Existential Depression

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

One of my friends specializes in somatic work (helping people connect with their bodies) and she HATES it when anyone endures touch they don’t like.

“Stop it,” she’ll beg. “You’re ruining your capacity for pleasure with every unwelcome touch that you endure. When your body says no and you override that instinct, you’re creating so many issues that could be avoided.”

A lot of the time, she’s talking about people enduring touch from their partners. “I don’t really like it when he fill-in-the-blank, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I just go with it.” However, there are a hundred other ways it pops up. A handsy coworker. Pregnant women who endure belly touches that make them want to crawl out of their skin. Even exercise that your body hates (it’s not touch, but it’s the same principle).

Things that don’t actually cross any lines or make you feel violated, just things you don’t care for.

For me, it happens a lot in Thailand. Since massages cost $5, I go for one almost every day. However, I don’t always end up with someone who knows what they’re doing (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken an elbow to the spine). Since I don’t like to be rude, I used to just sit there and take it. “It’ll be over in 45 minutes,” I’d tell myself, “And I can try somewhere else tomorrow.”

On my last three trips to Thailand, however, I changed my ways. If someone doesn’t know what they’re doing, I no longer let them crank on my body. Not because I became magically empowered, but because one of them hurt my neck and it made me draw a line. The Universe almost always steps in when we don’t take action, in my experience. Way better to do it ourselves and avoid the more painful lesson, I reckon.

I’m writing about it today because of something I heard on a podcast yesterday.

I was listening to Shawn Achor, the author of The Happiness Advantage, talk to Oprah as part of my research for my “How to Human” book.

In the interview, they both discussed their experiences with depression. “Real depression,” they specified. The kind that significantly impacted their quality of life and also made them yearn a bit for death (“I wasn’t planning suicide,” Shawn said, “But I did find myself stepping in front of a bus one day kind of hoping it didn’t stop in time.”)

Both Oprah and Shawn Achor are big advocates for asking for help when you need it. Seeking medical advice when it’s required, doing what needs to be done.

And…they don’t think every case of depression requires antidepressants. “I set a date when I’d seek medical help,” Oprah said, “But positive habits were sufficient to pull me out from ‘behind the veil.’”

Shawn chimed in to say, “What we need antidepressants for sometimes is to get people to the point where they can start the positive habits like a gratitude practice.”

Like me, neither of them were opposed to any treatment that works. There was no pharmaceutical stigma, no saying, “Treating your depression naturally is morally superior.”

They don’t care. I don’t care. If pills work, take a pill. If you prefer a different treatment, try a different treatment. 

But here’s the point I want to drive home: back when I dutifully swallowed a daily antidepressant without getting any better and the only doctors I could afford kept telling me that I needed to try different pills, I wasn’t in that use case Shawn pointed out.

I could easily maintain a gratitude practice or go for a walk. I couldn’t authentically feel gratitude or summon joy on the walk, but I could do them.

The issue was the apathy I felt about all the things that made up my day. The “please no, not again” feeling when my alarm went off on a work day. The resistance when it was time to log on for an online course in my degree program. The soul weariness I felt when I started my side hustle at 9:00 PM.

When my doctors kept telling me to take antidepressants, they were urging me to endure a situation that my entire soul shouted “NO MORE” to.

And, like my friend who tells us all not to endure touch we don’t like if we want to have access to embodied pleasure, humans aren’t built to endure lives they don’t want if we want to have access to sparkly joy.

The type of depression that I had is called “existential depression.” It wasn’t clinical. It wasn’t about insufficient serotonin levels. It was about forcing myself to endure a life that wasn’t working for me. The symptoms are the same, but the root cause is very different.

When I stopped enduring a life that wasn’t working for me (in my case by moving to Thailand), the depression lifted.

I then used the kind of positive habits Shawn and Oprah talked about to clear the imprint from my system. Because I spent years depressed, my brain had become wired for depression. My neural pathways defaulted to apathy and despair when life felt icky.

These days, they don’t. I’ve rewired them, which is possibly the greatest blessing of my life.

I share ideas like this because I felt defective when conventional treatments for depression didn’t work for me. I felt like I was doomed to chronic cycles of despair when I wasn’t. There was very real cause and effect in my situation…but the cause wasn’t “a chemical imbalance,” it was something else.

When people endure touch they don’t like, they decrease their capacity for pleasure.

When people endure lives they don’t like, they decrease their capacity for vitality.

Not every case of depression is like mine. But some are. So I share the message in case it helps. I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I knew it. And, now that I know what I know, I like to spread the word.  

Wishing you joyful vitality,

Keely

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