Disrupting Depression's Negative Feedback Loop

[Content note: depression]

Recently I went through a spot of depression. I’m not sure if I’d call it “An Episode Of Clinical Depression” or not; when you have a personality that already meets several of the diagnostic criteria for depression and you’ve had it since your earliest memories, it can be hard to tell what is or isn’t “An Episode Of Clinical Depression.” So, I don’t really care what I call it.

The whole thing seemed to draw on a few of the recurring themes in my life: I Cannot Date Like A Normal Person; Everything Good In My Life Is Over; I Will Never Have A Real Career Or Any Money; and, my personal favorite, There Is Nothing Redeeming About Me Except My Writing Ability. (Make a note of these; they’ll be on the exam.)

Of course, objectively, everything was going pretty well for me this winter. I have great friends in NYC that I see once a week or more. School stuff was going fine. I love New York. I have a no-longer-very-new partner that I like very much and whose only significant drawback is having the misfortune of not living in New York. (Alas, not everyone can be so lucky as me.) The fact that I managed, in light of all this, to be entirely convinced of my own failure in every conceivable department (while I remained confident of my writing skills, I berated myself endlessly for underutilizing them) was the first sign to me that something was once again significantly off in my brain.

Depression is really nothing but a huge negative feedback loop. The worse I felt, the more I became convinced that I have nothing of value to offer other people as a friend, partner, or anything else. I found that I could barely stand messaging with friends online (something that’s normally my lifeline) because I felt like I had nothing to say. People would ask how my life is or what’s up or how I’m doing or whatever and I had no way to answer that question. My life is bad. Nothing is up. I’m doing shitty. And you?

My various attempts to talk about the depression itself (only when people asked, of course) generally got nowhere. Either they would be like “That really sucks, I’m sorry :(” and the conversation would end there (as it should–I don’t want to force anyone to listen to this) or they would attempt to fix me and that would fail and there would be frustration all around. A few people would listen patiently and then say very little and I had the distinct sense of over-stepping, and so I tried not to ever do it again.

To make matters even worse, I couldn’t stand hearing about their lives, either. Hearing about someone going on a date or otherwise doing romance-/sex-related things became a literal depressive trigger. One time I ended up going back and forth between crying and just being miserable for the rest of the day because someone told me that someone else we know went on a date. Not because I begrudged them their happiness at all, but just because I was entirely convinced that I would never go on a date again because for whatever reason I can’t handle going on dates. (Long story. In sum: introversion.) I also hated hearing about job-related success because I was (and remain) convinced that I will never in my entire life have a job I like OR a job that gives me enough money. I’m not even talking both, mind. Either/or. But that’s also a long story.

So, since I couldn’t talk about my own life and I could only listen to other people talk about their lives as long as they weren’t happier with those lives than me, that left me with…not a lot of conversation topics. (My other mode is RAGE ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE!, but I’m only okay with doing that when someone specifically starts a conversation with RAGE ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE! Otherwise I assume nobody gives a fuck.) And thus I ended up largely avoiding conversations. And that only made me more and more convinced that I’m broken and wrong and cannot interact with other people like a normal fucking human being, which only exacerbated the depression, which only made me more and more convinced–and so on. There was even a point when I hit rock-bottom and made a list of ways in which I’m a total worthless failure compared to one of my friends and I came up with 21 reasons. That is a lot of ways to fail. And I could’ve probably kept going.

Sometimes there is no rhyme and reason to any of this. I remain hopeful that someday researchers will understand exactly how and why it happens and how to stop it, but for now, the depressive feedback loop continues ad nauseum–until it’s suddenly interrupted. What it takes to interrupt it is something that varies from person to person. For some it’s drugs or therapy (drugs worked that way for me once a long time ago), for some it’s getting out of a situation that’s become intolerable, for some it’s finding a way to make a situation tolerable, for others it’s totally random.

For me, it was reconnection. Everything suddenly flipped around on a random day when a friend saw a sad tweet of mine and offered to listen if I wanted to talk. Knowing this friend is struggling with depression too, I told them a little bit about it and they responded kindly and helpfully, neither trying to fix me nor leaving it at “sorry, that sucks.” We didn’t talk for long, but it was enough to disrupt the depressive feedback loop. (It was also enough to make me realize that one of my major mistakes this entire winter has been attempting to discuss depression with people who do not have it. Of course that’s not going to go anywhere. They can’t possibly have any idea what the fuck I’m prattling on about.)

That day I started talking to more people. People I hadn’t talked to much for a few weeks or months, or that I’d been talking to a little bit not very authentically. I let myself believe that I am the sort of person who actually talks to people long enough to become that person again. And the more I felt like a competent and sociable person who has positive traits, the less I got insecure and anxious when people talked about their own accomplishments, and the more I was able to show genuine happiness for them, and the more I felt like a competent and sociable person who has positive traits.

And that evening, I found out that two of my closest friends are moving to New York this summer. These are the kind of friends that I feel comfortable asking to hang out when I’m feeling down, the kind of friends I’d invite to my shitty little apartment, the kind of friends I don’t need a “reason” to go see. The kind of friends that my other local friends will eventually become, but not yet.

Already the huge city felt less lonely.

Later that night I took a hot shower because why not. I could hear my phone pinging with messages from my friends. The bathroom window was open because the city was finally unfurling from its long frozen sleep, and the steam from the shower was billowing out the window into the darkening sky. I’ve often felt a strange nostalgia and comfort standing at this spot, and that night I finally realized why: my grandma’s apartment in Israel is the only other one I’ve spent lots of time in that has a bathroom window, and for a moment I felt like I could almost be back in my first home again.

The second I realized that, I suddenly knew that everything would be okay again.

To be sure, I knew that there would still be awful nights after this one and that it would probably take a long time to be as happy and hopeful as I was during my senior year of college. But every time in the past that I’ve gotten that unmistakeable “it’ll be okay” feeling, it was the beginning of a long but steady trek up and out of the ditch I’d found myself in.

I recently saw the movie Frozen (yes, just recently). A lot of things resonated with me in that movie, but in particular I liked the theme of connection. In the movie, Elsa tries to hide her magical talent (and, by extension, her entire self) from everyone around her, even the little sister she loves, in order to keep them safe from the magic and to keep it a secret. That to me sounded a lot like a metaphor for depression, whether or not it was intended to be one. I also go to certain lengths to keep people from seeing how miserable I sometimes am*, and I also do this in order to “protect” them from worrying about me, from the frustration of being unable to help, and from whatever mild or severe drop in mood they may experience upon exposure to me. Like Elsa, I ultimately fail at this.

Elsa discovers in the end (spoiler alert) that the only way to prevent her gift from consuming her and everyone around her is through connection with others, through being close to people she loves and experiencing the positive emotions that brings. Likewise for me, there is no relief from depression without connection. Locking myself away in a tower makes for a good fairytale, but not so much for a recovery.

But that’s where my story diverts from the Frozen metaphor. There is no turning my depression into a wonderful force for good that makes a big happy ice skating rink for all the villagers and a cute snowman who talks and a beautiful ice palace. I have always resisted the societal imperative to turn all adversity into a “blessing in disguise.” While I certainly learned useful things from the experience of being depressed, that doesn’t mean that depression itself has positives, at least not for me. If you’d like to view yours that way, you are of course welcome to.

For all the fuss I make about how I can’t do this or that or I totally fail at this or that (I have basically decided that I am never going on a “date” again and I have also given up on trying to find a summer internship because they’re all unpaid and I’m fucking tired of paying for public transit and for lunch every day without being paid for my goddamn work), I’m actually improving in all sorts of ways. My writing’s never been better. I’ve started writing for the Daily Dot, which demands a level of confidence I did not previously have. I’ve been starting more conversations with people online, which I don’t usually do (especially not while depressed).

And, for the first time ever, I’ve written a blog post that’s purely about myself and my life and I don’t even have the slightest urge to put a big disclaimer at the top about how this is a personal post and you probably shouldn’t read it.

That’s right, I actually don’t give a fuck if you read this post and think it’s a waste of your time. Too bad, I guess. 🙂

Now that I’ve gone all meta, I’ll just say this: this is not an advice post. Please don’t leave me angry comments about how suggesting that you talk to your friends more isn’t going to help. If you’re going through something that may or may not be “An Episode Of Clinical Depression,” please do whatever makes the most sense to you or seek advice from a qualified professional. But what I do think that anyone can glean from this story is that sometimes you have to find a way to disrupt the negative feedback loop somehow. The challenge is figuring out what will disrupt it for you specifically.

What I went through this winter was pretty mild compared to other depressive things I’ve gone through, so it makes sense that the solution to it was also pretty easy and simple. Letting my friends back in felt like opening the curtains and letting the sunlight back into my room after a long, dark winter.

~~~

*By the way, the fact that I write publicly about depression is not at all incompatible with the fact that I hide the worst of it. I do pretty much everything described in this perfect article about how to be a “good depressive citizen.” In fact, I’ve probably done it in this post. But I tried to circumvent that a little by letting you see a little bit if how I actually felt.

Edit: So I got curious and read the Wikipedia entry about “The Snow Queen,” the fairytale that Frozen is loosely based on. It sounds like an even better metaphor for depression than the movie:

An evil troll (“called the devil“)[2] makes a magic mirror that distorts the appearance of everything it reflects. It fails to reflect the good and beautiful aspects of people and things, while magnifying their bad and ugly aspects. The devil teaches a “devil school.” He and his pupils take the mirror throughout the world and delight in distorting everyone and everything; the mirror makes the loveliest landscapes look like “boiled spinach.” They try to carry the mirror into Heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror grins and shakes with delight, and it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth, shattering into millions of pieces. These splinters — some no larger than a grain of sand — are blown around and get into people’s hearts and eyes, freezing their hearts like blocks of ice and making their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, seeing only the bad and ugly in people and things.

Disrupting Depression's Negative Feedback Loop
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DSW Shoe Warehouse is Promoting Vaccine Denialist Jenny McCarthy

This is a short post to alert folks about a pretty crappy thing that DSW, a place where I ordinarily like to buy shoes sometimes, is doing:

Flyer for DSW's Jenny McCarthy event
Their Facebook post about this is, for whatever reason, visible only to certain Facebook users (weird targeted advertising perhaps?). I can still see it, as can Rebecca Watson, who’s already written a post about it. The DSW post with this image reads:

Hey, NYC—don’t forget!! Tomorrow we’ve got a BIG Shoe Lover party at DSW Union Square. Come shop amazing deals, grab an exclusive offer, and get the chance to meet Shoe Lover Jenny McCarthy!*

Wednesday, April 9 from 5–7 p.m.
DSW Union Square
40 E 14th Street | New York, NY 10003

RSVP and get full details: http://bit.ly/OoAVNt
See ya tomorrow!

*Participation in the event will be on a first come, first serve basis—so get there early! Line starts at noon.

I commented with the following:

Hey DSW, why are you hosting this vaccine denialist? Her continued claims that vaccines cause autism are scientifically incorrect and extremely dangerous. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children threaten their own children’s health and that of other kids who are unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons. Several cities have already had outbreaks of diseases that are entirely preventable by vaccination and previously much rarer; parents refusing to vaccinate their children is a major cause of this and Jenny McCarthy actively promotes this dangerous idea.

I know your company’s about shoes, not healthcare, but it’s irresponsible of you to promote this person. I’m not shopping here again until this is canceled or apologized for.

They responded:

Hey Miri! We’d like to hear more about your concerns. You can email us at: [email protected].

And I responded again:

Thank you for your response. However, I have already stated my concerns, and I will not do so through private email when your event is *public*. Others deserve to know.

Here is more information about McCarthy and the very real harms she has brought to children and their families:

http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/anti-vaccine-activist-jenny-mccarthy-mother-of-plagues/

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/04/04/anti-vaccine-measles-ignore-jenny-mccarthy/

http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html

Those links, by the way, are a great place to get started if you don’t know much about McCarthy and her promotion of dangerous and false vaccine myths.

We’ll see what comes of this, but for now, if you want to help us put some pressure on DSW, please email them at the address they provided ([email protected]), participate in the conversation on Facebook if you can see it, or tweet them @DSWShoeLovers.

As Rebecca also mentioned, Chili’s recently responded really well to a similar controversy. Hopefully DSW shapes up and does the same.

Screencap of the discussion on DSW's Facebook page, which isn't visible to everyone for some reason.
Screencap of the discussion on DSW’s Facebook page, which isn’t visible to everyone for some reason.

Update: Avi weighs in.

DSW Shoe Warehouse is Promoting Vaccine Denialist Jenny McCarthy

I Admit It: I Was Wrong About My Sexual Orientation

On this day when so many straight people are finally realizing that they are actually queer and reaping the resulting “wow dude seriously”‘s and “LMAO”‘s and “ewww”‘s on their Facebook statuses, I have had the opposite realization: I’m straight.

Yes, straight dudes who scoffed whenever I came out to you and asked how I could possibly be bisexual if I am currently dating a man or have never had a serious relationship with a woman or “just don’t seem like that type” or don’t want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend: you were right.

First of all, I’m straight because many scientists are still apparently unsure that bisexual people exist, and everyone knows that research evidence matters more than some random girl’s opinion about her own experiences. Until researchers using deterministic and rigid categories of sexual orientation prove that bisexuality exists with the same level of certainty that mathematicians have proven that the circumference of a circle equals its diameter multiplied by pi, it would be anti-skeptical for me to claim to be one, don’t you think?

I’m straight because, let’s face it, men just have more value than women. Sure, I’ve had crushes on girls or whatever, but everyone knows that what I really want is to marry a man and have children. You know, the “natural” way. So even if I’m attracted to women, it doesn’t really matter.

In fact, if you’re attracted to men, that is the essential aspect of your sexuality no matter what. That’s why “bisexual” men are all actually gay, while “bisexual women” are all actually straight. If you’re into dudes, that’s what counts.

I was only pretending to be bisexual for the attention. You know, girls like doing stuff like that so guys will notice them. Sure, bisexual people experience both biphobia and good ol’ homophobia, and on some mental health measures fare worse than gay men, lesbians, or straight people. But I am so desperate for a guy’s attention that I will pretend to be bisexual to get it. That’s literally how desperate I am. After all, the only other thing I’ve got going for me as a person is this crappy little blog. It’s not like I have a personality or anything.

I’m straight because I started seeing guys long before I started seeing women. How could I have really known I was bisexual if I didn’t have “experience”? Unlike straight people, bisexual people do not have the luxury of being born with an innate and immutable knowledge of their own sexual orientation. Nothing–not their turn-ons, not their crushes, not their romantic daydreams–nothing besides Real Sex with someone of the same gender is sufficient to prove for certain that they are really bisexual as they say they are. And if you’re not proven to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, then you’re automatically straight. So at any rate, I was simply lying all those closeted years.

I am straight because of the sheer power of your opinion. Since you are so utterly convinced that I am actually secretly straight, I have basically become straight. It’s like The Secret, but with other people’s sexual orientation! You are so clearly uncomfortable with the idea that I might want something other than dudes all day erryday that you have changed my mind with your iron will. Wow!

I’m straight because, as I mentioned, I don’t want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend. There is only like a 3% chance that I want to do that, and that is just too far below the threshold to be considered properly bisexual. If I really were bisexual, I would want to have a threesome with you and your girlfriend immediately. I would also want to have a polyamorous relationship with you and your girlfriend in which you are both allowed to sleep with other people but I’m not, and I take care of your kids while you go on dates with each other or other people. Come on, what’s my problem? Anyone would jump at this opportunity. I must be straight.

I am straight because I don’t “look gay.” It’s pretty impressive that you picked up on this, but queer women actually have a slightly different bone structure than straight women, and it is said that the two groups are so genetically different so as to practically constitute two different subspecies. The winter plumage of straight women is slightly duller in color than the winter plumage of gay women, although during the summer months it can be nearly impossible to tell the two apart on sight alone. Experienced observers rely on other identifiers, such as nests, migration patterns, or calls. I guess I didn’t realize that your knowledge of these differences would be so extensive that you would immediately see through this ridiculous act I was trying to perform. Haha, you got me. I’m straight! Lol.

So, it’s time for me to come out. As straight. I will no longer argue with that dude that there is at every party I ever go to who starts spouting off about my sexual orientation as if he’s been checking my browser history. He knows better. If he says I’m straight, I’m straight. Thanks for clearing that up for me, dude.

I Admit It: I Was Wrong About My Sexual Orientation