[lbo-talk] Thanks, All

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Jul 16 15:40:59 PDT 2007


cgrimes at rawbw.COM wrote:
>
>
> You're not alone buddy. We've all been staring at the screen
> with a world of despair running around our heads. Well, I have. The
> terrible state of the country and the perverse evil of the people who
> govern us is soul destroying. I have no idea why the political climate
> physically effects me as if it were the weather, but it does.

Chuck, you've just said nearly the worst thing you can say to anyone who suffers from depression. There is really no resemblance at all between depression brought on by ascertainable 'external' events and the kind of depression Dennis describes, and which I myself have suffered for many decades. On any of the many lists of what NOT to say to depressed friends, versions of what you have said here come very near the top.

A story my psychiatrist told me a couple decades ago. Early in his career one of his patients, a woman in her forties, had a series of catastrophes. Her husband was killed in an accident & her son crippled. She was diagnosed with cancer. When she had finished telling these stories he asked her how she was feeling. Her reply was that she felt awfully bad about those events -- but in fact she was feeling pretty good because her depression had let up. That's the difference. It's a _huge_ difference, and NEVER NEVER NEVER tell a depressed person, on the basis of situations you have experienced, that you know how he/she feels. Someone might even attack you physically.

Even within the depression support group, where _everyone_ (except family & friends present) has experienced depression in one form or another, we are careful not to claim we know how another person feels -- it can be insulting. Do you feel as though someone has dumped a quart of Karo Syrup over your brain? Do you feel a pressure on every cell in your body just below the pain threshold? Try to enter a busy department store. If you don't turn and run, you don't know how someone who has experienced a panic attack feels, and shouldn't try to guess.

Doug has several times tried to link my political pessimism to my depression. Nonsense. They are two quite different things. Many depressed people can be quite optimistic about external events. Despair at "terrible state of the country" simply is relevant to the topic at hand.

Carrol



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