This is a chapter from my current work in progress, which is a self-help book for people struggling with depression. I have posted it here because my recommendations work for every kind of emotional distress, whatever its cause.
There are seven requirements for a contented life. All of them may be present to varying degrees. If you have a good dose of all seven, you are GUARANTEED to be able to fight off depression and similar devils.
Your Depression knows this. It knows the list, even if you don’t. So, it protects itself by sabotaging as many of these requirements as possible. It can do this very well. So, first aid, the way to fight back, is to return these seven features into your life. The rule is:
I’ll briefly discuss the list here, so you can take immediate action, then I’ll spend a chapter on each item.
The list is:
Since this is a first aid list, I have ordered the items so that the easiest to implement is at the top.
Note what is NOT on the list:
…and all the other reasons people tend to associate with their mood.
The last requirement, meaning, comes from the work of Viktor Frankl. You just have to read his inspiring book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The other six come from anthropological research on the lifestyles of hunter-gatherer people. You see, genetically, we are still identical to our ancestors from up to perhaps 10,000 years ago. By analysing the lives of modern hunter-gatherers, anthropologists have extracted the essentials of the lifestyle humans have evolved in. And that’s the list I’ve given you.
Think of the measures I’ll recommend as antidepressants. Only, these antidepressants have several huge advantages over the nasty little pills a doctor might prescribe for you:
Let’s now look at each of the seven requirements for contentment, see how Depression sabotages them, and what you can do to protect yourself.
Depression starves some people. It tricks others into ill health and obesity by getting them to eat too much, and all the wrong kinds of food. Either way, its job is easy in today’s crazy society: even people who are not depressed are likely to eat badly, and many of the common foods are full of stuff that does you harm.
Fred didn’t want to get counselling. He knew it couldn’t possibly help him ― nothing could. Life was hopeless, and that was that. But when he mentioned killing himself to his doctor, he was given my leaflet and ordered to come and see me. He cancelled the first appointment, because his car (conveniently) broke down. He didn’t show up for the second one. I phoned him, and after a long conversation, he at last made the effort to be there the third time.
Sound familiar? It may well be if you are in the grip of deep Depression.
When we finally sat face to face, I asked him what was making his life so miserable that he contemplated suicide. A whole list of woes emerged, but the top item was, “I can’t eat. If I have something, I feel like chucking up.”
“Have you ever done so?”
“No, but it sure feels like it.”
I knew that his doctor had checked him out for any physical problems. So, I told him, “Food is medicine. Eat a tiny bit, doesn’t matter how it makes you feel, and do this every half an hour until you have enough to keep you going.”
We organised a few strategies. He bought grapes, and popped one at a time, ten minutes or so apart. He made a cheese sandwich, cut it into eight pieces and ate one piece, went on with whatever he was doing, ate another little square, and so on.
At first, the nausea persisted. But, while he insisted on feeding his body regardless of how bad he felt after it, he was starving his depression. Within a couple of weeks, he could eat a normal meal.
Depression tricks you into becoming overweight through ‘comfort eating’ or ‘boredom eating’, and always the things you swore you won’t touch (but have handy all the same). You feel guilty, and put on weight — and this gives something else that Depression can use to beat you over the head.
First aid is to get rid of all the wrong foods and store up on things that are good for you: apples, carrots, celery, chewy dried apricots, nuts of various kinds. When you feel like some comfort food, eat a small bit of one of these, then congratulate yourself. Tell all the people in your life that you are switching your food intake in this way, and ask them to help by keeping the problem foods away from you.
As with food, Depression can trick you into either too much or too little. Or it can keep you awake all night, and then you’ll feel too sluggish and sleepy all day.
Do you lie in bed, your mind going round and round and round, torturing you with thoughts you’d rather not have? Among them will be the thought, I MUST get to sleep! I’ll be so tired tomorrow! Oh, will I never get to sleep? On and on the wicked merry-go-round goes, keeping you awake.
Some facts about the nature of sleep will help. Sleep has several stages, which can be grouped into two: rest, and dream time (called ‘rapid eye movement’ or REM sleep because when you dream your eyes can be seen to move through your closed eyelids). You can’t do without REM sleep. No matter how many hours you spend asleep, if someone wakes you the moment your eyes start to move, you’ll be like the walking dead in the morning. If you put all your REM times together, they’ll amount to about two hours. You are guaranteed to get that much on the average awful night of disturbed sleep. So, typically, lack of REM sleep is not the problem. It is that you have not rested at all during your stay in bed.
It actually makes no difference whether you are awake or asleep for the remainder of the time. As long as your body is relaxed, you will be as rested as if you were asleep.
So, the first aid trick is to learn muscular relaxation. Then you lie in bed and keep saying to yourself, over and over:
This is true. But even if it wasn’t, it would cut through the negative thinking that’s keeping you awake. Get relaxed. Lie there with your eyes closed, breathing softly, and keep saying this mantra to yourself. You’ll soon be asleep. And even if for any reason you still stayed awake, you’ll feel rested in the morning.
Tony was a nice, decent seventeen-year-old. He and his group of close friends did everything together. Unfortunately, that involved substance abuse. One night, a member of the group murdered his best friend, while out of his mind on marijuana and alcohol. (In some people, marijuana can induce intense terror or rage.)
Tony held the dying boy during his last moments. Months later, he was required to testify against his friend in court. Not surprisingly, he needed counselling for his grief.
I asked him how he was affected. He told me that the worst thing was that he couldn’t be bothered to do anything. He took ‘sickies’ from work, couldn’t get up in the morning, had no energy. All he wanted to do was sleep. “What’s the point of doing anything anyway?”
He hadn’t realised that he was in the grip of depression, a natural aspect of grieving.
As part of working on his issues, I taught him a list of first aid measures. He agreed that whenever his grief tried to talk him out of doing something, he’d force himself to do just that. He set his alarm clock for the usual time he needed to rise for work, even on weekends and holidays.
“If you feel too bad to go to work, then maybe you need to stay at home. But still get up at the right time,” I told him. “Then, do all the other preparatory things you do on an ordinary day: have a shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast.”
And when he did this, he ended up going to work. The first step is always the hardest.
On the days when he defied his grief, he actually felt good, in power, for having done so.
Many people do things that get them tired, but that is not the kind of exercise I mean here. You need to work up a sweat, and find yourself puffing for air. When you do this, your body generates chemicals called ‘endorphins’. When endorphins settle in certain receptor sites, you feel good, happy, full of energy. So, aerobic exercise gives you a holiday from depression.
Have a skipping rope handy, or do a few starjumps, of just go for a brisk ten-minute walk, and you’ll feel good for a while.
How can you have fun when you are depressed?
You often do. I did an experiment once. My friend George and I went to a concert. He is a musician — and was suffering from severe depression. As I watched him, it was obvious that he thoroughly enjoyed himself. His eyes never left the performers, I could see that he was up on stage with them. His mouth was half open much of the time, his body subtly moved with the rhythm. After the performance, he chatted with me, bought a CD and talked for some time with the players, smiled at strangers.
I saw him again a few days later. “How did you enjoy the other night?” I asked him.
“Oh... it was all right I suppose.” His tone of voice was bored, flat, shoulders were slumped forward, and he didn’t look at me. He was in the pits, and could not even imagine that a few days previously he might have had fun.
That’s what the doom-coloured glasses of Depression do to you.
Don’t believe Depression when it tells you that you never have fun, can’t have fun, there is no such thing as fun.
There have been times in your past when you had a holiday from depression. If you are in its grip now, chances are you won’t remember them. But try. Think back to times when you got on with your life, and the misery was absent. What did you do for fun then?
Whatever it was, deliberately schedule it into your week.
One of the reasons for the high incidence of depression in technological society is that so many people stop doing creative things for months, even years at a time. They go on day after day, week after week, year after year, round and round the same treadmill of routine and boredom. Get up in the morning, go to work, go through the motions, come home, veg out in front of the idiot box, go to bed... who wouldn’t be depressed? And these are the lucky people who have a job.
For many people, life is drab. Housework is a chore. Kids are an unending stream of problems. Work is a chunk out of your life. And when you go on holidays, you come back so exhausted you need to recover from them.
Introduce creative activities. Here are a few examples:
Where do you find the time for such things? When you engage in something like an item from this list, you’ll find that you have MORE time rather than less. This is because creativity recharges your inner batteries, and you’ll be more efficient in everything you do.
Megan worked as a sales assistant in a huge department store. She described it as being a trained pair of hands and an automatic smile. To the customers, she was a thing that took their money. She had no contact with other workers except during the lunch break, and even then she knew they were not interested in her as a person. All the talk was on superficial topics that held no interest for her. To her superiors, she knew herself to be no more than a number, someone to keep an eye on.
Irene worked in the same store. She loved her work, particularly the people aspect. She said there were regular customers, and they always had a friendly chat with her. She’d watched their kids grow over the years. She took an interest in her colleagues, and several had become her friends, with frequent after-work contact. Her superiors treated her as an equal. After all, she used to be a department manager until she had kids and chose to work part time. She had no ambitions for promotion, but was happy with what she was doing.
Both these women came to me for help through the store’s Employment Assistance program. Irene came for chronic pain management, because she suffered from a painful lower back and RSI in both wrists. It won’t surprise you to find out that Megan came for help with her Depression.
Research shows that a person needs to have close connections to other people. Being part of three (possibly overlapping) networks is ideal.
When you are in the grip of Depression, you want to avoid company. Also, others won’t enjoy being with a grump. A third way Depression isolates you is by whispering in your ear that the people you care for are too good for you, and the best thing you can do is to separate from them.
Remember, whatever depression tells you, do the opposite. Remember, it is doom-coloured glasses that hide the good things and focus on the bad.
It is important to note that I am not talking about introversion-extraversion here. People vary according to their need for being with others. The extreme extravert is a party animal who dislikes being alone and craves human company. The extreme introvert is a loner, who prefers solitude, and is uncomfortable in many social situations. Most people are in between — about two-thirds of people are neither one or the other.
You can suffer from Depression regardless of your place on the introversion-extraversion scale. And even extreme introverts need social connectedness. You could be on a solo round-the-world yacht trip with no radio, and be socially connected. This will be because you’ll know there are people who think of you as important in their lives, and you carry them around with you, in your memories and even in your heart.
So, when Depression tries to isolate you, fight back by taking an interest in other people. Distract yourself from your woes by taking an interest in the lives of others. Fight back by doing random acts of kindness, enjoy the play of little children. If face to face contact is more than you can cope with, use the internet.
Two or three times a month, I get a desperate email from a young person. Here is the best of them, with only the name changed:
Hey, Bob, my name's Crissie, I'm 15, and I desperately need your help, although I have to admit, I feel guilty loading a stranger with my problems...I feel guilty loading them on anyone at that. Anyway, here's my problem: I have no joy for life. I don't believe in any god, I'm an atheist, and life seems totally pointless to me, and completely devoid of meaning. I'm turning 16 next week, and frankly I'm amazed I've made it thus far without jumping infront of a bus. I feel numb, and worthless, and empty. I think I'm having what people call an existential crisis, and, now that I've reached it, it feels like the ultimate truth, that all those things I enjoyed in the past were distractions from the pointlessness and absurdity of life and existence. I wouldn't care if I were alive or dead, and I've felt this way for well over a year. I feel like every day I'm alive is just a depressing wade through time, which doesn't exist anyway, it's just a concept, an illusion like everything else, like romance, and society, and purpose.
I want to be a psychologist when I grow up, if you manage or care to persuade me that there is something to live for, because I feel like I'm in touch with the madness. No one understands me, they can't see the bigger picture, they can't see their existences from a higher perspective, but I guess it's better that way, because then they can get lost — no, remain lost — in the oblivion, and not worry about these things and enjoy life... It's too late for me though. And I'm a mess... I'm impatient, and I can't have small talk, I can't bear to have to think about things that now seem completely irrelevant. Everything seems superficial and shallow, and I've lost trust in the world — but perhaps trust is a euphemism for naivety...
Everything seems so predictable, and stupid, and selfish and cruel, and insane. The reason I'm telling you all this is because I think you're the only one who could understand me, and I really hope you do. I feel so alone, and everyone is turning out to be disappointing.
so, goodbye, I hope you reply
much love, genuine love,
from me
We ended up exchanging several emails. Here is my reply:
Dear Crissie,
What you don't realize is how intelligent you are. I suspect, just from this brief note, that you have the ability to do anything you put your mind to.
This has (rightly) led you to question all the falsehoods of society, including the hypocrisy of those who claim to worship God but do the opposite of what their religion commands.
Most people who go though an existential crisis do so in adulthood. You have reached this turning point before 16 years of age. This is an amazing achievement.
Now it is time to move forward.
By the way, I don't mind you asking me for help. I feel privileged that I get such calls of desperation several times a month, and often I am able to make life a little easier for the other person. In my everyday life, people pay me in order to deal with similar issues, but there again, my joy is in their success, not in the money I earn (although that is useful for paying the bills).
Based on the evidence you have considered so far, you have rejected religion. But that does not mean that life is meaningless and has no purpose.
Suppose there was no God, nothing but us, as byproducts of existence. Well then, we are still capable of creating meaning and purpose. If there is a God, and God is good, then my purpose in life is to be the best human being that faulty, limited little me can be. If there is no God, then the best thing I can do is still to be the best human being that I can be.
A plant grows deep in the forest. It sets flower, but the flower bears no seed. All summer the flower is there, but no-one sees it, not even a bird. Comes the autumn, and the flower dies.
It was still beautiful. It still existed, and had a right to that existence.
To be a good psychologist, it is necessary to have suffered. Otherwise, how can you have empathy for sufferers? You can do no good by being superior and pitying, only by feeling like an equal to your client, although further along the path to a good life. So, look on your current stage as an apprenticeship. You are learning what it is like to feel depressed, to drift rudderless, so that later on, once you have finished your education, you can help others.
Crissie, I also reject organized religion. And I don't believe that there is a Father in the Sky, a Person who pulls the strings of earthly puppets. But I have found a great deal of evidence that there is a God, that there is purpose and meaning. God is not out there, but within your heart and mine. It is the God within you that looks at society and rejects the craziness. Since that's all you have encountered in your short life, you have rejected everything. But there is more than greed and selfishness and aggression and competition. There is also selfless giving, and hope, and beauty. Look around you. Apart from the creations of humankind, we live on a beautiful planet. And us humans have created beauty too, in visual arts, and music, and dance, and the music of words.
So, Crissie my dear, don't look for meaning and purpose out there, supplied by someone else. Do what I am doing, and look within your heart. It is there.
For me, part of the meaning of my existence is all the kids in the world. You are all my grandchildren.
:)
Bob
By coincidence, I got a similar cry for desperation a week later, from a British medical student. His issues were so similar to this girl’s that I sent the same answer to him.
Both these fine young people were pulled out of their dark hole by my words. I hope they give you some guidance too. My final email to the medical student said, “My friend, you can pay me by passing the love on when it is your turn to be a teacher.” And the same to you, if you should find solace and help in this book.