I like to really pause when someone asks me how I am.
I like to give a sincere answer.
For months now, though, I’ve been noticing a little confusion in that pause.
I look around my life and it’s really great. Filled with love and friendship, meaningful and engaging work, all the essential resources for health and wellness.
And yet there was… something else. Something challenging. Something that got in the way of freely answering “How are you?” with “Fantastic! Wonderful! Living my best life!”
The mystery revealed itself over the course of one brief walk, listening to one brief podcast: The Hilarious World of Depression. The episode turned out to be a fundraising promotion in which listeners shared lies their depression had told them. That’s the name of the episode, actually: Depression’s Eleven Big Lies EXPOSED!
Let me break in here for an explanatory comma: There’s Depression and then there’s depression.
In my late teens, I experienced Depression.
It was all-encompassing; it was painful; and it was dangerous.
Big-D Depression is what kills people.
Little-d depression is so common that when someone recently told me that she had no experience of it, I did a double-take. There are people who don’t know what depression feels like?! What magical world is this?!
Little-d depression feels, to me, like a lower-than-usual baseline.
For example, the other day, I was moping around all day and then somehow got into a game of trying (and failing) to throw chunks of watermelon into Theresa’s mouth while our pup scurried around happily vacuuming up the fallen bits. I was laughing so hard that my aim just got worse and worse. Then, as soon as the game was over, it was back to sullen for me.
That’s little-d depression: able to feel joy and connection but, oof, that baseline.
Best I can figure, this depression snuck up on me because I was comparing the symptoms of depression I was noticing in myself to what I felt during my years of Depression. Since I was experiencing happiness every day, since I was laughing every day, since I was feeling loved every day, since I was finding meaning in my work every (work) day, I figured I wasn’t Depressed, so I was fine.
In fact, when I went to see my doc in July about my allergies, he wrote in my chart that I had acknowledged feeling a meaningful amount of stress but that I was treating it with yoga and therapy. Yup, that sounds like something I would have said.
And, truly, that I have developed an almost-daily yoga habit and was seeing a therapist (currently looking for another after an insurance change – don’t even get me started on access, and I have a hell of a lot of access compared to lots of people), that I eat in nourishing ways and have vulnerable conversations, etc., is likely why I’m depressed instead of Depressed.
There is a part of me that fears sharing this publicly, despite my long-standing instinct to share everything widely within my intimate community. (By bedtime on the day of my podcast-induced ah-hah, I had told two friends, my mom, and my wife. Between listening and writing this, I’ve shared with many more. Depression and depression really hate to be illuminated; shame helps them grow and shame loves the shadows.)
The taboos are real, though, and I’m a person whose work includes supporting others in their mental and emotional well-being which makes sharing widely feel like inviting people to doubt my professional abilities.
The only way to steal the power of taboo, though, is to chip away at it, one share at a time. That’s what makes Selina Gomez’s sharing so powerful, and Brendan Frazer’s, and Simone Biles’s – people with big spotlights who can swing with sledgehammers instead of tap away with chisels.
That I have a wee chisel – that you likely do, too, friend – doesn’t make our impact any less important.
So, in case you also need to hear this – as I needed to hear it – let me pass along some thoughts:
Depression is a big, nasty liar. It will tell you you’re not depressed; it will tell you that you don’t need or deserve care; it will tell you that you should be able to pull yourself out of it through sheer willpower alone.
Neither Depression nor depression are your fault. We are complex beings living in a very complex world and, for some of us sometimes, that can make our brain chemistry go haywire.
There’s no virtue in suffering. (Ooh, writing that one made me a little teary – apparently, I needed to hear it again.) Your well-being matters. Take advantage of whatever resources are available to you. Fight whatever obstacles get between you and your well-being as though your life depended on it…
…because when depression turns into Depression, it just might.
Also: I love you. Whether I know you or not, I really do. You’re my kind of people which is to say that you’re human and I care about your well-being.
Now, if reading that struck a chord in you, go do what you need to do, friend. You deserve your own loving care.
