The Impression of Depression

Jun 11

**Depression.** This word is so fraught, so heavy, so aligned with so many headlines, so tangled in our social vocabulary these days, that it's hard to come to it with any sort of objectivity or clarity. I'm certainly no expert, but in the sense that I have experienced depression in my life, I find myself acquainted enough to say a few words on the matter here. In my journals, I say things like "depression is on my tail", or "I must keep the depression at bay." Depression for me is like a wild dog that I keep chained up in the yard. I know if I ignore it, it will retaliate. I know how easily I can be going on my merry way and RUFF! this saliva dripping beast rears its ugly head and nearly snaps mine off. At best, depression for me sleeps peacefully in the sun, properly managed by good weather, patient friends and a therapist, and a clean diet of healthy foods and plenty of sleep.

This topic is so close to my heart because I feel it's one of the things that we can DO something about. War, disease, corruption and global warming so often feel so far out of grasp that it's hard to get behind these topics with any real practical effort. But for me, mental health is like a sports team we should all be wearing the jerseys for and screaming Rah Rah at the top of our lungs like our team is winning. Because every day that you and I survive, every day that our loved ones get up and get moving, every day that we manage to make something, call a friend, share, listen, give... every day that we do that, we are winning. And the only way we can do this thing called life that we are all doing together, is if we keep the wolves at bay.

So, how did we get like this? How did we get so dragged down that even something as innate as survival starts to become optional? Maybe it is optional, and everyone has their own right to choose how and for how long to live this life. I don't know about you, but for me, any time I see a suicide appear in my life, or in headlines, I know we are definitely not winning. I know that humanity has lost something. If you believe we are all connected, we have lost a piece of ourselves. Some part of us was hurting. And parts of us are hurting all over at this very moment. We don't get to dictate how long people live, but we do get shine light into all the dark places and hopefully, by banding together, we will find all the wild dogs chained up in our yards have evolved and our time has come to lay in the sun.

Depression and Social Media

One morning recently, I was busy writing in my journal out on my balcony in the sun, and I got distracted by a reason to check social media. My attempt to check one thing swept me into a 45 minute diversion of exploration and mindless scrolling. My mindful moment was hijacked despite my best intentions to responsibly check up on something. And this isn't even something I struggle with! I hear my friends complain all the time about what a time-suck social media is, sharing how many times a day they check facebook and instagram and find themselves down a rabbit hole of judgement, jealousy or just plain voyeurism. I hear them, and I get it, but this is actually not something that plagues me. I have always been someone who has a sort of 80/20 relationship with social media. 80 percent output, 20 percent input. I have no squirmy feelings about posting, I do so when I feel like I have something to share with humanity. I do so to participate in this big ole life that we are all living. And I check in from time to time to keep up with my friends or people who inspire me. But that morning, after my 45 minute diversion, I "came-to" and looked around. I was still sitting on my balcony, the sun was still shining, and the day still awaited me, but I felt foggy. I felt slightly confused, slightly "separate" from the act of living. And I thought about the trend of suicides we've seen in the media lately. I thought about the violent ends, the sometimes result of someone experiencing depression. I thought about how peaceful my morning was before I entered the fog, before I challenged my brain to navigate the forest of social media. And it occurred to me that maybe we aren't really equipped for living in so many alternate realities. There is a lot of talk about social isolation as a cause for depression. But maybe it's more complicated than that. Maybe it's the trickery the brain is experiencing. The physical body is isolated. But the mind is occupied, "entertained" by the images online - a constant onslaught of visual information that says, "You are surrounded by people." You become hyper-aware of the existence of people's many and varied lives. You see dinner parties and the coastline in Greece. But you don't really see these things. Your body doesn't really feel the pleasures of food or the warmth of the sun on your skin and the breeze in your hair on the coastline in Greece. Maybe the mind has to do too much work to resolve these discrepancies. And it's that mental work and incongruency with the body that causes depression, and the kind of severe depression that lets one disassociate with the act of living and the archaic will to survive.

In the moment after writing that, I sat in the sun, I felt the temperature dropping as a summer storm rolled in. My body and mind were in sync as the environment gave me signals. I reclaimed the day with that other buzz word: being present.

I'm not someone who gets on social media throughout the day. Certainly I have my moments. But I also go days where I forget completely about social media and then I remember that it's been a while since I've posted or checked in. But in the light of these thoughts on the state of our minds on social media, I can only imagine what "depressions" must form in the neural pathways of someone who does spend a better part of their day scrolling.

I'm not saying social media causes depression. I find depression knocking at my door despite the presence of a wifi signal. Depression doesn't discriminate. It can just as easily find you in bed, in the shower, at a party surrounded by people, in a bad sandwich or after too many cocktails. But maybe we should be mindful of the work we are requiring our brains to do daily, to overcome the disassociation and disconnection that happens when we try to "connect."

So the next time you find yourself scrolling, filling otherwise usable time with "alternate realities", snap out of it, put your face in the sun, and let your brain sync-up your body with the visual information... you know, in the real world. This is one reason a walk can be such a helpful addition to each day. I'm an artist, not a scientist, so I mean to inspire, not necessarily inform. But if I can inspire just one person to reclaim just one day that may have been lost, then this post is worthwhile. As an artist, you'll find that creativity and mental health are often tangled up together in a web of sometimes confusing layers. It's a worthy pursuit to devote your life to figuring this out. We each may never actually "be in the clear" when it comes to the dark forests of the mind. But why make it harder on ourselves? Let's be in pursuit of the health that allows us to make our work and share our gifts. Let's wear the jersey for the team we are all on. Let's be on a mission to align body and mind as many times throughout the day as we can manage. Because every time you overcome the sinking, you help me overcome it too. Every time I rise up out of the fog, you benefit from the spark. It's a worthwhile pursuit.