What Depression Means to Me
I recently had my first visit with my new psychiatrist. One of the questions he asked me during the consultation was, “What does depression mean to you?” I took this to mean, “How does it manifest itself for you?”
The question was hard for me to answer, and not just because my three year old son was wreaking havoc in the room. I was surprised that I had trouble answering, and upon reflection, realized that it was akin to answering someone’s question about what attracted you to your spouse. When the relationship is new, you think about it all the time, so you have those answers uppermost in your mind. When I was first diagnosed with depression, it was all new to me, so I examined my feelings about it constantly. After 15 years I just took it for granted that there was nothing new there for me to discover. I write about it all the time, but I rarely think about how I define it.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:39 am
You know, that is a fairly hard question to answer. I do believe I went though a series of depression bouts but could not really recognize it as such till quite some time later. Not being able to see the trees from the forest tends to be a fatal flaw for those of us who do not make critical introspection a daily habit.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Those kinds of open-ended questions are the kind men fear!
I mean we really, really, really, really don’t like them. And for good reasons.
They are full of traps as the dreaded “Which dress do you like better?” which isn’t really about a dress.
We learn the art of prevarication and politicking right there and then and to answer in the most evasive manner possible. (Or we develop a love affair with our hand.)
Introspection just means knowing your what your fundamentals are, and sticking to them, or revising them when they are shown not to work anymore.
Your shrink would love/hate my guts.
I would ask him to define the terms and the whole thing would descend into an exploration of psychiatry, in the end revealing nothing of myself.
(My first wife once called me the “sanest man she knew” [though that may have been damning me with faint praise.]
November 14th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
I think the “Which dress do you like better?” question is usually either:
- “I’m curious to see what your taste is like” or
- “I’m not sure which, so I want you to make up my mind for me” or
- “Do you want me to be innocent or trampy tonight?”