Let Your Genius Emerge

We Need a First Aid Course for Depression!

January 31, 2022 Julia Bright Season 1 Episode 5
Let Your Genius Emerge
We Need a First Aid Course for Depression!
Show Notes Transcript

Depression has more than one cause or trigger. Many people are worn down and their energy gets depleted and silently they cry out for help! They need their community's support to be there in a non-judgemental way without giving unsolicited advice.
This episode's 35 minutes is intensely packed with  stories, useful coping strategies besides giving information on depression. It is not just helpful for people with depression but also beneficial for the ones that want to prevent it from happening.
Our website for more info is HumanlyGenius.com
Our phone number, where you can leave a comment is 1-631-371-3722.

Title: We need a First Aid Course for Depression!

Hello and welcome everyone, this is Julia Bright, your host at Let Your Genius Emerge podcast. Let me first shout out to our listener in Tokyo, Japan. I hope you are going to hear today’s show too. Thank you, for listening in Spain and in Hungary, The United States and of course, in Canada. You are giving me hope that what I do is worth keeping on doing! Please share our podcast with your friends too, even if you just share it with one person each, our community will double instantly! We are planning to start a newsletter in a few weeks on our website @ humanlygenius.com where we will write more on the topics we mention in the podcast. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, and I promise you will only get an email once a week that is readable in a minute and a half about a brief summary of what is going on with us. Then you can read more on the website newsletter page. I feel the pain of getting long promotional emails all the time and that is not our aim at all. 

Now we also have a phone number where you can leave a message and comment. You can find the number in the podcast info and on the website and with your permission, I can integrate your comment into the show.

Now that we have done our housekeeping, let’s start our subject for today. I am going to talk about depression. The title is We need a First Aid Course for Depression! Do you agree? I personally think that this subject needs to be taught in school so at least children would not hesitate when it comes to helping each other and it would not be treated as taboo anymore and as with a lot of new ideas, they could go home and educate their parents about it. This topic was requested by one of our subscribers and our patron as it is not just relevant but a very pressing problem for an increasing number of people. We decided to spend two episodes on this issue. First I will focus on the disorder itself, what it is and what we can do about it. We don’t need to be helpless and ask for medication right away and rely on a psychiatrist or psychologist only! Although it is hard to take charge when we feel down, we can still slowly take steps and become proactive. In the next episode I will zoom out and talk about the larger picture, why has it become such a great issue? The history of depression in the past 50 years or so, why it became an epidemic and what is the role of the family, the community and society, and its culture. Although some sadness and grief is part of our nature to process emotions that are triggered by negative events, depression, especially clinical depression is not innate, we did not carry this from 50 thousand years ago, not even from ten thousand years ago.

But that is next week’s topic.

Today I’d like to start with some examples. 

The first story was shared with me only, anonymously. Here is the way this person wrote it:

“I’m dealing with trauma and suffer from severe depression, anxiety and PTSD. Until recently I was working full time and by many I was considered to be completely healthy and high functioning and in a sense, from certain perspectives, I was. In social contexts, peer and manager reviews at work and family gatherings I did everything that everyone expected of me and what I understood as being”successful” in the eyes of the corporate and academic world. I excelled in university, a top performer at my job and also my friends would all describe me as fun and outgoing and smart and a hard worker. But I have suffered from these major afflictions for much of my adult life and have just never really been able to make strong headway despite all the investigation, doctors, medication, self-awareness programs or experiments. I am posting this anonymously because of the stigma around the topic. Hey, if my own family and friends don’t want to talk about it, you can pretty much understand what stigma is capable of doing.”

I can almost hear family members and friends saying: Just snap out of it! But you are so good, you can do it! Get up, do what you need to do and don’t think about negative things. Positive affirmations and active lifestyle, that is the remedy! Really?  Are your family and your friends there for you the way it counts, when you need them the most? I know why YOU don’t want to share any of your fears and feelings with them. You have a history of being judged and betrayed, belittled and not taken seriously. They may not have even listened to you all the way through, interrupting you by giving unsolicited advice, what they would do, what they want you to do, or if they just want you to ignore it, it will just pass and go away. As if.

That is when the jackal speaks telling what you have to, you should, or should not do.

These people have no idea about depression, and break the first rule: be there to listen and don’t give unsolicited advice.

Every one of us needs at least one person that we can talk to openly who listens without judging, who does not want to be smart and give advice, just help us come up with a solution. See, if we can talk about it out loud, then chances are we can figure out something for ourselves. The friend is there to listen, ask some strategic questions that can help steer us to the right direction. That’s what it means to be there for someone.

But they are not there for us the way we need them to be most of the time. 

No wonder many of us don’t turn to our family or our close friends.

Yes, there are other ways of help out there now.

There are free 24 hour hotlines, there is psychotherapy, psychologists to help you.

It is stunning though, don’t you think?

You need to call a stranger on the phone if you are at the end of your rope. That person will not know you, your situation, they will not even know your thoughts because they are distorted by your depressed mood and who knows where your negative thought patterns have taken you by then? 

Be there so next time someone will be there for you!

All right, I have a friend, I want to help her, what do I do besides listening to her? What if I just take her/him for a night out? That will raise their mood level.

Well they may say yes to you because they want to please you, but they won’t want to go and they won’t enjoy it. What’s worse, a night out usually involves some alcohol, and that is definitely not going to do any good for the person. After the night they might go down to even a lower mood level. Although they will desperately say to themselves that they should be doing something that will raise their mood, they should set goals. Are you hearing the jackal speaking “should”? What they need to do is try not to get lower in mood level and maybe raise their level by a point at a time. More than that is not achievable at that moment in time. 

In your files there is a person and a phone number there to call in case of emergency.

We need to have one person on speed dial in case of a low mood emergency. It isn’t that hard to listen and nod. Empathy is a skill that everybody can strengthen and does not necessarily come naturally to even girls. Strength is in understanding, guys, so challenge your cultural thinking!

The next story is about a student of mine. He was one of the brightest people I have ever seen, beside his brother, whom I also had the pleasure to teach in high school, in the ninety’s. They were reading classical literature, fiction and philosophy, playing the guitar. I found him very mature for his age. There was only one problem. He never really followed the curriculum. He could intelligently talk about anything but didn’t stick to the grade nine and ten syllabus, so his teachers failed him. He dropped out of high school and it wasn't because he wasn’t smart enough. I had some heated conversations over him with my colleagues, and they said that they can’t have someone in the class who doesn’t follow the rules. They had no idea how to nurture a talent. For years I visited the family and his mother sent me a message when he committed suicide at the age of 24. He had been suffering from depression for years, not being able to find his place in society. He orchestrated his suicide in a way that his final letter sent the police on a wild goosechace for weeks so they could not even identify him. His creativity sadly persisted.

His depression probably had genetic and environmental roots. 

Another major trigger can be social, interpersonal issues at the workplace. A friend of mine suffered from it lately, but she is not the only one. Over the years I heard many complaining quietly about the boss, how he treats subordinates, about the lack of training at work opposed to the demands, lack of proper communication and direct feedback. 

During the pandemic problems can compound greatly. My friend, who has a genetic disposition to depression, knew her family history and took care of herself, her diet, learned to meditate, and to be mindful. But then her father had dementia and she felt compelled to quit her job and take care of him and the whole family, day and night for years. Her family took her for granted, thinking that it is her job now to look after everybody’s needs. It is hard to take care of a person with dementia, they easily get anxious, irritated and develop different symptoms. But one thing is for sure: Neither the ill person, nor the family will remember to appreciate what the caregiver sacrifices for them. So her energy got depleted bit by bit by seeing the light going out from a person she and her family loved so much. She was conditioned by her culture that as a woman she should be the caretaker of the family and should not ask for help. Finally came the day when her father got hospitalized and soon died there. As she was grieving she was still taking care of her family and now she was back at her job too. First she felt relieved and happy about being able to work again but she never realized that only the scenery changed, she didn’t. She was the same person who wanted to care for everybody, and took on more than she was able to handle, especially in her depleted state. That is what led to depression. She needed to reclaim herself. She needed to remember who she was before she became a caretaker. It could have been when she was six or eight years old, when she was not yet told what a girl was supposed to be. She needed to remember what she wanted for herself, not for others. And she needed to let other people in the family and at work handle their own needs instead of her doing everything for them. She had to be reminded that she was dealing with adults, and nothing prevents them from looking after themselves! Let them finally become independent! This way she can become anything she wants to be, find herself. She does not have to be reduced by cultural expectations.

See, she was talking to herself the jackal way: I should, I shouldn’t, I have to. She herself left no room for anything else. 

In a work environment you will always find people, especially managers and supervisors who are really good at delegating work. Some women are really good at taking on more and more responsibilities, partially because it is harder for them to say no, and because they are conditioned to be caretakers. Then they feel pressured, overwhelmed and can’t find balance between family life, taking care of children and parents, and worklife. It will eventually cause trouble physically and mentally as well.

Work-related stress and a non-supportive environment is a common cause of depression. In Japan, a study linked depression at work particularly among male employees with a higher socioeconomic status.

So when you feel pressured at work, I would give you the same advice as when you have to give a public speech: imagine them in their underwear. If your boss or coworker is giving you a hard time or starts to bully you and you are choking not being able to say anything, just imagine them as toddlers, with their rattle toy in their hands throwing a tantrum! You can think to yourself: poor kid, and his poor mama! Will he ever grow out of it? This image can be so funny that you can ground yourself and be more and more confident. Rest assured, most of these people are trying hard to show their authority and strength because they are not sure of themselves at all. They are just projecting how  they want to be seen. You can consider what they are saying, you can pause, instead of reacting right away, they don’t like pause, then you might say You need this and this from me so for that to happen I need that information from you or from a coworker, more time to do research, or can we talk about pay raise?

You are a valued employee and don’t need to worry about your job if 1. You show up on time everyday, 2. You work during work hours and don’t spend time on personal social media and excessive smoking instead. 

The last example is  very much pandemic related. It started in the spring of 2020. I am glad this person shared her story with me so I can tell you about it. She was going to visit her dying mother early that spring but by the end of February 2020 it was obvious that Covid would be ending our normal way of life as we used to know it. All air travel ceased, so she called her mother every day to check on her. As she feared, her mother did not make it to summer. Her son, who suffered from mental illness could not take the isolation and psychosis set in. He was hospitalized. She felt she had lost her mother and son almost at the same time. Her grief was enormous as she knew her son would not even recognise  her for months. She tried to talk to her family about her grief as it was their grief as well but they didn’t help. During that spring her other son’s girlfriend moved in with them and she was glad to see another woman in the family. She hoped for a daughter and she thought she got one. But the girlfriend cooped up in their room and she didn’t come out very often. She didn’t talk and she didn’t take part in the house chores either. 

At the end of the summer our suffering friend finally could go back and take care of her mother’s funeral. She spent three weeks in the home she grew up in, this time all alone, sorting out everything, because by the end the house needed to be empty and ready to be transferred to the new owner. It would never be her home again. Nights in the house were awful for her, the days were different because old acquaintances came and talked to her. Meantime she still had the compassion to reach out to her son’s girlfriend who also had family troubles and she offered her empathy.

The shock again came when she was ready to fly home. Her son and his girlfriend demanded that she be quarantined in a hotel for 14 days before she went home. Another 14 days of isolation? How could she handle that? That is torture! The rest of the family agreed that she could isolate in her own room and use the bathroom and sanitize after herself. So that was settled, but not by the son and his girlfriend.  Just as she arrived home, they quietly left the house without saying goodbye and she didn’t see her son for months after that, and the girlfriend ever since. They accused her of being manipulative. All this experience pushed her into a two year long clinical depression that still has to be maintained by medication. 

What can we see from these examples? For one, most of the time more than one problem triggers depression. Things become too much, energy is depleted. The second problem is more critical: there is no community support there. No family to listen to us in need, no friends, just strangers whose job it is to be there if there is a crisis.

I just had another thought. I never ever heard or read about before-death-depression. I am talking about old people who retained all their faculties, they are aware of what is going on around them, and they know that they do not have much time left to live either because of a terminal illness or because of old age related complications. Most of them are not surrounded by family at this critical time, they might be in long term care or retirement home, or isolated at their homes. They wish they had dementia by then so they would not suffer from knowing that the end is coming. I think the exact moment of death is determined by when they give up on life. That is a sign of deep depression and rarely just letting go. I might be wrong, I haven’t heard any research done on this, there is only anecdotal evidence of what people say who were there with the dying persons. But what if nobody is there with the person? Who suffers for days or weeks prior to death and thinks about nothing else but death?

In a feel good society we are not allowed, and we are not allowing ourselves to pay attention to negative feelings. But they are in our head more and more and if we don’t deal with them, they will break us. We need our friends and we need time to process what  happened to us. We are not taught how to approach this. Not by our parents, not by school, however there is science behind it, how you can deal with difficult situations, how you can protect yourself by communicating directly or matter of factly, so guilt, and shame, would not crack your backs.

Some think depression is majorly a women’s issue, with PMS, Premenstrual syndrome, or PPD, postpartum depression, and it is a part of menopause. It gives the male part of society an excuse to invalidate women’s behavior or decisions in general and that gets me so frustrated because we women get doomed for life. Either it’s our hormones and then comes dementia. And then in between Or hysteria! Hysteria, that originates from the word “of the womb” when they thought the dysfunction of the uterus sent the women into uncontrollably and neurotically insane. This is why the removal of the uterus is still called hysterectomy. While it’s great to know the origins of words, I am absolutely frustrated by this prejudice that it implies and it still represents in our society. Don't be hysteric! Yeah!

Anyway, and There is SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder that does not have gender preferences.

But men can get depressed just as well and the sad truth is that children are diagnosed at earlier and earlier ages. I was talking about hormonal changes and PPD, postpartum depression. In the first year after their baby is born, 4% of fathers experience depression as well!

So how would you know if you are depressed or you are just going through stages of sadness or grief for example. First you might realize and identify how and when  you go through those stages of grief and loss of a job, a marriage, or a terminal illness diagnosis. First the shock and denial with disbelief and numb feelings, then pain and guilt, and you feel anger and start bargaining “If only I have…”, then the depressive stage is the quiet phase “Why go on? What am I without him or this and that” 

Then comes the upward turn, a more relaxed stage, a reconstruction and working through stage and finally the acceptance and hope.

Grief does have a depressive stage; it is just a normal part of grief if it is not prolonged.

So how do you feel when you are depressed? 

It is a mood disorder, so there is a major drop in your level of mood. On a scale of one to 10 you might feel 1 or 2. 

You have no interest in any activities you used to enjoy. You feel worthless and you are full of guilt. Your mind is buzzing with negative thoughts, you have a hard time concentrating. There are changes in your sleep pattern, either you sleep too much or you can’t sleep anymore. You are fatigued, you lack energy. Your weight might change because you stop attending for your own needs. You can either lose or gain weight.

So what can we do for ourselves?

One versatile tool is the CBT triangle I mentioned before. Imagine the three points of the triangle: at one point are your thoughts and images, at the other your actions or behavior, and at the third point your emotions and body sensations. These three points are connected and each affects the other, so arrows point both ways on each side. When you are depressed you ruminate, you have repeated thoughts about the past, the future, about negative events. You might have had a restless night so you are tired, you looked into the mirror and didn’t feel attractive, So you go down to the kitchen to finish the chocolate cake that was left from the weekend instead of having a proper breakfast. You can decide which point triggered the other one.

The second piece of advice is connected to the triangle, to your thinking. What are your core- beliefs?   

One piece of advice is to start a journal if you haven’t had one before. Write down sentences that reflect your beliefs about yourself, about others, about the world.

I am six foot tall. Kidding. That is not a core belief, that is a fact and not even about me.

People who are pessimistic most likely will have negative core beliefs and tend to have depression. 

I was talking about binary thinking in the last episode, how our culture teaches us to choose only between good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. Also we are taught to please our parents, our teachers, and our peers. This type of thinking plays a major role in depression. You create statements in your head about yourself, about people in general and about the world. “I am’ statements beliefs: about helplessness, like I’m weak, I’m a loser’ I’m trapped.

Or I am unlovable. I will end up alone, No one likes me

Or Feeling worthless: I am bad, I don’t deserve to live, 

And your beliefs about others: There is external danger: People can’t be trusted. You can’t count on anybody but yourself. 

And then your beliefs about the world: Nothing ever goes right. The world is dangerous. 

There are some Facts about core beliefs: 

People are not born with core beliefs - they are learned

Core beliefs are usually developed in childhood, or during stressful or traumatic periods in adulthood.

Information that contradicts core beliefs is often ignored.

Negative core beliefs are not necessarily true, even if they feel true.

Core beliefs tend to be rigid and long-standing. However they can be changed. 

Back to your journal. When you write down your beliefs about yourself, people in general and about the world, take a closer look at them! Try to find out where these beliefs originate from. Did you learn them from your parents, from church? What experiences taught you some of them? Do you realize how general these are and cannot apply to everything and everybody or every situation? That you most of all are labeling yourself? 

So try to recall a situation when you called yourself names, labeled yourself. What happened? So in that situation I was being weak because I was tired and didn’t know how to react. See, I was being instead of I was.

Can you stick with situations in your mind instead of generalizations? That would be the first step in changing your thinking.

The advice to not think bad thoughts is not going to work. Your brain cannot make the difference between do and don’t, just the basic thought. So either you say to yourself: don’t be weak! Or Be weak! The two are the same message to your brain. You need to change the message. We can spend more time in later episodes on this, it is part of Nonviolent communication, because you are constantly communicating with yourself!

So when you have dealt with your thoughts, you can write down your current behaviors. When you are depressed, you don’t do too much, so you can list all the things you used to enjoy but don’t anymore. Would you do any of them if you had company to do it with? It is a vicious cycle, the less you do, the less you are capable of doing while depressed. So how can you stop this spiraling? You can gather up your courage and call a friend, maybe go out for a coffee with her. If you have a hard time reading a book, start listening to an audiobook, half an hour at a time. It could be such an achievement to cut your nails and take a bath but then you will feel better. Remember, the goal is not to raise your mood level from 2 to 9 only a point at a time.

Third advice is you can set small goals for yourself. 

I will meditate 15 minutes a day. I will download an app and track it. 

However the so called SMART goal setting does not always work with depressive people.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Now that will not alway go well with depression. When I hear psychologists suggesting SMART goal setting to depressed people, I wonder if they really know who they are dealing with. It can be a drag to get out of bed in the morning. People suffering might avoid looking into the mirror, won't comb their hair, skip their meal, stare out the window, forget to pick up their medication, and go to bed at night without doing any housework at all. That is the reality. They have no motivation to do anything. That is when intervention is needed. 

Serotonin is a chemical messenger that is among other functions a mood stabilizer. It also helps develop healthy sleeping patterns. So when we talk about depression, serotonin levels might be raised by medication, but we can also add serotonin with lifestyle changes.

Here is a list of 11 things that can help raise serotonin levels naturally:

Well, talk about food first by eating Eggs, Tofu, Salmon, nuts and seeds, turkey, and fermented food. Avoiding sugar helps too. Adding vitamin B6 and increasing your exercise routine, exposure to the sun, and daily meditation practice will put you on track especially if you use it to prevent mental health issues. As I said, When you are in depression, you will not have the motivation and drive to structure your life and schedule all the good things that would be needed.

That is why we need our community, our social cushioning. Please educate yourself on how to be there silently for a loved one, how to slowly get them to know their real limits and help them to overcome their issues. Remember: They are not you, their issues are not yours, their lives are not yours, you cannot give advice on how you would approach the problem because they are not your problems. You need to be there and help the other person figure out what they need to do  for themselves. Also, make sure that they are not overburdened and still carrying other people’s issues and needs! This is the time when everybody needs to become independent and learn to take care of themselves so caretakers can do some selfcare too.

I would love to hear your story on depression! I promise, I wouldn’t pass it on, I just really care about your story. You can send me an email @LetYourGeniusEmerge@gmail.com.

And our question for today: What do you think about the idea of first aid for depression?

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I will post more information about this subject  on HumanlyGenius.com

We will release a new episode every Tuesday by 9 am Eastern Standard Time, that is 3 PM Central European Standard Time. 

In our next episode I will continue this topic, as I said it before I will zoom out and talk about the larger picture, why it became an epidemic. In the history of depression, especially in the last 50 years or so, and what is the role of the family, the community and the society, our culture in it.

If you are interested in any of the subjects, especially the assertive non-violent communication that is just so important in communicating within yourself as with other people and ESL coaching, send me a message on HumanlyGenius.com or send me an email  letyourgeniusemerge@gmail.com

Don’t forget, the next episode is next Tuesday! And Don’t forget: If you like our podcast, share it with at least one person so our community can grow. Think, explore, create, communicate! Be yourself and try to be the best you can Goodbye for now.