How Hard It Really Is Read online

  - It feels like forever while it's there and as though it never happened when it's over.

  - Depression feels like a tease. You want to die but you can't.

  - It felt like I had the floor under my feet, then the floor broke and I fell. Then I felt like I landed on another lower floor. Just when I thought I was better, I'd fall even further.

  - It feels like the question, Why?

  For me, depression is a fog in which I collapse inward and lose all sense of myself. I know when it begins, like I've stepped into a sweeping cold, and I know when it ends, as if I've stepped into new air, like the cold was never there.

  One of the most vivid descriptions of depression I've read is by author and journalist Tim Lott, who also digs into the physical symptoms:

  "I start to stumble when I walk, or become unable to walk in a straight line. I am more clumsy and accident-prone. In depression you become, in your head, two-dimensional—like a drawing rather than a living, breathing creature. You cannot conjure your actual personality, which you can remember only vaguely ... You live in, or close to, a state of perpetual fear, although you are not sure what it is you are afraid of."[7]

  These descriptions were so different, but I found that depression could be communicated, often with similar imagery and running themes. It was not some amorphous shape-shifter.

  Yet over and over, each respondent felt that their depression was misunderstood, not with a lack of empathy, but with an abrupt scorn. Many were tired of explaining themselves. When I asked respondents, What kind of dialogue have you found helpful?—the replies revealed that just having dialogue was a rare miracle.

  In other words, we do have plenty to say about depression, but it seems no one wants to listen, which only imprisons those with depression even further. There's no shortage of words to describe depression, but there's a short-circuit in the delivery of the description.

  The talk of depression comes with its own built-in blind spot, a chasm around the abyss.

  My Broken Brain

  Doesn't Get Your Broken Brain

  Why does this happen? Why doesn't depression get a fair hearing?

  I feel like that scientist in a disaster movie who keeps yelling, "The flood/earthquake/meltdown/alien-invasion is coming!"—and everyone just shrugs.

  I'm afraid that telling someone, "I have depression" tends to come off as begging, "Please believe me!" It gets written off as melodramatic and self-absorbed, usually with ridicule and resentment.

  Try a thought experiment. When you read the previous descriptions of depression in the last few pages, did you feel more compassion or contempt? Was there trust or suspicion? Engagement or detachment?

  I believe the dilemma with describing depression happens because:

  1) When it's expressed, it's often hand-waved as nothing more than "sadness" or "introversion" or "laziness."

  2) Unless someone has experienced depression, then reaching out is usually ineffectual. It's like describing the Mojave to a polar bear.

  I'll be the first to admit that I also raise an eyebrow when others tell me about their depression. While it's true that some confessions of depression might be "crying wolf" (a lot more on this in Chapter 6), we tend to rush too quickly to the other extreme. We often don't engage confessions of depression with serious discovery.

  Part of the reason we do this is purely from reflex: by design, we dismiss stuff. We each have heuristics, these internal rules about how we see the world, and since it's a big world, we use the least amount of cognitive resources to generalize our input. In other words, we turn a single scene into a whole story. It's an instant process. There's an effort-reduction framework, like a constant Occam's razor, pruning what we see into bite-sized chunks so our brains can save time and energy.[8]

  We make snap judgments based on the information at hand, no matter how little is at hand. It's a necessary adaptation to survive. We must make quick decisions with little info around the clock. But the side effect is that our conclusions are often found by the path of least resistance. Part of this means we're biased towards the visual. We don't naturally empathize with an "internal storm."

  This is why we cringe at an open wound, while a migraine gets, "Drink some cold water." In martial arts training, I've heard countless times: "He's not bleeding so he's fine."

  I've seen this snap judgment as a common attitude in the hospital all the time. When we talk about car accidents, cancer, or the common cold, we use assured language. It helps that these injuries can be seen quickly. Yet describing depression can feel pathetic and pointless, even with a shared well of vocabulary. A patient with cancer is treated much differently than a patient with depression, even though both diagnoses can lead to a terminal result.

  I don't mean to equate these two diagnoses, but rather to make a larger point: that a clear-cut physical problem is measurable, while psychological issues are bound in metaphors, images, and narratives, which are beyond our conventional grids.[9] The former has visual cues that demand a crisis response. The latter defaults to a hasty prejudice. A surgeon gets the VIP seat; a psychologist gets called a fraud.

  It's no wonder that depression is seen as "psychosomatic" or a "hot mess." Add to that confirmation bias, in which we affirm only the ideas that we want to confirm, in a culture where depression is seen as whiny and wasteful, and this conversation was never on the table.

  All this to say: When it comes to validating mental illness, the deck is stacked against us.

  Dark, Unknowable Void

  Fortunately, the tide is changing. Recently, a YouTube personality loudly declared that "depression is the stupidest thing in the world," and thousands of commenters voiced their outrage.[10] I've seen a healthy, growing awareness in the public square in which we're finally approaching mental illness prima facie, at face value.

  And yet, I wonder if "outrage" is the right response, even to someone who says depression is "the stupidest thing in the world." Yes, that's indefensible, but maybe there's a deeper reason it was said.

  This leads to a point which is hard for me to admit, but harder for me not to.

  I have a lot of sympathy for both sides of this conversation. There's an elusive element to depression itself, a dark void of "the unknowable"—which means depression, in the end, is impossible to both fully understand and describe, even for the person with depression. Those who want to understand mental illness still struggle.

  This doesn't make it okay to dismiss depression, but I can see why it happens. Maybe depression itself has pulled off the devil's trick of convincing the world it doesn't exist.

  In the many descriptions of depression that I read, as vivid as they were, I saw a point where there was a loss of words to meet on even ground. There was a void in the middle of the consensus. This frustrated me to no end, and it was a bit terrifying.

  Maybe it was from a limitation of language, or the lack of practice in expressing ourselves, or the unspoken wall between all human connection in that we are each "alone" in our own heads, never fully known as we are.

  Or depression is just that clever: it exists in an uncanny valley of unreality where it's never fully knowable. Eventually, there's a threshold in which depression cannot be fully articulated, no matter how much you try. It is dark matter, swirling in dead space, pushing on orbits without a trace.

  Not only that, but depression can be so different from person to person that we might never comprehend all its intricacies. Mental illness is notoriously difficult to diagnose for those exact reasons.[11] If each depressed person is already different than the next, then the 95% of the world population without depression will find it that much harder to understand.

  There was a similar bank of imagery from each survey, but each reply in itself was uniquely painted. It would be harmful to treat every case the same way.

  As cruel as it is to dismiss depression, it's also just as crass to expect total understanding from case to case. The spectrum is so buck-shot with words like numbness, l
ethargy, and vacuum on one hand to mania, irritability, and panic on the other, that it demands a new set of eyes each time.

  That happens by attempting to see with the eyes of every side.

  "I was trying to describe it to her, and she was like, 'I think you're depressed'—and a light bulb went off. 'Is that what this is?' I just thought the world was heavy and no one was sharing the weight."[12]

  — Baron Vaughn

  Pushing Past

  the Birth Pains of Dialogue

  Here's where we are.

  - Those with depression can describe what it's like with similar images and vocabulary.

  - We are, however, quick to dismiss depression. We invalidate mental illness because we're wired not to fathom the depth of such mental battles. We instead leap to "easier" conclusions, leading to mockery or indifference.

  - Depression itself will hit a threshold of unknowability.

  So what can we do? How do we communicate better?

  For those without depression (or for those like me who are quick to be suspicious)—

  My utmost exhortation is that we're aware of our temptation towards dismissal. Plain and simple: many of us are wired to be biased. It's an uphill battle to offer grace. When we can first recognize the obstacles that stop us from connecting, then we're on our way to healing—and that's part of the fight towards understanding.

  Fortunately, it's very possible to widen our heuristics. Empathic concern is a complex process that develops later in life, but the brain can actually be trained to get better at it, like learning a musical instrument or a second language.[13] We can practice pausing to investigate and to offer empathy. It happens "when deliberate attempts are made to take the perspective of the target person."[14] This is perspective-taking.[15] Without it, our dialogue is sunk.

  My hope is that you may hit slow-motion and rotate these experiences in all their dimensions, that there's a willingness to validate more than to criticize, and that there's an awareness of our capacity for prejudice.

  For those who are fighting depression (and for those who seek to understand)—

  The bad news is that we will never find the perfectly ideal person to hear us. When someone says, "I understand what you're going through"—can anyone really understand what someone's going through?

  I must remind myself that we're each never fully understood, and if we each have a unique mosaic of signs and symptoms, then we must not be too angry if our depression is at first dismissed. We must not instantly consider the other person morally wrong or a "bad listener" or "one of those people." Though the initiative should not be on us for others to hear us, I hope we recognize that "this is the world we're living in," in which the everyday reflex is to judge quickly, in which conversations require more than a single shot.

  If that sounds wrong to you, I agree: it's neither right nor fair. But I think it's also unfair to expect a loved one to listen with enraptured attention, especially to a murky, mishandled subject like depression. We can hopefully elevate and embrace each other's stories towards a better connection.

  And if depression at its center is truly unknowable, then it was never your fault that you couldn't describe your depression. Your frustration in finding compassion will always seem like an endless quest for the missing piece of a terrible puzzle.

  Every side of this discussion, then, needs help in fighting through the "unknowable void." I've noticed that when we keep attempting to connect, no matter how messy, through missteps and misunderstandings, by fits and false starts and failures—something powerful happens when we reach across the dark. Simply talking about depression out loud and finding the words for what depression is like is often a first step towards getting through. Not perfectly, but persistently, we can we meet in our limited, yet life-giving vocabulary of this affliction.

  When our pain is exposed to light, the fear of such pain begins to lose its hold. Fear starts to shrivel the moment it is exposed. It becomes the lie that it really is.

  I hope you will not hide. I hope you will find a friend you can trust and tell them what's happening inside. They might not get it. Tell them again. Or find another. And try again.

  One thing I kept seeing in each survey was: "I feel better just talking about this."

  We empower each other by solidifying our narratives and speaking our stories into the air. There's an immense shift internally, as if we're taking back our power from the deep, and of course, in knowing that we're not alone.

  "In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."[16]

  — C.S. Lewis

  If you're either at the edge of depression or thinking of harming yourself right now, please don't hesitate to call a friend. If they don't answer, leave a long message. You might be surprised that it helps. Also, I love you, dear friend, and you are loved.

  Chapter 2 — Moving at a Dead Stop

  Disclaimer: This chapter contains some intense imagery about depression and might be a trigger. I advise skipping if you are currently struggling.

  Volition to Change

  "Nowhere," I tell him.

  "What do you mean?" he asks.

  "I'm just ... nowhere. And somewhere else. Like the thing with Zeno's arrow. Moving at a dead stop."

  The therapist nods, making another note across his desk, click, his pen, click, a scribble, jot, a bird singing outside, click, the therapist talking but I'm watching this puffed-up bird sing, click, I can see the therapist writing, Anxiety, manic, dependency, prone to grandeur and hyperbole, of no volition to change, typical teen angst common for his age.

  I'm on the ground. A freshman. A bottle rolls off my chest. Some of the beer spills out, innards across my shirt, trickling down my ribs, clink, the bottle hits the tile and rolls, stops at a groove, clink, and I'm waiting for the beer to kick in so I can feel something, anything, and I hear my stepmom throw something across the kitchen at my dad, a microwave, and it beeps its very last beep, muffled and resigned.

  I'm in the car. Parked on campus, sixth year of college.

  I look down. I have a pen cap and I'm trying to open my wrists, frantic scrawls in fast diagonals, yet methodically somehow, and I'm not really sure why but tears have carved my face into my jeans and I'm actually laughing, and it feels tight in my stomach, like a knot tied up through my lungs, but I keep flailing with this pen cap, which isn't working, and suddenly it's working, and crimson splashes my pants and I quietly wrap my jacket around my wrist and I drive with one hand to go home.

  I'm at the bottom of the stairs. Looking up. Sixth month of marriage. I imagine floating at the top of the staircase, my neck askew, feet off the ground, creak, and I'm nowhere and everywhere, two places at once, Schrödinger's joke, croak, a rope in one hand and a note in the other, and I get this flash of my mom calling me stupid and my dad calling me never, and I walk away from the stairs and lie down on the floor under the side of the coffee table and I remember being fifteen again and I shut my eyes hard enough to see stars.

  I'm at a cafe. Check-out. I'm not sure when; it's after church service, I think, or before work, and the cashier asks what I want and I'm smiling, but the sides of my lips are cutting into my cheeks and I don't remember how I got here and I look around and see people laughing and talking and browsing their phones and sipping their lattes like they really mean it, and you know, I really want that, but I've forgotten how to do these kinds of things, and the cashier asks what I'd like again, and I turn and drop my phone and keys and wallet in one swooping crash, and my hands are not shaking but I am.

  Only a moment before, it was all fine. A moment after, I see the tail end of myself rush down the abyss with the rest of me. Imagine a quivering hole in your guts, and pull at one loose thread of your three pound brain down that hole, faster until friction melts away your stomach lining, faster as your brain-thread bumps along the charred edges, fa
ster until you are left with a gutted chassis where echoes cease to return. It's senseless horror.

  "What does that mean?" I ask the therapist. I'm back across the desk, the bird knocking at the window.

  "Does what mean?" he asks.

  "No volition to change."

  The therapist draws back his notes with a sharpened hiss. "How did you see that? You can't peek, that's not acceptable."

  "But what does it mean? I'm not judging you, I just want to know, please."

  "It means—" and he stops himself. "It means only I can ask the questions here, okay? I ask and you tell, this is a safe place where you can be yourself, okay?"

  "Volition?" I ask, scratching my temple. "Like, willpower?"

  "Mr. Park," he says, "let's call it a day."

  "So I just need willpower, right? Can you please tell me how? I'll do anything not to be like this, I'll do the volition thing, please, I can do that."

  "I need your help," I tell my senior pastor.

  I'm in a meeting with the pastor and two other elders, begging to take a break from ministry. I'm the youth pastor in an Asian-American church, one of the biggest in the city. A week before the meeting, one hour before I had to preach for worship service, I had a breakdown at the door of my house. I turned the knob, fell over, and couldn't find my breath. I tried not to weep but I wept and wept and wept, all over the floor, and as much as I tried to pass the threshold, I could not step out of my house.

  Now I'm in the senior pastor's lobby, a tight square of a room with closed curtains and empty walls, the plastic wrap still choking the couches.