Metablog

This is part one of a three part series on depression. (Index to other parts.)

I’ve not been very active recently on this blog. I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve had the same problem with my other interests and chores, too. They’ve mostly been remaining undone.

I have had a low level of energy, true. I’ve had trouble focusing. But those are just symptoms, too. What is the cause? How can I make sense of this state? Is it ADHD? Is it depression?

For a long time, I thought it was ADHD. So many of the symptoms fit. But the remedies don’t seem to, and the accounts of people with ADHD didn’t really strike a chord with me at all. So after a while, I began to suspect that depression would more accurately describe my problem. (Especially after I was diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist.)

So, a few days ago, I had a truly marvelous and unprecented idea. Why not read about depression? After all, I realized, I really didn’t know that much about it. Despite having lived with it since I was a teenager, I had somehow never actually read any book about it. So I strolled over to Barnes and Noble to take a look.

I picked up a book called The Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon. I read a couple dozen pages, and found it compelling enough to buy. (At $17 for ~550 pages, it’s not a bad value, either.) Solomon writes quite poetically, and though I found his anecdotes tended to draw on a bit excessively, they did a good job of illustrating what it feels like to go through depression. His factual writing is elegant and interesting, and taught me quite a bit about depression that I’m very glad to know.

(If you’re interested in the book, you might like to know that it covers, primarily, unipolar major depression, with many mentions and a few discussions of bipolar disorder. It doesn’t really cover atypical depression or dysthymia.)

My understanding of depression has been changed quite a bit from my reading. My primary revelation, I suppose, is that whatever depression I have had has not been nearly as bad as what others have had. I have not come close to rock bottom. I had heard some descriptions about it, but I actually had a hard time believing they were literal descriptions, and not exaggerations.

I believe the difference between my experience and Solomon’s is instructive as to the nature of my depression. His depression seems to be much more endogenous, and mine more circumstantial (but still pretty endogenous). His seems to persist depsite lots of support from friends and family, and mine seems to be at least partly the result of pretty severe isolation.

Throughout my life I have always had a lot of trouble making friends, close or casual. I have always felt alienated from most other people, in a substantial part due to my intelligence and nerdiness. This is despite having a deep longing for close relationships. In these respects I would seem to have Avoidant Personality Disorder, though I don’t quite meet the DSM IV diagnostic criteria. (Nor do I meet the criteria for social phobia.)

It may have been exacerbated a bit by the fact that I moved around a lot from the ages of 9 to 14. Maybe had I been in a more stable environment, I would have learned to cope with my social problems and become more normal socially. I’m not sure it’s possible to say.

I am not very attached to my family. My grandmother died a couple months ago, and despite living a few hundred yards from her for years, I have felt no more than a few moments sadness at her passing. I feel no real love for my parents and siblings, and have never felt it. I believe this is due in large part to never having received any affection from my parents. I had near-constant, bitter arguments with both of them about pretty much anything and everything. My father was excessively strict, and my mother resented him for it and tried to be less so, but was only able to do so much.

Today I remain socially very isolated. Despite being very lonely, I’ve only managed to procure three dates through an online dating service in the past 14 months. I have no friends at all. I see my immediate family occasionally, and I’m starting visit some cousins that live nearby. (I currently have another dating prospect, but those aren’t worth much.) I’m fairly friendly, but not close, with my co-workers, and get along well with them. Other than that, I have no social contact at all.

On the occasions when I have had social contact, such as the period of three months three years ago when I had a girlfriend, and the period of about four days a few weeks ago on my last date when I thought the woman might be interested in me, I think I felt happier. I can’t really say that it was obvious—my spirits weren’t a lot higher—but I was more motivated and less insecure. I think. Looking back, it’s hard to say.

I had the idea for a while that it would be good for me to find some more outgoing and adventurous people who could help draw me out a little, who could encourage me to try things I wouldn’t otherwise try, to meet people I wouldn’t otherwise bother to meet. But having actually spent some time with such a person recently, and having been rejected by them, I now think people like that might find it too hard to understand me. They don’t understand why I’m shy, why I don’t talk more with them about their life, why I’m not more up front about being interested in them. (On reflection, this might not have much to do with depression itself.)

Solomon says, “A large preportion of my best friends are a little bit crazy.” During a depressive episode, he called a friend of his at 2 AM for support, but then discovered he couldn’t explain what he had been feeling. He called her later to apologize and explain. “[She] laid into me for waking her up and then disappearing. As she scolded, I felt the overpowering weirdness of the life I was living, which I knew I could not possiby explain. Dizzy with fever and terror, I said nothing. She never really spoke to me again. I would describe her as someone who cherished normality, and I had become much too peculiar.”

He continues, “Depression is hard on friends. You make what by the standards of the world are unreasonable demands on them, and often they don’t have the resilience or the flexibility or the knowledge or the inclination to cope. … Most people don’t like one another’s unhappiness very much. Few can cope with the idea of a depression divorced from exernal reality; many would prefer to think that if you’re suffering, it’s with reason and subject to logical resolution.”

While I have been quite isolated in my life, Solomon seems to have become very good at making friends, at least since he was in college, if not earlier. He mentions throughout the book the many interactions he has with friends, whether it be traveling with them, staying at their house during a breakdown, or just staying in contact with them through the years. (The former example not withstanding.) He leans heavily on his father for support during his worst times, and was greatly affected by his mother’s death from cancer when he was around the age of 30. Despite his depression, I would wager Solomon is quite an extravert. He had a caring family, and a happy experience with school.

How does this make his experience with depression different from mine? Well, besides the obvious ways, I’m honestly not sure.

---

Stay tuned for part two of this three part series. In the second part, I examine apathy and breakdowns.

Filed under Human nature, Personal thoughts, Depression. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.