Let's Talk About the "D" Word

The Silent Epidemic in the Midst of Chaos | Part 1

The capitalistic media messaging delivered to us from all channels is of healthy humans living productive, affluent, joyful lives:

• Effortlessly going to the doctor

• Taking a pill to fix what ails you

• Buying cars and homes

• Eating out

• Going on vacation

• A steady career trajectory

• Financial security

I’ve not known that life since 1984. I was a kid then. I believed what I saw.

The last time I believed I could afford to go to the doctor and actually get effective help? 1999.

It blows my mind to think I was a single mom barely making ends meet but didn’t think twice about taking my five-year-old to the doctor and getting a prescription filled because all of it would cost me less than $30.

In the U.S., the ‘90s was the last decade you could find affordable health insurance premiums that actually covered your medical care without going into serious debt. It was the last time gas was 98 cents per gallon. And I remember I could afford both—and groceries—earning below $50,000 a year.

Like the ’90s, those days are long gone. I continued to be a believer in the fiction of the American Dream lifestyle until 2020.

Realizing you spent half a century of your life brainwashed, believing in something that only existed for the generation before you, is devastating. It’s like realizing you spent half your life in a cult. That is significant loss.

Apropos, today I’m being called to examine a very complex and challenging topic that is an unrecognized epidemic in our society: depression.

Photo by Logan Fisher on Unsplash

It has become very clear to me, as my father and I were medically mismanaged over the last five years to the point that we could barely walk, that our illness-for-profit system of health “care” in the U.S. has become shamefully inept and exploitative.

This is especially true for those of us struggling with mental well-being challenges, chronic mystery illnesses, or complex ailments. I know this from decades of personal experience navigating the system—not just from what I’m seeing on social media.

The validation from others with similar experiences paints a larger picture of a shared reality that is, unfortunately, too common—and, outrageously, denied by the system itself. An entire book could be written about the hows and whys of this last statement.

But my stack is dedicated to cultivating inner resilience when life is hard. My work is about empowering individual agency through practical knowledge, skill building, and facilitating self-recovery. And so this is the lens I will use to closely examine this thing we call depression.

To not have an accurate grasp on depression—which is very difficult to do, especially when you are in the midst of being consumed by the darkness—renders you vulnerable to exploitation and medical mismanagement. To not know what you need to know leaves you helpless to make informed decisions about your wellness care, spinning in circles instead of making effective choices.

And if there is one thing I know to be true, it’s that when it comes to these matters of the “mind,” adequate patient education from the places we are told to go for help is scarce—as is effective support.

So, let’s start with a bit of understanding, and then, in Part 2, we will roll into practical strategies to reclaim well-being when dealing with depression.

Depression Is Not an Illness

Depression is a word we use to succinctly describe a group of symptoms commonly experienced by people who lack a felt sense of a normative range of emotion and a generally hopeful worldview orientation. Ergo, depression is a symptom.

And this is the first paradigm shift you must make if you are to transcend its grip.

Depression is your psyche’s way—and your body’s way—of telling you something is not right. You are not abnormal. You are not mentally ill.

Depression is a normal psychological and physiological response to duress. Your task—and your only task—is to listen to your somatic wisdom and figure out the source of your duress. And that source can be really complex and difficult to pinpoint.

Inevitably, there are going to be some psychiatric practitioners who stumble across this stack, and so I want to make something very clear: my claim that depression is not an illness in no way denies its physiological correlates, which often include hormone and neurotransmitter imbalances.

Our body’s hormone and neurotransmitter production—or lack thereof—is governed by our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, which react to environmental and internal stimuli.

So if your body is experiencing chronic pain that has no relief, at some point you will likely become depressed. Anyone would. And if chronic pain is the sole source of your depression, then duloxetine or another psychotropic might be a miracle medicine for you.

Again, depression is a result—a complex symptom. But rarely is the source of this symptom derived from one obvious thing, such as chronic pain.

Given this basis of understanding, I reject labels like major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. I reject the notion that depression is a mental illness. I reject the prevailing medical-model approach to psychotherapy, which is demanded by for-profit insurance companies.

People who are depressed and/or suicidal have good reasons for not wanting to live. They are not ill. They are not disordered. Their psyches are screaming for relief, and anyone feeling this type of agony would be inclined to desperate measures to end their suffering.

My transpersonal-based paradigm regarding psychological well-being—the only foundation that effectively supported me to endure and recalibrate myself—is why I have no desire to undertake a ridiculously expensive APA-certified graduate degree in psychology via traditional higher education.

I’ve lived more than half a century and have significant life experience navigating anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and mental wellness.

And after a decade working in higher ed, I am averse to investing significant time and money to acquire another piece of paper that says I’ve been “educated” on a whole lot of theory—from “professors” who generally think too highly of themselves and their abilities—that I flat-out reject and would never use in practice. After working behind the scenes in academia, the stench of exploitation and negative return on investment lingers.

Instead, I choose to undertake applied training and education. I learn from highly experienced mentors who are leading voices in their fields and who share an alignment with my transpersonal psych paradigm for personal well-being.

I know these methods work because I use them myself. Self-recovery is a practice and an evolutionary journey that does not stop. But it does get easier. However, it requires you to take back your agency.

The first step to taking back agency is awareness. So let’s start there.

Identifying Your Baseline

There is a theory in positive psychology called the happiness set point. Derived from research in behavioral genetics and adaptation theory, the happiness set point model posits that:

• Happiness fluctuates in response to life events.

• After a particularly happy event—even one that is life-changing—people will return to their baseline level of happiness due to psychological adaptation and personality traits.

• Our happiness set point is mostly innate, influenced by temperament, neurobiology, and stable personality factors.

I think there’s a good bit of truth in this theory. However, I believe it falls short in recognizing the important role of childhood development, intergenerational trauma, and basic needs security.

People are not perfect, and the same goes for family dynamics. Even families that have above-average functioning can be struck by adverse or tragic circumstances that destabilize safety and security needs.

When I think back to the time in my life I was most happy—prior to age fifteen—I was not the kind of person who often experienced blissful childhood joy. I was just never that kid.

I was blessed with above-average family dynamics in early childhood, but I often resented the fact that I was a child and had to capitulate to the rules adults made.

I’m fifty-five now and still resent that I am at the mercy of societal incompetence, toxic competitiveness, ignorance, and greed from fellow adults. This is a personality trait. It affects my happiness quotient. Until I am able to level up my state of consciousness, it will continue to affect my peace.

Think about the period in your life when you were most happy and at ease. This will provide clues to your own baseline.

Then add on any sort of developmental trauma occurring before age twenty-three—for example, chronic bullying in school, significant adverse change in family financial stability, a difficult move to a new home and/or school, a serious illness, a death, etc. Any circumstances that adversely impacted you count as a trauma or loss layer.

Next, add on life stressors like work, parenting, dysfunctional family dynamics, societal instability, witnessing violent conflict and destruction, and survival-needs acquisition. These add more layers of dis-ease.

If you grew up in a seriously dysfunctional household or experienced childhood abuse, you won’t be able to even guess what your true happiness baseline is, because life circumstances never existed for you to be carefree.

Now you can begin to understand how challenging it is to untangle this symptom called depression. Its origins are multifaceted and multilayered.

Is it possible to level up your baseline happiness? I believe it is. But it requires effort and practice—similar to learning to play a musical instrument. It also requires making your well-being a priority, regardless of circumstances. And it requires evolving your consciousness.

Depression Is Not a Result of Negative Thinking

Thoughts are an aspect of depression; they do not cause depression. This is why cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can be so infuriating for someone who is depressed.

I would encourage anyone who is seeking support to interview their prospective therapist on their own personal experience with depression. If they:

• Respond by saying, “I was depressed once after a death,”

• Avoid answering directly by saying, “I’m an LCP or LCSW and therefore qualified to work with depressed people,”

• Give you an unsatisfactory answer in any way—

Don’t waste your time and money with them. Keep looking. Being depressed after a loss is grief. Depression is an aspect of grief. Grief is not chronic depression but can be an unrecognized source of chronic depression.

If you are looking for effective support, you must find a practitioner who has conquered the depression demon. Effective support may not come in an insurance-endorsed package. Do not give up on finding effective support for yourself because you can’t find it where you are told to go.

The intrusive or ruminating thoughts that clutter your mind when you are depressed are your psyche’s way of trying to solve your problem. They are not the source of your problem.

These thoughts are intrinsically connected to what’s happening in your body. Our thoughts are so connected to our body’s autonomic nervous system that we don’t even realize they arise from internal and external stimuli.

Thoughts happen instantaneously. Eventually, these thoughts begin to take on a life of their own as they become part of a larger negative feedback loop operating in our body. We think that our thought came first, but in fact our thoughts are just part of the loop of dread to which our bodies have become habituated.

In the previous section, we talked about the plethora of sources of chronic and traumatic stress that contribute to depression. In fact, studies on rats that are exposed to constant stress show they become depressed and die earlier than rats exposed to intermittent or no stress. They physically give up, their bodies become diseased, and they die.

Any organism exposed to constant environmental stress that inhibits ease of survival will become depressed and die. This includes humans who are unable to turn off hypervigilance and survival mode due to prolonged adversity or perceived threats.

Happiness might be a choice, but for those struggling with depression, having a therapist cognitively reframe your felt experience as a way to “teach” you to think more empowering, “happy” thoughts is, quite frankly, insulting—not to mention ineffective.

This is the crap they are being taught in graduate school. People who’ve never experienced depression should not be front-line support to help people who are suffering from depression recover themselves.

In summary, your depression isn’t just your thoughts. Depression is a deep groove—or set of grooves—in your brain’s neural network system that affects your entire body, including the thoughts you think.

Hormones Are Vital to Wellness

Emotional disconnection. Fatigue. Insomnia or hypersomnia. Lack of appetite or overeating. Feeling dead inside. Anger. Irritation. Body aches. Cognitive impairment. No motivation.

These are symptoms of depression—but they are also associated with PTSD, chronic anxiety, puberty, and menopause.

The takeaway here is hormones. Every single hormone our body produces affects our mental wellness. We cannot separate our hormones from our mental health.

But you will not hear any psychiatric practitioner speaking of this or running tests on hormones.

It’s no coincidence that the two times in my life when I was so depressed I could not function normally were when I started having periods and when I quit having them. These years were extremely difficult in other ways, with significant financial stress and challenging living conditions. But what pushed me over the edge and obliterated my ability to power through were my hormones. I struggled with suicidal ideation for years during my menopause transition.

No mainstream doctor, other than an endocrinologist, seems to know anything about the profound influence our hormones have on our ability to feel well. But you will never get a referral to an endocrinologist for “mental health” problems.

Our adrenals play a significant role in hormones that help us feel well. Mainstream doctors will tell you adrenal fatigue does not exist. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it does, and if you have it, you will feel like you are dying. Not enough cortisol is just as detrimental as too much cortisol.

Recognize that your hormones are the source of downstream neurotransmitter production. During depression, your body’s ability to produce hormones when—and in the amount—needed is compromised. Testosterone, estrogen, cortisol, aldosterone, epinephrine, norepinephrine—all of these are vital to optimal wellness.

The only resources I’ve found to help with hormone testing are functional or integrative medicine doctors. It’s a serious investment of money, but I would encourage anyone struggling with intractable depression to have hormone testing—especially if psychotropics do not provide any relief or make your symptoms worse.

When I was suffering through menopause transition, the doctors I went to for help treated me like a mental illness patient. They claimed I had a sleep disorder. I did have a sleep disorder—insomnia—but it was a result of my extreme hormone loss.

Hormone function is not something that would have been uncovered by a sleep study, which four different licensed medical professionals told me to get. I knew better and did not waste my time and precious dollars pursuing that line of inquiry.

Do not allow mainstream doctors to beat you down. Do not allow them to gaslight you into believing something about yourself and your body that is not true. When you are depressed, you are often desperate and and always vulnerable. Believe in yourself and what you know intuitively is right for you.

There are doctors out there who can help. Most of them do not take insurance, and recovering proper hormone function is not a quick fix. Three years post-menopause, and I’m still trying to fix my broken body. Fortunately, I finally found a menopause specialist who believed me when I told her about my debilitating symptoms.

The Curse of Consciousness

Walking through the grocery store today, I could not help but feel guilty and disgusted at the packaging lining the shelves and the resulting environmental damage humans are perpetuating for their own convenience on both sides of the food supply chain.

Collectively, in first-world nations, humans take our personal comfort needs for granted—and at the expense of everything else that exists on this planet. This is existential depression.

It often goes something like:

• Feeling guilty for being a member of the species that’s destroying the planet

• Lacking meaning and purpose attached to your existence

• Being painfully aware of the death and destruction other human beings and the environment are experiencing from intentional conflict meant to kill them

• Perceiving the damage societal hate, greed, violence, poverty, and injustice do to the entire collective

Existential depression is the easiest to live with because it does not usually affect us physiologically to the point where the body struggles to function.

But it can cause you to become numb. The numbness is an intentional dissociation because these big problems do not have easy fixes that you alone can implement. Our psyche chooses to block out this discomfort and guilt via distraction or dissociation.

My husband is an absolute master of ignoring problems and hoping they will just go away eventually. He is capable of ignoring problems for years—decades even—if it means he does not have to change anything about his life. Observe our society, and it’s obvious he’s not alone in this mastery.

Existential depression is hard because there is nothing you can do to effect external change to remedy the issue. It requires an elevation of consciousness, which can be quite challenging. Resorting to cognitive or spiritual bypassing to resolve existential depression is not an authentic or effective solution.

Change Must Come

If you’re depressed because your dog died or your child is seriously ill, that is grief. Grief can linger for years, but it should not debilitate you indefinitely.

The key to navigating grief is if you can compare your functioning and well-being in three-month increments and can point to objective measures of improvement. If you are not improving, you may be experiencing complicated grief, which will often manifest as depression.

Grief requires significant self-compassion and self-love. Overcoming chronic depression requires self-compassion, self-love, commitment, and change. Depression is your body’s way of telling you something is not right—and it usually requires both internal and external change.

In Part 2, we will examine effective strategies and interventions to overcome depression and reclaim well-being.