Here’s a profile of Spalding Gray by Oliver Sacks that appeared in the New Yorker this April. “The Catastrophe: Spalding Gray’s Brain Injury.” The subtitle is a bit misleading, you might think it deals with neuroscience. What it really chronicles is a slow, but seemingly unavoidable descent toward suicide. It is very dark. Those that recall Spaldings performances during his popularity will recall that he was the essence of life. When he first disappeared I seem to recall the press treated it as if it were a mystery. To hear this recounting is chilling. Highly recommended, if you’re up for it. Not recommended if you’re depressed.
Author: kaleachapmanpsyd
Clinical Psychologist practicing in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.
The Role of Sadness in “Inside Out”
photo by Jan Fidler (creative commons)
Unsurprisingly very nice piece by Dachel Keltner and Paul Ekman in the New York Times on the portrayal of emotions in the recent Pixar movie “Inside Out.”
… studies find that sadness is associated with elevated physiological arousal, activating the body to respond to loss. And in the film, Sadness is frumpy and off-putting. More often in real life, one person’s sadness pulls other people in to comfort and help.
First, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations.
Also posted at Pasadena Therapist
Andrew Solomon: Poor Judgment in Depression
photo by lisbokt (creative commons)
“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn’t a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Nine Ways to Support Someone Who Has Depression
photo by carl jones (creative commons)
Thoughtful, and above all, not misguided piece at PsychCentral by Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. The nine points are taken from Deborah Serani’s Living With Depression, a book I haven’t read, but is generally quite favorably reviewed.
Here’s number one:
1. Be there.
According to Serani, the best thing you can do for someone with depression is to be there. “When I was struggling with my own depression, the most healing moments came when someone I loved simply sat with me while I cried, or wordlessly held my hand, or spoke warmly to me with statements like ‘You’re so important to me.’ ‘Tell me what I can do to help you.’ ‘We’re going to find a way to help you to feel better.’”
First-Person Account: A History of Depression
photo by chris ford (creative commons)
Here’s a short, convincing account of depression from Marisa McPeck-Stringham at Huffington Post. She touches on quite a few of the experiences depressed people face — the difficulty of realizing when depression returns, the reactions of others (usually not helpful), the difference between depression and grief, what helps her “head off depression at the pass,” the isolation that is both symptom and fuel for depression. Reading first-person accounts can help spark recognition as well as lessen isolation, if you happen to be depressed.
Well worth a read.
Despite all social stigmas to the contrary or people accusing me of being “crazy,” I’m not ashamed to admit that I have depression. Just like I’m not ashamed to admit that I have asthma.
So let me tell you what depression is like for me. It is debilitating. It makes mundane, ordinary tasks like taking a shower or making the bed seem impossible. It is soul-sucking. It breaks you down into a person who no longer feels anything but apathy. It also makes you feel completely worthless and unlovable. When I’m in the throes of depression my brain lies to me and tells me that I am worth nothing. No one cares about me. The world would be a better place if I died. And when you have all this negative self-talk running through your head all day long, no amount of fluffy kitten pictures is going to take that away.
Allie Brosh on Depression
“…trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work.”
― Allie Brosh – Hyperbole and a Half
Famous Depressives #1
nick drake by delarge (creative commons)
Happy Birthday, Dalai Lama
This doesn’t have much to do with anything in particular, but it might lighten your day. It’s Patti Smith at the Glastonbury festival, leading a brief “happy birthday”. The Dalai lama addresses the crowd briefly.
los feliz psychologist 