Starting this post, I am wondering to what extent this is going to be personal, and whether the title is fitting. It is a personal topic, but if I have learned anything in the past few years, it is how widespread this dis-ease is. I am talking here about a range of complaints, with a common denominator, a maladjustment to the circumstances you live in, the difficulty to adapt to them and — this is the crux — the recurring deep unease, discomfort and often profound suffering this brings.

Eleven years ago, Brené Brown gave one of the most-viewed TED talks of all times, The power of vulnerability. It was eye-opening and made a huge impression on me. There is one particular statement that I have often come back to: "We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history." If this is true for the U.S., the rest of the Western world won't be far behind. Think about it for a moment. How did we get there? What does it mean? What degree of unhappiness and imbalance lies behind this statement? It was just as valid ten years later, and in the midst of the Covid crisis it became clear that this state of things did not help at all. Very likely, and further fueled by the intentional fear-mongering of the government, it contributed to turning a managable problem into an ongoing, seemingly never-ending, perceived emergency.

There is a few things to distinguish here. Mental health issues per se, which will always show up, in any population. But then, how much are they brought on by the environment, and also, how are they being dealt with? What Brené Brown described are the results of coping strategies. I am sure there is a big part of the population that is doing just fine, not everybody is unhappy, not everybody is struggling to adapt. In fact, what keeps astounding me in this crisis is how able and willing people are to adjust to all kinds of measures that to me seem absurd and really restrictive and intrusive — with some outright damaging. Then there is a part that is struggling, but numbing themselves. And then there's the part that is on a constant roller coaster.

I am one of the fairground junkies, and this morning, soon after waking up, I had excessive levels of cortisol running through my veins, and I plunged into despair. Then I cried, and then I started talking to my husband for absolutely ages, about all that was bothering me. I cannot always do that, I cannot always pinpoint what is wrong. This time, it was a whole barrage of things, and the ongoing outrageous pushing through of lies, half-truths and completely inappropriate measures (looking at vaccination of children here in particular) on part of our government played its part in it. It was not all though. There are the things that had been there before the crisis, sometimes managable, but cropping up again and again. Most notably, the lack of confidence and the belief that I was just not able to make proper progress with things, especially my programming skills, but really anything, and therefore being of limited use to people.

What was astounding this morning was just how much the talking helped. It was serendipitous, just the right balance of talking, the right kind of listening and interjections by my husband. I guess good therapists create circumstances where conversations like this become likely. In any case, I believe the response from somebody close, or sometimes even not so close, combined with taking the right care of yourself, is so important in a crisis like this.

I have to acknowledge that I am in an extremely fortunate position, I don't have to work at the moment, this week the whole family is on holiday in fact (but staying at home), I am not lacking in anything. The bouts of depression come from inside, from my conditioning and from an unproductive, frustrating railing against the current societal situation, feelings of helplesness and a seeming inability to change anything.

I am interested in learning to challenge and overcome this, and then to help others do it too. I am re-reading the book I found most helpful in this, "Undoing Depression" by Richard O'Connor.

As always, there is so much more to write, and on so many more topics. But for now, good night.

Things I have been reading: A.A. Gill "Pour Me", David Foster Wallace "The Depressed Person" (short story), and Brian Keenan "An evil cradling". It was not for that reason — not consciously at least! —, but I notice now that all these are by men (and two are memoirs) that had been held captive in one way or other. In Keenan's case in the literal sense, as a hostage in Lebanon. Gill by alcohol, Wallace by depression and I believe addiction, too.

Gill's book had caught my attention over a year ago in Waterstone's and I read it with long breaks inbetween, though it is very readable — just other books got in the way. Keenan's book found me in the Amnesty bookshop in Gloucester Road this weekend. I am half way through now.

I wish I had not read the Wallace short story. It was mentioned in an article in a newsletter. The article says that in the story, a young woman "is depicted as a self-centred monster". I only remembered this remark after I had finished reading the story. While I was reading it, I felt very much for the woman. But the end does in fact make her look bad, as she descends into a meta-meta-guiltiness about the way she is. Seeking reassurance, she keeps phoning a terminally ill friend, seemingly not caring about her friend's condition as much as about receiving some kind of absolution from her.

And this is one of the meanest things about depression. How self-centered and unable to care it makes you, when it really hits you. Hits you? — The other humiliating thing is of course, that in a way, with the exception of depressions that are caused by an illness of physical origin, or bipolar disorder, you are doing it to yourself. I am convinced that in most cases, some part of the brain chooses to go down that route. What the hell? Why to choose something as debilitating as that?! And yet, somewhere our unconscious sees some benefits. Withdrawal. Rest. Not having to be responsible. Not needing to confront that you might not be as good as you wish. Avoiding rejection. But as the owner of a brain like that, you can only watch on with the remainig parts, as a shitfest begins, with mood, physiology and behaviour all going out of whack.

I used to think it is not possible to get off that downward-bound roller-coaster. And in fact, in most cases it's not. And yet. There might be some stretches that are even. In the past, these times of respite made me think, "ah it's not that bad yet", just before going down the next steep descent. So then I became resigned, and when it started I just surrendered. But then it changed again. Sometimes it seemed I could jolt myself off the roller-coaster when it was about to start. And this was mostly with help from other people.

What if we do have some say after all? Of course, there is the cognitive intervention, David Burns' "Feeling good" which apparently is popular in IT. Exercise. Meditation. All have their merits. But there is never a guarantee.

It is a skill. A bit like dancing I guess. Rolling with it. Once I walked home in a really somber mood, because of some incidents that made me feel rejected, or something similar. And then all of a sudden I managed to have these thoughts that let me see everything in a different perspective. And I thought, "maybe I have grown a patronus".

Recently, it has been challenging, as it had already become physical. For days on end, I seemed to have an exorbitant cortisol production going on. The nerves in my lower arms felt as if they were going to burn through, and if we still had hair on the back of our necks, mine would have been all upright a lot of the time. As mentioned above, physiology out of wack, the stress axis in particular. I started taking St John's Wort and also Omega 3 tablets. I still get the high cortisol a lot, but I have somehow got used to it, and it is not as bad as it used to be. Maybe some day soon, it will become obsolete and stop.

There is a whole story behind it, but at the moment I cannot tell it. I cannot even make sense of it, why it affected me so much.

Something that is always a problem: I cannot see myself as competent at anything. It could even be something I fear, strangely enough.

I do not want this to become the main topic on this blog, but it will crop up again and again I guess, the effort to stay out of depression, and how to do that. There is so many layers to it. Not least how our upbringing plus the unspoken assumptions and expectations we all have, can contribute to one's malaise. I want to think outrageous thoughts, and train myself to be accepting, of myself and others, in ways I have not yet been capable of.

And I take heart from the Irishman, and the English ex public school boy, stuck in a cell, life-lines to each other. — I hope to write some more about that book, I find it very impressive.

For now, if people can keep themselves out of madness in conditions like that, it must be possible to keep my, all in all pretty small, demons at bay, hey?