According to…some travel company or other I think it is… ‘Blue Monday’ - which this year fell on Jan 15 - is the most depressing day of the year. And on that particular day I have to say I felt pretty good - so if it’s only going to get better from there I’m feeling pretty chipper about the future.
However, once upon a time, for me, every day was Blue Monday. I think I was depressed as a child, and never really stopped being depressed, at some level, until I starting taking anti-depressant medication at the age of 31, shortly after suffering a catastrophic breakdown, which forced me to address the problem. Before that I was rigid in my insistence that I was ‘normal’ . It was easy for outsiders to believe, since I was extraverted and thrill seeking, not at all withdrawn and brooding. Neurodiversity’ was not really a word then - only ‘nuts’ - and I feared the taboo it might bring upon me.
When I discovered that I had in fact been ill, and that there was medicine that helped, I became quite wedded to the idea that this awful form of mental illness was purely biological, a malign brain glitch that I had not acknowledged. This experience was borne out by periodic subsequent attempts to come off my medication , which invariably resulted in my mood crashing again within 6-9 months. Eventually I accepted that I would have to take these pills for the rest of my life- and now I’ve been swallowing them pretty much every day for the last 35 or so years.
So far as I can make out, they haven’t had any negative effects on me, and I remain truly grateful to whichever team of scientists managed to come up with them. But I have also come to accept that drugs are not the only answer to depression.
Since suffering my breakdown I tried therapy a few times, but it didn’t suit me - or rather, I didn’t find the right therapist. Again, very late in life, I discovered one that did , nearly ten years ago.
I didn’t go to see him because I was depressed, but because I felt overwhelmed with certain life situations that I was facing which were pushing me into what I thought of as non-clinical gloom, I’m sure it would have developed into something full-blown had it not been for the meds, but I still wanted to do something about feeling so guilty and inadequate.
For the first time I discovered what therapy was capable of. This therapist, unlike others I had gone to see, never gave me any advice. He simply gently prodded me into changing my ‘narrative’, ie, the story I told myself that made up the story of my life ( this is also the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). . I began to see that my thoughts and feelings were not set in stone, some sort or God-given or spiritual condition, but a flow of somewhat conditioned words and sentiments that could be re-thought, without losing the authenticity of mind that I prided myself on. In other words, I believed that I could feel better about myself without lying to myself.
I was - and am - someone who thought most people got through life by strenously denying reality, and I wasn’t prepared to go down that route. It would be catastrophic for a writer. However, the concept that I could change my habitual interpretations about myself and the world was something I had long known about but never really practised. My new therapist, who I still visit when I feel I am at a low ebb, taught me how this could work to my advantage. For their are many forms of mental suffering, and you can undergo confusion and mental pain without the mood disorder of depression. My therapist helped me to get out of uncomfortable mental muddles, time and time again.
But I still wasn’t there yet. When, a few years ago, I still found myself feeling ‘not right’ - despite all the remedies I had applied, and despite the fact that my mood had been lifted by a diagnosis of ADHD , since it provided relief by identifying the root cause of a lot of my depression - I asked my therapist if he had any other solutions. He recommended meditation.
I had tried meditation before, but only briefly and intermittently. This time, I really went for it, meditating for 20 minutes twice a day, a habit I have more or less stuck with. Once again, my mood improved, if not dramatically, then at least significantly.
(I should pause at this point to say to anyone who is neurotypical and doesn’t have to fight hard just to feel ‘ok’ - you should never forget how lucky you are. Ordinary, everyday reality, not seen through the grey screen of depression is a wonderful thing, even though you still have to suffer sometimes, like everyone else.)
So on Tuesday I am 68 years old. With a great deal of time and effort and attempts to understand the ‘problem’, I have finally rendered myself as somewhat reliably ‘normal’, whatever that means - although the ADHD still exacts a toll, despite the medication I also take to moderate the effects of that, and although I still suffer in an ordinary human way.
Why am I telling this story? If only to underline the narrative put out by mental health professionals, that depression responds to medication, therapy and meditation ( and, to some extent, diet and exercise, which I don’t bother too much about). I would add that although I have rarely found anyone who objects to the idea of therapy or meditation or the rest of it, there are still many who think that anti-depressant drugs are a con, invented by Big Pharma to make big profits by exploiting human suggestibility. I can say that in my experience that this idea is completely wrong, and anyone who suffers real depression ( which is quite a different thing from ‘unhappiness’, which we , inc;uding me, must continue to participate in sometimes during our lives) anti depressant drugs are a godsend and a miracle and without them I wouldn’t be alive today. Or rather, I might be alive - but in a level so reduced and broken that the experience would be entirely pointless . It’s true the pills don’t work for some people but I think that’s because those people are not so much depressed as simply unhappy and there is no surefire cure for unhappiness, since it is not an illness.
So thank you, Big Pharma, thank you, my therapist, and thank you my new found ability to sit still and do nothing , twice, twenty minutes a day. I wish I could do without the inconvenience of all these remedies - but the alternative is so, so much worse, that is, Blue Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturays and Sundays.
I admire your candidness in sharing your journey through depression and how you've found various strategies to cope with it. Thank you for sharing your story and helping raise awareness about the importance of seeking help for mental health challenges. 🙌💙
Great post, Tim. Lots of resonance. Ditto re. medication, which I strenuously avoided for decades until my husband's life turned around overnight thanks to Lexapro. (Don't know its name in England - an SSRI). Happy belated birthday!