the way we live our lives, and fix it.”

The author’s solution to this virtual swampland of depression: mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness is actually quite simply to do and involves sitting in silence and watching our feelings and thoughts float by the stream of our consciousness. But instead of taking them literally – that such depressing thoughts and feelings are REALITY – we just detach from them and let them continue to float down the river. We stop trying to react to these states by stopping our attempts to try to fix them. We move from a “doing mode” to a “being mode.” We pay attention to a neutral experience – the in and out sensation of our breath. When we notice a thought or feeling flowing by and see that we are getting embroiled with it, we let it go and return to our breath. Check out this great video, “Mindfulness with Jon Kabit-Zinn.”

In “The Zen Path through Depression”, Philip Martin advises us to stop running away from our depression and face it. It can even provide us with a unique type of experience:

“In depression our back is often against the wall. Indeed, nothing describes depression so well as that feeling of having nowhere to turn, nothing left to do. Yet such a place is incredibly ripe, filled with possibility. It gives us the opportunity to really pay attention and just see what happens. When we’ve done everything, when nothing we know and believe seems to fit, there is finally the opportunity to see things anew, to look differently at what has become stale and familiar to us. Sometimes when our back is against the wall, the best thing to do is to sit down and be quiet.”

Part of the quality of our lives, of maintaining ourselves, is learning and growth. The ongoing pain of our depression is a wakeup call that we need to think about how we typically respond to our depression and how we might respond differently – by moving from a doing to a being mode. This can be achieved with mindfulness meditation.

Copyright, 2013 – Daniel T. Lukasik

Living a Simpler Life Can Ease Lawyer Depression

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler ~Albert Einstein

I believe most of us want, no, crave, a simpler life. Henry Thoreau, seeking to find out what was essential about life, retreated to a small cabin at Walden Pond and wrote,

Our life is fritted away be detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Lawyers know that their lives are too complex, confusing and stressful. They feel it in their bones. This sense of things intrudes on their thoughts during a five-minute lunch between court appearances and an afternoon deposition. They think to themselves, “There’s got to be a better way to live my life”. They yearn for more space, more time to digest their experiences. However, without a greater simplicity, their lives are swallowed by a flurry of demands that never stop coming.

It’s not only the office that weighs attorneys down – it the consumerist culture they live in with everyone else. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal “When Simplicity Is the Solution”, takes a sample of the dizzying array of choices buyers face everyday:

“Every facet of our lives, even entertainment and recreation, is complicated by an ever-widening array of choices delivered at a frantic pace. Consider:

More than 800,000 apps in the Apple App Store

240-plus selections on the Cheesecake Factory menu, not including lunch or brunch specials

135 mascaras, 437 lotions and 1,992 fragrances at Sephora.com

Lawyers need to shed those habits that weigh them down and clutter their lives and spirits. As the author Hans Hofmann once wrote, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

Some of the things that can be jettisoned are mundane: not reading the paper every morning, not responding to e-mails and text 24-7 or just allowing the sweet space of silence for ten minutes a day. Then there are the bigger items to chuck: letting go of relationships that aren’t healthy, daily diets that increase our waist lines and poison our bodies and habitual ways of responding to stress that batters their brains.

One Day at a Time to a Simpler Life

What small things can we let go of in our daily lives to make it simpler?

1. Keep your office clean and organized. Check out the website and book The Organized Lawyer.

2. Bring nature into your office – a small vase of fresh flowers helps or some green, leafy plants. A good tonic for a harried lawyer – the simplicity of nature.

3. Live a Day of 5 – and only 5 – important things that you want to get done today. Take a legal pad, a bold flair marker, write in big letters and allow copious amounts of space between items. This practice has a way of focusing our efforts and keeping it simple.

4. Get rid of needless noise in your office – keep your door shut, turn off the radio.

5. Live from a place of abundance rather than scarcity. So you think you are, said the Buddha. Remind yourself that you have everything you need and enough time.

6. Bring a healthy lunch and snacks to work rather than going out for a lunch at a busy and noisy restaurant.

7. Take a 10 minute silence break in your day.

8. Only check your e-mail 3 times per day during the morning, noon and at the end of the day. Psychologists estimate that as much as ninety percent of e-mail is junk. As such, the chances of your missing something urgent aren’t great. Try this for a week and see what happens. It’s an eye-opener.

Living a Simpler Life over the Long Haul

1. Using technology to make your life simpler – go paperless. Check out the ScanSnap Document Scanner.

2. Check out the blog Zen Habits – a site devoted to living a simpler life.

3. Develop the wisdom that having more stuff in your life doesn’t equal more happiness.

4. Practice walking outside in nature as much as you can.

5. Clean your house and throw out everything you don’t need.

6. Do something with your hands – some people love chopping wood, for example. Volunteering for Habit for Humanity is another.

7. Practice Mindfulness – check the best-selling book, The Mindful Way through Depression.

8. Fasting – it’s amazing how much time and energy we fret away thinking about food. A friend of mine took note that he had twelve eating opportunities in one average day. Check out the Master Cleaner fast – I did it one weekend and found it easy and rejuvenating.

9. Do free stuff for a day. As the author Robert Brault wrote, “The best things in life are not only free, but the line is shorter.”

Remember that the more you simplify, the less your day will be fragmented by nonsense. Thoreau wrote: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life.

Do you really need to live your life driven by choices that increase your preoccupation with complexity while fueling your depression? You already know what it’s like to live a complicated life. Try for a while to live a simpler one. You don’t have to go to Walden Pond to do it. You’re home and office can be a good place to start. It’s that simple.

By Dan Lukasik

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