On Depression

"Cold blackness has been my companion for decades. Through my teens and twenties, my unwillingness to sit still inside that darkness drove me into drug abuse, wildly inappropriate relationships, risk taking, and petty crime."
— Terry Real

The heavy cloud of depression swept into the landscape of my life when I was about 13 years old, and it stayed until I was well into my 40s. It did not entirely choke out the sun, and it did not bring rain every day, but it was basically always there, looming over every moment.

The quote from Terry Real at the top of this page, makes a subtle point about the nature of depression: If we aren't willing to sit with it, and figure out what it's actually telling us, we are destined to act it out. We become its marionettes.

Terry also makes an excellent point, that in his work, he sees two main expressions of depression: Covert depression, and overt depression.

Overt depression is what we have come to know as "major" or "clinical" depression. It has a DSM-5 definition, and it is objectively diagnosable. It is recognizable: Extremely low, persistent moods. Anhedonia. Appetite disturbance. Insomnia or hypersomnia. And the list goes on. If you check enough of these boxes, a doctor will diagnose you with depression and probably prescribe you one or more medications.

Covert depression, however…that is another beast entirely. People with covert depression are often highly functional, and do not necessarily look to others like they are suffering: They go to work, they go to church, they spend time with their families, they get married, they get promoted.

But something is deeply wrong on the inside.

There is something missing, and that hole inside simply can not be filled. This depression gets acted out through addiction, or rage, or workaholism, or risk taking. It ends up subtly governing almost everything in a person's life, in one way or another.

I lived with covert depression for most of my life. I sought refuge in engrossing behaviors like riding motorcycles, martial arts, risk taking, and intensely demanding video games. Any activity that would occupy my entire mind was a tremendous relief from the sadness inside me that I was terrified to sit with. Later in my life, this spun into substance abuse and addiction.

I successfully avoided, disengaged, and hid from the sadness inside me for most of my adult life, until the universe finally decided that it was not going to wait any longer for me to wake up.

It decided to open my eyes by force.

In the span of 18 months: I lost a good friend to late stage stomach cancer, lost my job, my father was diagnosed with late stage stomach cancer, I moved 2000 miles across the country to a city I could not afford to live in to be with my father, my mother was diagnosed with late stage stomach cancer, my cat died, my father died, and I lost my job again.

And then I became a father, and my covert depression became overt depression almost overnight. And I could no longer keep the darkness at bay.

Everyone who overcomes depression has a moment of "rock bottom". Some moment that catalyzes their experience and pushes them over a threshold. It finally convinces them that whatever they are hiding from, running from, or avoiding cannot actually be worse than the suffering that they are experiencing, and they finally pick up a shield, and turn to face the darkness.

For me, it was when my therapist asked:

"Chris…when was the last time you experienced joy?"

My mind works pretty quickly most of the time. I rarely struggle to find the right words to express my thoughts, but when he asked me this question…I had absolutely no answer.

Somewhere in my mind, I went to the drawer that was supposed to contain joy, opened it up to grab whatever was sitting there, and realized that the drawer was entirely empty. There was just…nothing. Like someone who is late for work and has lost their car keys, I started frantically rifling through the drawers of my mind, sure that I would discover that I had simply misplaced all that joy. Surely it was sitting there somewhere…right?

It turns out…a lifetime spent running from sadness, trauma, grief, and any form of self exploration will steal all the joy you can experience. I don't remember where, but I read something once long ago that still lives rent free in my mind:

"Joy and hypervigilance cannot simultaneously coexist in the same body."

I believe this to be true, and I believe that the most devious way that covert depression acts on us is by trapping us in a constant state of hypervigilance. Always guarding. Always defending. Always running from the thing that we are terrified of, which happens to be the very thing that can set us free.

Fundamentally, this is the great work of therapy for depression: Summoning the courage to turn and face the darkness, and confront whatever dark truth we have been running from for so long.

I turned to face my darkness, shield in hand, and saw it wasn't a monster at all.

It was me as a child, suffering, trapped in time, waiting for someone to hold him and convince him that everything was going to be ok.

Therapy taught me how to do exactly that. It taught me how to travel mentally back in time, how to visit that part of me that was trapped and suffering, and save myself.

I stopped having panic attacks. I got sober. I quit the career that was bringing me nothing but stress and unfulfillment. I fell in love with learning about mental health. I started volunteering. I started applying to top rated MSW programs.

And then one day many months later, sitting by my pool watching my daughter swim and splash, I realized that the drawer of joy in my mind that was empty all that time ago, was so full I couldn't even shut it.

Your life is waiting for you.

It is time to stop running.