My Latest Depression – And How I Survived

Photo courtesy of the Author (c) 2024

Today is a Saturday. I am on a plane with only My Wife. We are headed to Sweden to Fika and trade bracelets with T Sweezy. Our children are back at home with My Wife’s parents. It’s the first time since all three of our kids were alive that we have left the country on our own. My Wife was terrified, and I was…less so…Only because my need for balance tends to slightly outpace my consistent anxiety.

Speaking of anxiety, I could feel it growing stronger as I sat down on the plane.

It had been awhile since I had been on a plane without my kids, maybe a year. For many previous years I flew all of the time. I loved it. Then, I couldn’t stand it. The idea of leaving my family grew more and more painful each time I folded into the taxi and pulled away from the house.

As I squeezed into the aisle seat today, that particular brand of anxiety was back… “What if something bad happened? To me? To My Wife? To the kids?”

As the questions swirled, I thought about my life over the past several months.

I had been seriously depressed through the winter. After months of reflection I was finally able to describe it.

I didn’t want to die, but I felt trapped in a prison, waiting for death.

While still in that dark place, I finally connected with a new therapist and had been doing a lot of work on anxiety management to contend with maelstrom shame spirals, paralysing social avoidance, and irritability escalating to anger.

One thing my brilliant therapist tried to do was reconnect me with my values through mental exercises. I started slowly, painfully reacquainting myself with those values, which were once so certain and present but now seemed a misty morning mountain away.

Photo courtesy of the Author (c) 2024

The therapy worked in spurts. I’d get a little better and then fail again. As I reached out to the people in my life who I loved from a far and wanted to reconnect with, I discovered (or perhaps rediscovered) some of their wisdom. They explained in their lives they would fail, figure themselves out for a little while, and then realize they had to put in a whole lot more work just to get back to a good place before failing again.

This did not sit well with me.

See, I had spent so long…about 30 years…getting myself and my family to a safe and stable place. Then, a few years later, I unknowingly slipped into a dark chasm of uncertainty. My foundation – my familiarity with my sense of self – was gone. I did not know where to start to look to find it again. Of course, in this type of environment, shame permeates. “How could I regress so far? Am I this invalid? What was the point of three decades of work? Is it all lost now? What was the point of any of it?”

It was then (to borrow from JRR Tolkien), “when all hope had faded” that my friend texted.

“FYI…I am not liking this version of [you] and I’m 5 mins away from booking a flight [across the ocean] to see your face and figure out what is going on. Is everything ok? Be honest with me…”

Everything was not ok. It was so not ok that it took more effort to conjure up a short text response than it used to take me to finish an Ironman.

A few weeks later, I finally made time to speak to this friend. I felt like I botched the whole conversation but he just kept showing me compassion. Compassion. Compassion.

I’ve always been better internalizing others’ compassion for me, than I’ve been practicing self-compassion. My friend reminded me of this. He also told me I may want to bring up my crippling self-criticism to my therapist.

Turns out, I didn’t have to. My therapist pointed it out to me, on more than one occasion.

A month or two later, my therapist turned up the volume. She challenged me to put serious effort into figuring out what I valued and how to act in small ways to reinforce those values. Sounds simple. It wasn’t.

As I sit on the plane writing this I am still upset. Why doesn’t anyone tell you how hard life gets AFTER you “figure it all out?”

Why do I have to endure eight months of depressive pain just to rediscover that I value authentic connection with people I admire?

Why do I have to put my family through the consequences of these self-critical, controlling tendencies, just to rediscover that I value quality time with them?

Hey Life, your complexity is fucking exhausting.

This all leads me here. To this moment. On this plane, with my wife’s head on my shoulder, as she sleeps and the pilot announces our final approach.

I guess one way to look at it is…

Balance the stamina required for a Quest, with the effort required to find a Purpose.

I’ll have to remember, the purpose which helped me value my last decade dissolved before I realized it. The quest to find my next purpose started before I was ready. The amount of effort required to cultivate that new purpose has and will continue exceed my capability.

And yet…if I can connect with my sense of self, with the people I admire, and cut myself a break; maybe, when all is said and done, I will have had a positive impact, and more sunshine than rain on my skin.

Maybe I will have fulfilled my Quest for Purpose. Maybe that’s what Frank meant to have, “lived a life that’s full.”

End.

Epilogue: Two months and one very impactful week at the beach later, I feel like myself again. It’s good now, I’ll enjoy it. It will probably get bad again, but I’ll deal with the bad when that time comes.

Photo courtesy of the Author (c) 2024

~This has been Self-Focused Saturdays: Episode 1~

…holy smokes! It’s actually Saturday!

Notes:

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