Posted on June 26th, 2008 by admin

People who don’t have depression of any kind have no sympathy whatever with us “deep feelers” who do! They think we can make it go away by saying, “Scat, go away, dumb old depression,” and not to be doing that is sheer self-indulgence.

Hah! A man I work with—an almost criminally undepressed type—was clucking disgustedly over his secretary the other day. She’d told him she hadn’t slept any the night before . . . was “just sort of anxious and worried.” “Would you tell me what that girl has to be anxious and worried about?!” he demanded. “She has a good job, her husband loves her, they go to Jamaica every summer and ski every winter—pretty terrific trips for kids their age. Together, I’d say they make about forty thousand a year. For God’s sake, what has she got to be unhappy about?!”

Because this man is a dear friend, I have resisted—with almost inhuman effort—saying “Screw you, Mr. . One might wish you would come down with a tiny bit of depression just once and you’d stop being such an ass.” We depressed ones really don’t choose to be depressed any more than a migraine victim chooses a migraine or a person with one arm prefers getting dressed by shuffling into his clothes that way! A woman I greatly admired—Sue Kaufman, who wrote Diary of a Mad Housewife—was beautiful, rich, successful, beloved by her family, and finally jumped off a roof to end her monumental depression. Did she really “want” to jump?

Depression comes in three forms:
One: physical malfunction—Asian flu, a cold, anemia, cystitis, low blood sugar, syphilis, recovery from surgery, the curse coming on, haven’t eaten for ten hours—all of which can sap your joie de vivre.
Two: exogenous—an outside happening—death, firing, loss of lover, etc.—brings you down.
Three: endogenous—though you may find a “reason” and say that’s what felled you, this kind of depression really has little to do with external causes. Doctors believe endogenous depression (the bitchiest kind because it keeps coming back) is caused by a biochemical imbalance—the sufferer has a predilection toward depression, probably hereditary (it can run in families) and there is no way to explain its existence any more than you can explain diabetes.

Now, endogenous sufferers often have real reasons for the blues so our depression is both endogenous and exogenous. Through the years, I have had some fairly horrendous real problems—family, health, money. My shrink says that, given the set of problems I had growing up and as a young woman, it’s quite astonishing I’m not locked away in a mossy little cell somewhere. I am an absolute living monument, he says, to what one frail little person can do about life! Nevertheless, with all these problems solved—by the mouseburger system—what else?!—mild endogenous (“causeless”) depression does tend to come back on me. Even now, I wake up mildly depressed or anxious about 30 percent of the time—wake up that way, mind you, not stay that way or go to sleep that way.
What to do?

Tags: deep feelers, Depression, Depression comes in three forms