Depression Talk

I haven’t been to a Recovery meeting in quite a while, but I do look over the literature every now and then. One of the key concepts is spotting. This is when you notice your symptoms of your mental illness and can recognize that you are not going insane, or the sky is not falling — you are just having symptoms. This all helps you to calm down and get a better perspecitive in how to handle daily activities (called “trivialities” in Recovery-speak).

An Example From Today

I have to always accompany my Mom when grocery shopping. She’s had several surgeries and just this autumn had two mini-strokes. I also think she likes to take me along so I feel useful.

Anyway, it’s hard for Mom to walk. This is one thing I’m still good at. So, if she forgets an item, I run back the seven asiles or so to get it while she carries on. So, she asked me to go check for curry paste and I did so, stopping to pick up a couple of items on the way.

And then I couldn’t find my Mom in the grocery store. There I was, 39 years old with two college degrees, holding onto a box of tea, a jar or tortilla chips and a jar of guacamole and I had lost my Mom. My thoughts started to whirl.

“My God — will I never grow up? Did Mom spontaneously combust? Is she on her way to the hospital while I rush up and down every asile over and over again? She has all of the money! I left my purse at home — !”

The panic began to build.

Imagination On Fire

Right, I took a breath, stayed still a moment and took stock of the situation. No one was acting abnormally, so that means Mom must be acting just like any other shopper and is not doing anything alarming. My imagination is on fire again.

Losing your mother in the grocery store when you are 39 years old is not dangerous. It’s embarassing, granted, but it’s not dangerous. I spotted a symptom of panic. It doesn’t mean that anything worth panicing over is actually going on.

Anyway, I finally found Mom and she said, “I saw you run by twice and tried to flag you down, but I’m too tired and thought I’d finally catch up to you when you ran out of steam.”

I got to keep the guacamole, chips and tea anyway. Never did find the curry paste.

Depressives have trouble with directions, especailly if they are directions to finding a new place like a doctor’s office, a friend’s house or a job interview. The reasons for the trouble are:

• Trouble concentrating
• Fear of messing up and getting hopelessly lost
• Thoughts that the person/website that gave you the directions was wrong

All of these are normal symptoms of depression. If you’re not sleeping well (common for depressives) than that just compounds the problem.

But, you can’t spend your entire life in your home. And besides, the mental and physical activity will be good for you, besides the self-esteem boost of actually finding the new place. Here are some tips on how to find a new place when you have depression or the symptoms are flaring up.

Double Check Directions When Possible

If you get the directions off of MapQuest or another webiste, actually phone the place or a trusted loved one who has been to the place and ask them their advice on how to get there. And, do the same thing if someone gives you directions. Check it against MapQuest (or wherever). If they are mainly alike, then chances are the directions are good.

Have The Directions Wrtitten Down For Both Ways

Beause you’ll be stressed and nervous, you may be more prone to getting directions like right and left mixed up. For example, in the days before I telecommuted, I was guarenteed to have a migraine start immediately after a job interview — even if I got there in time and the interview went well. It just never failed. Perhaps my body gets tense for so long that when it’s over, it finally falls apart like the car at the end of The Blues Brothers.

So, I have two sheets of paper with directions on how to get to the new place — and then directions on how to get back home. Even if I was desperate or flush enough to get a cab home, the cabbie would never know where I lived and I’d have to give him directions, anyway. It just saved me some stress.

When Driving, Use A Clipboard

In the days when my eyes were good enough to drive, I would write the directions in big block capitals and stick them to a clipboard and lay it on the seat next to me. Sure beats trying to interpert a map.

Hope this helps.

One of the most upsetting aspects to depression is that you feel a complete loss of control. Everything is the most horrible thing that ever happened in your life and you are incurable. This sense of being completely out of control is an illusion caused by depression, extreme stress or general anxiety disorder (GAD).

In 1937 (long before Prozac), Austrian doctor Abraham A, Low develpoed a method by which the patient could identify a true emergency from their symtpms. This eventually became called Recovery or “the Recovery Meathod”. He helped start an international organization called Recovery, Inc. (but is now called Revovery International).

There is some squabble over whether Dr. Low predated other cognitive-behavior therpaies. When his works were published, they were generally ignored by the psychatric community. Dr. Low was appreciated by his pateints, but not from his on peers.

Anyway, the group finally has a channel on YouTube. Here’s their first video:

Recovery (or RI) is NOT a substitute for doctors or medication. You will still suffer relapses every now and then, but that’s normal.

Basically, all you do is learn to take a deep breath and get some perscpective of everyday events that can really get under your skin. For example, say you’re convinced you can never be cured. That would be called “imagination on fire” — you really don’t have evidence that you can’t be cured. Then you know that you are exhibiting a symptom — the fear of not being curable — and your fears are not facts.

There’s a lot more to it than that. You’re encouraged to go to weekly or monthly meetings because it gets you out of the house and socializing with others as well as learning when to spot fears that you mistake as facts.

Also, just a quick announcement that in addition to Dealing With Headaches, I’ve taken on another 451 Press blog, YouTube Digger. I’ll try to keep the depression-related YouTube clips to this site, though. Well, I’ll try, anyway. I’m not promising anything.

The old cliche is that you have to have some sort of a tortured soul before you can product a great work of art. This is the excuse some people give in order to go on a drinking bender or do a lot of drugs, because they will get the “inspiration” they need in order to create AHT (as opposed to mere art). Depressives don’t need the drink or drugs in order to be miserable — yet we’re usually crippled by the fear of making a mistake in order to get around to being creative.

The Good News

You don’t have to be depressed in order to be creative. Being creative just doesn’t mean making music, painting or writing a novel. Cooking is definately shows artistic talent, as well as interior decorating, tending a garden, sewing, rearranging the furniture or figuring out how to fix the leaky sink with nothing except duct tape and a prayer. You can be in any kind of mood or state of mental health to accomplish any and all of this.

The Bad News

Secondly, it’s going to be inevitable that you will make mistakes when creating anything. Sometimes the mistakes can be therapuetic. But you are under no obligation to make a universally acclaimed masterpiece every time you want to make something. Even scribbling on your paper (or ranting on a blog) can be a great source of cheap, effective emotional release. It helps to take youir mind off of the usual tornado of thoughts that depression can give you.

For Pete’s Sake

Successful singer/songwriter/musician Peter Gabriel (once of Genesis, then solo and not a depressive, despite some of his songs) often scoffs at interviewers who insit that he posesses any special talents. He claims that any success he had is due to hard work and slogging it out rather than any innate talent. If he wasn’t successful, he wouldn’t survive. Simple as that.

In a 1986 interview with Musician magazine he said, “If you put a gun to someone’s head and tell them that they will be dead in a year’s time unless they make a great work of art, they will suddenly be inspired to do so.”

Hope this helps.

Remember Mom’s friend who tried to commit suicide and had to be hopsitalized? She’s going to be receiving shock treatment now. This is nothing new to her — she also had shock treatment 27 years ago. Although Mom’s friend is convinced that nothing will ever help her, the odds are that she is wrong and shock therapy may be exactly what she needs. Over 100,00 people get shock treatment every year, according to MSNBC quoting from the National Mental Health Association.

What It’s Not

Whenever anyone says “shock treatment”, what immediately pops into your mind? It was any scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, wasn’t it? Even though I’ve talked to people who had shock therapy and were able to manage life very well aftewards, thank you very much, I STILL think of a comotose Jack Nicholson whenever I hear anyone say “shock therapy.”

That’s not what shock therapy, or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), is all about, although the jury is still out whether ECT can cause permanent brain damage.

What Is It All About, Then?

Yup — you still get a jolt of electric juice to the noggin, but not in the massive doses given to Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Why do this to someone (insert your own joke here)? This triggers a grand mal seizure in the body. Now, a grand mal seizure is painful, so a patient always gets anethesia or some kind of painkiller before the power is turned on.

Also, it’s illegal to just subject anyone to electroconvulsive therapy. The patient has to sign papers to allow it. Also, the patient has to under go a round of antidepressants first. There are people with depression, schizophrenia or other mental illnesses that will not respond to any medication. It’s for these people that ECT is sometimes recommended.

You also get a basic chesk up and have to have blood tests done in order for the doctors to know whether your body is healthy enough for shock treatment.

You get all padded up, get a heart monitor on and the anesthesia kicks in so you are asleep. The juice is turned on and the seizure lasts from half a minute to a whole minute.

You already have a hard enough time trying to get through life with clinical depression. Why make it any harder on yourself? Here are some suggestions about activities to avoid, otherwise you may find your symptoms of depression intensifying. Enjoy.

• Don’t count the number of dead animlas by the side of the road (not unless that’s part of your job).
• Don’t watch a documentary called America’s Lost H-Bomb right before going to bed. You won’t sleep for days, wondering about how anyone could loose an 8,000 pound H-bomb for over 50 years.
• Don’t call anyone from Scotland “Scotch”. They hate that. Of course, you’ll be knocked unconscius before you can have a chance to apologize.
• Don’t decide to clean the bathroom when anyone in the home has the flu.
• In a similar vein, don’t clean the floors of your home on a rainy day if you have a dog. Not unless you enjoy muddy pawprints. Otherwise, never mind.
• Don’t watch any of these movies.
• If you are an American with a Bachelor’s in English and you move to England, don’t tell the natives you have a degree in English. You won’t be believed. Ever. Not even if you bring the diploma with you.
• Don’t bang your head against a brick wall. (As George Carlin said, “Well, some people need practical advice”.)
• Don’t teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
• Don’t rack your brains trying to remember where you first heard, “Don’t teach a pig to sing. It wates your time and annoys the pig.” Definitely wasn’t EB White.
• Don’t go out to eat, to the cinema or go shopping on Christmas Day. The employees there do not want to be there and will be really annoyed to see you. Not unless you come prepared with gifts for them, like chocolate, peppermint sticks or money. Then, they’ll at least plaster that fake smile on their faces. Ho-ho-ho.
• Don’t make your bed unless company is coming over and will, for some reason, enter your bedroom. Life is too short.
• Don’t write a list entitled, “Some Things Depressed People Shouldn’t Do” if you already have depression.

Lucid dreams can greatly benefit someone with major depression. However, lucid dreams are not an overnight cure.

(Sorry. Runs and ducks for cover.)

Anyway

Lucid dreams are special dreams when you realize that you are dreaming. Some people describe it as “waking up” while still in the dream. Some people are born being able to lucid dream, others need to learn it. Some others (like me) were born with it, forgot how to do it as I got older and had ro re-learn the process all over again.

The Benefits

There are many benefits for a depressive to learn the art of lucid dreaming. Here are just a few:

• They’re fun. In my lucid dreams, I’ve been able to fly, talk to God (who was drunk at the time, so it wasn’t much of a conversation), ride wild horses and have romantic encounters with Peter Gabriel.
• They’re cheap therapy. Antidepressants and other medications for mental illness alone will not make you feel reasonably normal. In order for the antidepressants to help do the voodoo they do, you need to be very aware of your thinking and if you constantly beat yourself up in your thoughts or go to extremes.
• They help give you a sense of perception. It’s very hard to get an overall picture of how your life is because depression puts all these painful bits in the way. It’s like trying to get around at night with dark sunglasses on. Alll you see is the darkness.
• You can safely confront your nightmares. And see that they’re not so bad. I’ve even died in my dreams — no big deal.

Recognizing Dreams

Unless you have a really good memory, you need to keep a dream diary or journal for a couple of months. In this way, you get to recognize certain patterns in your dreams. These will be people, objects or situations that come up again and again. For example, many people report that words on a written page blur and change each time you look at it. For others, they may see clocks running backwards or suddenly leaping ahead hours when only seconds have gone by.

It can be hard to distinquish lucid dreams from real life. But if the laws of physics go out the window, I know it’s a dream (or really good drugs). For example, in the waking world, if I unplug a television, it stops working. But in the dream world, I unplug a television and it still keeps on working. Sometimes I then become fixated on how to turn the damn telly off, missing the fact that the telly is not importnat because I’m dreaming.

In this way, we can see the unplugged tellys in our waking life and realize that they are only distractions from the big picture.

“I know why you’re depressed,” someone inevitably says when they somehow discover you are clincially depressed and single. “You just need to meet a nice girl/guy. That’ll cure your depression in no time! Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!”

Going into the December holiday season, you may have to brace yourself for a lot of this if you are single or not in a committed relationship. I’m this < => close to telling people that I’m gay just to shut them up about me not being married or in a long-term relationship that could possibly lead to health benfits and tax breaks.

A Lot Of Married People Are Depressed

Being in a relationship has no bearings on your depression — no matter what kind it is. This is because depression is a medical condition and not a choice. No other person is going to be able to help you magically cure your depression with love, sex and a certain amount of prezzies.

In fact, being in a relationship can make your depression a lot worse.

Case In Point

I was once in an abusive relationship. It was so bad that I finally went to seek medical treatment for my major depression. After a year on Prozac, my lover wanted me to drop it because he thought it wasn’t doing me any good. Perhaps this was because I was beginning to fight back.

A year and a half after taking the Prozac, I finally realized that this guy was a looser and I left. However, that relationship was so traumatic that I highly doubt I’ll ever get into a relationship ever again.

Single And Lovin’ It!

Having a lover is highly overrrated. You don’t have to have one to be happy. Although it’s not good to isolate yourself from other people, you don’t have to date them to help be supportive have healthy relationships with them. It’s no shame to be an adult and live with your parents (unless your parents are paying all of the bills).

You can still be a vital member of your family and community without having to conform to the schedule and whims of a lover. Instead of just concentrating your energiues on raising your own biological children, your whole family, community or charity work becomes your legacy. Heck, once I stopped dating, I was able to run my own freelancing business.

It is possible to be single, happy and have depression.

Hi, all. I’ll give you an advance warning — I’m curently getting over an attack of the flu, so this post might be a bit wackier than usual. But, as we barrel along with flu season, an important question comes to mind — should you take your meds with an upset stomach? These medicines cost enough as it is — you really don’t want to waste them by tossing them back up.

Don’t fool yourself — as soon as your meds get in the least bit wet, they’re usless. Trust me — I once tried to get a fluoxetine capsule out of my vomit because it wasn’t discolored in any way. But it still dissolved in my fingers. Once down the hatch, there’s no going back.

Call Your Doctor

If you do wake up with the flu and feel queasy but haven’t vomited yet, if you can, call your doctor or therapist to ask if it’s okay to skip a dose. I always seem to get sick on my doctor’s day off, so I have to wing it.

Know Your Meds

The two prescription medicines I have to take everyday are fluoxetine (for depression) and verapamil (for migraine prevention). I’ve been taking fluoexetine since April, 2003. This is more than enough time for me to not the quirks of this drug on my system. Skipping a couple of days is not going to mess me up. But if I skip for a week, then I’m in trouble and start to think suicidal thoughts again.

But I have only been taking verapamil since the spring. I don’t know what would happen to me if I missed a couple of days of it. So, I decided to wait until my stomach calmed down before taking verapamil.

Sometimes, You Have To Experiment

Please keep in mind that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the Internet. I’m also only talking about depression medicines and verapamil. With some classes of medications — like insulin — you don’t have a choice. Take it, no matter what gymnastics your stomach is doing.

But sometimes you can’t get a hold of a doctor or therapist about your own meds when you have an upset stomach. In these cases, sometimes all you can do is experiment. Cross your fingers, swallow the meds (or however you take them) and note the results.

Hope this helps.

Did they really need to do a study on how many college-age Americans have personailty disorders? I think we already knew the results to this one. According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the New York Psichiatric Institute, every one in five college students has a personality disorder to the extent that it screw up their ability to try and lead a normal life.

College age students studied had ages ranging from 19 - 25. (And yes, you can start college or uni much younger or older than that). The study interviewed 5092 college kids in order to get their findings. The interviews were done in 2000 and 2001 and apparantly the kids must have talked a long time, because the findings only came out this week. The study only looked at college kids. So, the study doesn’t mean the one in five Americans have personality disorders (which may be mistakenly implied), just one in five college age kids.

What’s a Personailty Disorder?

There is a lot of quibbling over just what constitutes a personality disorder and I’ll admit up front my opinion — if you are alive, you probably have a personailty disorder. Here’s the Mayo Clinic’s definition of a personality disorder:

“Personality disorder is a general term for a type of mental illness in which your ways of thinking, perceiving situations and relating to others are dysfunctional.”

The study included a variety of mental conditions under the heading “personality disorders”. These include bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, alcoholism or drug abuse. There is some debate in medical and social care circles as to whether alcoholism or drug abuse is a personality disorder, but the study includes them. I’d consider alcholics and drug abusers to be mentally ill, but then again, I’m not a doctor (but I am mentally ill).

The Practical Upshot

The finding of so many young Americans with personality disorders isn’t what’s disturbing. It’s the study’s findings than only about 25% of college kids with these problems actually go get help. It seems a lot of the kids didn’t get help because they didn’t want to be branded as crazy.

I remember college. It was the one place where you never had to worry about being crazy because everyone else was, too.

All kidding aside, most college campuses (even community colleges) have counseling services free or low cost for their students. The good news is that at least there is someone for college-age kids to talk to. You can also call 1-800-SUI-CIDE or 1-800-273-TALK for someone to talk to if you don’t go to college.

Getting bullied is inevitable, whether you have depression or not. For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to define bullied as “someone or something giving you a hard time.” You can be bullied by people such as school mates, co-workers, employers, businesses, Internet trolls, family. You also can be bullied by intangible entities like poverty, injustices and chronic illnesses such as depression.

Those School Yard Bullies

Think hard about your days at school when you were bullied. If you weren’t bullied, then you never went to school. If it wasn’t the other kids beating you up literally and metaphorically, it was the teachers, the cschool administration or the parents of your classmates.

Those days weren’t fun, but you survived. You learned how to deal with bullies in your own way. These ways could be:

• Act far more damaged than you already are and work on the sympathy of others
• Ignore them, when possible
• Get a bigger friend to hang around with
• Suffer quietly until graduation and then become a professional freelance writer and complain about them for money (HA! HA!)
• Fight back

This is the same strategy you can use to combat depression in your day to day life. You get sympathy from as many as you possibly can, and then fight back by getting together good allies like doctors, medications and good food. Thinking about how you survived your encounters with your childhood bullies can help give you encouragement, because if you handled that, you can handle just about anything.

Wow — I guess the bullies at school were actually good for me in a way. But I still want to punch them right in the mouth. But I can’t. But I can take that anger and use it for other means to help my mental health.

Those Other Means

There are many things you can do with the anger you feel about being bullied — whether it’s by people, circumstances or a chronic illness like depression. What you don’t want to do is take the anger out on yourself. You did not do anything to deserve being bullied — we just all get bullied (even bullies get bullied). Use the anger to:

• Clean something
• Create something
• Learn something
• Chop firewood (preferably, if you have a wood stove)
• Listen to other people’s problems
• Do charity work

Hope this helps.

One of the reasons why people with depression adamatly do not want to take medication is because they do not want their money going to fund Big Pharma. These medications include antidepressants, anti-seizure medications and anti-psychotics. Big Pharma (and even Little and Medium Pharma) doesn’t help its own image by some of it’s spending decisions.

But your mental healh is far more important than making a political or social statement. Get better first, then try to do the activism thing later.

Hard Lesson To Learn

If you’ve read more than three posts of my other 451 Press blog, Dealing With Headaches, you know that I’m not exactly a cheerleader for the pharmaceutical industry. But they do make medication that can save lives — including yours. Currently, I’m on generic Prozac. All it does for me is regulate my appetite and my sleep cycles — but that’s enough! (Please keep in mind that not all people react well to Prozac, so it may not work for you).

I didn’t go on Prozac until 2003. I’ve had major depression since the womb. I should have been on Prozac as soon as it was available (yes — I’m old. I remember when ibuprofen was brand spanking new). But I stubbornly refused all medications for depression until 2003, after many suicide attempts, going homeless and getting beaten to a pulp by a man I ran away fromhome for. One of the reasons I did was because of my belief that Big Pharma is evil, so if I took meds they made, I’d participate in the evil.

Just take the meds. Please.

Besides, Big Pharma may be evil, but it’s not unchangeable. Just because of past evils does not mean that it will ALWAYS be evil. If you have to play mind games in order not to feel guilty about taking the antidepressants or other meds, by all means, do so.

Suggested Mind Games

If you believe in Hell, then that’s where they’re going. Let God juge them and take the meds, knowing you’re going to Heaven and they to Hell.

If you believe in karma, same thing applies, only without the burning in eternal fire part.

Or, you can beleive that by getting better, you will be able to write your political leaders demanding change, writing articles and blog posts, participating in discussions, not buying Big Pharma stocks and one day, they will see the light that you have been holding out to them.

Play any mind game you have to — just take the meds.

Mom got a frantic phone call this afternoon. Her friend of about twenty years was calling from the hospital, after a failed suicide attempt. Her friend had been increasingly isolating herself from others — even buying a house far away from everyone she knew — and Mom did tell her that she was concerned for her well being. Her friend has severe depression.

Mom’s friend asked my Mom to contact her relatives in Ohio to come visit her while she was in the hopsital. Mom did so, telling complete strangers that their family member near Philadelphia had once again tried to commit suicide by trying to jump off a house roof and had to be taken to the hospital in handcuffs.

(No, I don’t quite understand that, either, but I’m not sure I really want to know.)

Not Your Fault

Mom says she feels as if she should be doing more to help her friend in the hopsital, but really, there just isn’t anything she can do. When someone you cares for tries to commit suicide, you naturally feel some degree of guilt. Party of it is survivor’s guilt and part of it is just the confusion and upheaval that such news of a failed sucide attempt brings.

Also, you feel bad because the situation is totally out of your control. When someone you care for tries to commit suicide, it’s not your fault. It is your fault if you completely ignore them when they ask you for help during their recovery.

Signs of Suicide

Although Mom did talk to her friend about her isolation, the suicide attempt still seemed like a bolt from the blue. Mom’s friend did not act in a way that let her feelings of suicide show — except for choosing more and more to stay by herself, surrounded by people who didn’t know her at all.

What could Mom do — force her friend to get help when her friend didn’t want it, just because she moved far away and stayed home every night instead of going to the movies? So, if you think you should have done more to help your loved one who tries to commit suicide, take a deep breath.

You did all you could.

When you have depression, the last thing you feel like doing is sticking up for yourself in any way, shape or form. You don’t have the energy to engage in any confrontation. You probably want to do everything you can so you can quickly get back to bed. You also feel as if it would be hopeless to be assertive in any way, since the world sucks, so why bother?

It’s hard to argue with those powerful feelings, but you do have to bother. One little victory today can help prove to yourself that you can make your life better through your own actions.

The Rescue Fanatasy

Believe me, I still indulge in this fanatsy from time to time. In this fantasy, you are the best friend or lover of a perfect person who can right all of the wrongs in your life. Although many women have this fantasy, many men have it, too. There seems to be a collective fantasy in the world that some sudden scientific discovery will take care of global warming once and for all, without us having to lift a finger.

People with depression don’t have any kind of rescue fantasy because we are lazy. We have it because our depression constantly tells us that we are helpless and hopeless and therefore unable to rescue ourselves. After battling depression all of my life, I still have those thoughts of, “I’m useless,” going through my head. It’s not exactly a rousing battle call. Not many family crests have the logo “USELESS” emblazoned over them.

So, when you keep thinking that you are useless often enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You do become useless because you’re convinved that no matter what you do, you’ll fail at it, so what’s the point of trying?

Being a Bitch

I’ve left an abusive relationship. I run my own freelance business and have run into deadbeat clients more times than I’ve had hot showers. And I have major depression. In order to survive, I’ve learned to ignore the voices in my head and stick up for myself. I am then called a bitch. Well, sometimes you have to be a bitch in order to get things done.

In order to stick up for yourself, just do it immediately. Don’t stop to agonize if you’re going to offend anyone or if you’re going to mess up somehow. That’ll make you a victim every time. Once you get one victiory sticking up for yourself, you can draw on that happy memory for strength when you have to stick up for yourself the next time.

Hope this helps.

I live with my Mom but my Dad and my stepmother live in the next town. Dad takes me out for breakfast every couple of weeks. Mom and Dad divorced when I was 16, but both parents were homebodies. They didn’t take business trips, gave up vacations in order to send me to a good school and were basically “there” for me. I always kept in contact with Dad all through my life and now, at 38, I was bent over French Toast and mentioned, “I stayed up until one in the morning watching the election. Wasn’t it great?”

And then discovered that my Dad was and is a conservative Republican.

Whoopsie.

How Didn’t I Know?

After having more or less steady contact with my father for 38 years, you think I would’ve somehow picked up on the fact that he was Republican. But I didn’t. I went through these 38 years being absolutely positive that he was a liberal to moderate Democrat. Why did I assume that?

Part of it was probably due to Dad being somewhat quiet about subjects like religion or politics, although he could be incredibly argumentive about things like unions, saving the whales and helping the environment (of which he is all for). But mostly, I didn’t know because of my depression.

You Get A Little Self Obsessed

With any type of depression, it’s very hard to get the big picture of things. You make assumptions and assume that there can’t be any change to those assumptions. This is one reason why people with depression often don’t go get help — because they are convinced that they can’t be helped.

When I look back on my political inclinations, I just assumed I got them from my parents. They pushed me in one direction and then let me go and I chose to keep toddling down the path of a liberal Democrat. Because depression makes you a tad self-obssessed, you just assume that everyone in your inner circle has the same opinions you do.

In Conclusion

When you have depression — or go to breakfast with a parent — don’t take anything for granted. You’ll still probably put your foot in your mouth, but don’t take anything personally. After a few minutes of staring over the food plates, we laughed, had a bit of a talk and laughed some more.