Crazy Scared

Posted by fxckfeelings on April 1, 2010

We began this week with people paralyzed by fear of the unknown. We now end it with people who get stuck, not due to fear of the unknown, but rather fear of the untenable; their lives are blocked by the effects, or even just the possibility, of mental illness. Everyone’s lives, even for the few of us who are sane, are fraught with danger, so there’s no point in letting any illness ruin you, at least not without a fight.
–Dr. Lastname

I know that my depression is one of the main obstacles keeping me from getting a new job; I got laid off three months ago, and even though my meds had stopped working way before that, I had enough discipline to push through. Now I don’t have a workplace to go to, I have trouble getting motivated enough to do anything, so between my inability to get out of bed and the fact I look like a mess, interviews aren’t happening. My wife is pissed because I’m not motivated to get new work and I won’t go back to see the psychiatrist, but I don’t see the point in trying this new prescription, because it’s my fourth medication so far, and I don’t understand why the first medication I took, which worked the best, stopped working, and why none of the others since has done the job. I don’t see why I should waste my time getting treatment if it isn’t going to work, but my wife thinks I’m being complacent and lazy. My goal is to find some way to get better or at least get her off my back.

You’re reinforcing something I’ve been telling my children their whole lives; life is unfair.

It was unfair for them when I wouldn’t by them a Happy Meal or the latest Nintendo game, even when they deserved it, and it’s unfair for you now that you’ve lost your job and can’t find the right meds. Unfair is unfair, as they say (or at least as I say).

The trouble is, it isn’t a fair world for anyone, young or old, and you won’t survive if you can’t take your lumps and keep on going.

The less you do, the more you scare and burden your wife, who gives you an earful, which makes you more depressed (as does doing nothing), and so on down the pit that leads to self-pity and divorce, all of which you can blame on your wife, who will be happy not to hear it.

Let’s get your expectations about depression straight. If anyone told you that antidepressants were effective, they were using the medical meaning of the word, not the English meaning.

The English meaning is, “usually works,” but the medical meaning is, “better than nothing.” You might get helped by antidepressants, but never count on it. Meanwhile, you’ve got to take care of yourself, so ask yourself how you’re going to manage, not why you can’t get a cure or stop your wife from being critical.

Consider the job description for a depressed survivor in an unfair world. If treatments don’t work, your job is to suck up the pain and ask others to give you the prompts, reminders, and coaching you need to keep going. If a treatment might help, pursue it.

Remember, when you had a job to get up for in the morning, you found the strength to keep moving and work all day, regardless of how bad you felt. Now that you don’t have a job, create a schedule of activities and meetings with people who are expecting to see you.

It isn’t easy when you’re unmotivated and unemployed, but you still have a job, assigned by you, and that’s to prevent your disease, unfair as it is, from taking over.

If you’re angry, disappointed, discouraged, or resentful, it’s also your job to shut up and not let your negative feelings become nasty words. Don’t expect your wife to be positive; after all, you’re not, and it’s an infectious venereal disease, bouncing back and forth.

You want your wife to help you recover, so put your negative feelings aside, reassure her that you continue to care about her and finding a job, and enlist her help in fighting an illness that can’t be helped.

After all, life provides us all with hard times, whether or not we deserve them, all the time. Don’t add to the unfairness quotient with your own behavior; if life pushes you down and hands you an unHappy Meal, there’s always something you can do, even as a depressed person, to push back.

STATEMENT:
Hit yourself upside the head. “Depression is sapping my natural motivation and ability at a critical time, but my goals haven’t changed. I believe in work and independence. I won’t let false pride, resentment, or negative thinking stop me from doing my best and asking others to help me.”

My husband and I are at the stage where we should start thinking seriously about starting a family. The problem is that his father and that entire side of the family have a history of severe mental illness, so he’s not just afraid of having kids, but of even adopting, because he’s afraid he might get sick down the line and ruin our future child’s life. When we got married, it didn’t seem to be a problem, but as his own father has gotten more and more nutty, he’s become convinced that having kids is a bad idea. I want to stay with my husband, but when we got married, he knew that I wanted a family, as well. And I’m OK with adoption, but it’s a long, expensive process, so if we want to go that way, we have to start now. Basically, my goal is to get him to come to his senses, or at least be willing to take a risk.

Life is tough, and having a child—creating a life—is risky. In fact, it is never not risky, even at the best of times, regardless of all that crap on TV about the power of eating right and giving birth in a bathtub, so don’t reassure him that things will turn out OK, because then he’ll have truth on his side.

After all, while modern medicine greatly reduced the rate at which pregnancy killed mothers, it hasn’t changed the way genes sort out randomly and often badly. So, whether you’ve got mental illness in the family or not, there are always tons of bad genes floating around and having a kid is a dangerous lottery.

The question isn’t whether having kids is dangerous (it is, always and forever), but whether your husband has the balls to take on the usual, scary, risky human lottery that is, for the time being, the only way to begin a family.

Once you accept that the risks are real and the results sometimes devastating, you can take pride in the good qualities that you bring to parenting.

You’ve got a good team; you seem open-minded, and he has lots of experience handling mental illness, which he’ll need for those many problems over which good parents have no control.

Remind him that many of those dangerous genes are also beneficial and it will be your job, as parent, to help your kids to manage traits that may be both a gift and liability, be it depressive sensitivity or athletic hyperactivity.

If your husband can see that there is no such thing as risk-free child-rearing, then you can calmly assess which parenting option—standard conception, adoption, foster care, whatever—would work best for you both.

Then, in the most educated way possible, take the risk of your life and take pride in your work, regardless of the (inevitable) helpless times. Just don’t let fear make you throw out the baby plans with the (birthing) bathwater.

STATEMENT:
Your message is: “Absolutely right, having kids is scarier than hell, but that’s the way it is. Don’t panic. We’ve got some good stuff going for us and, regardless of what happens, we’ll do a good job.”