There are a few phrases that I have come to hate over the past few months. One of them is 'cry for help', which I think is number one on my list of nonsense phrases that people should be banned from using. But the more pervasive and dangerous phrase is the one that doesn't always get said out loud: 'snap out of it'.
Before my depression was actually diagnosed I felt like there was a strong view that I should just 'snap out of it' and stop being miserable all the time. In fact that view had been there for a good ten years or so. And a lot of it probably wasn't coming from other people, it was probably something that I was telling myself. But when I was with my friends it seemed to be the thought that was constantly going through their heads. I thought I could see them looking at me and just having no idea what to do, and not understanding why I wasn't cheering up. Why wasn't I snapping out of it yet?
The reason why I think it is a dangerous phrase (wherever it is coming from) is that it puts a lot of pressure on the person who has depression. Usually a person who will already be putting themselves under a lot of pressure.
I want to try and explain this one as well as I can, so forgive me if I take a little while to make my point.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone about the relative merits of cycling or taking the tube to work. They were of the view that if you turned up late to work because something had gone wrong with the tube then you would get more sympathy than if you turned up late because your bicycle had got a puncture. I said that I thought this was a ridiculous notion. Obviously the cyclist had an equally good reason for being late and should be treated the same. But the person I was talking to was firmly of the view that the cyclist wouldn't get as much sympathy. Even though the puncture would have probably happen when it is raining (there is a reason for this - go read cycling blogs if you want to know!) and so the cyclist would most likely get to work wet through, cold and grumpy, and arguably deserving of more sympathy.
I personally don't think I would treat the cyclist any differently. But I can see that people might. I have been thinking about why they might and have come up with the phrase 'relative sympathy'. By 'relative sympathy' I mean that people have different levels of sympathy for someone depending on whether they themselves have ever been in the same position or can see that there is an issue.
A vast number of people in London get the tube. They know that it can, at times, be entirely unpredictable and frankly a pain in the arse. If you have been trapped in a train on the northern line while the service is 'regulated' then you know what I mean. It is accepted by all that probably at some point someone will be late for work because there was a problem with the tube. This is understood. You've probably been in the same position. You can therefore sympathise.
As for the cyclist: well despite Bradley Wiggins and co. being fantastic over the past year and the general appreciation for cycling that seems to have ensued, not many people will ever have changed a punctured tyre. Fewer people will have sorted out a puncture on the way to work. Added to that a puncture is quite often not immediately obvious to anyone aside from the person riding the bike. There simply isn't the shared knowledge base and so the sympathy may not be as forthcoming.
Now I'm not saying that people wouldn't be sympathetic. Some would. Some people are very empathetic. I'm just saying that some people aren't, or at least there are limits to their empathy, those limits being their own experience.
So coming back to depression. People are generally better at understanding things that they can see or that they have experienced. In terms of relative sympathy a broken leg will therefore get a fair amount. It's obvious. There are crutches, and wincing as the person tries to walk on it, and sometimes a cast so that people can draw doodles. And I'm not saying that people who have broken something don't deserve sympathy: obviously they do. I'm just saying that that sympathy will be pretty forthcoming. Also people will understand that that person with the broken leg is incapacitated. No one would turn round to someone with a broken leg and demand that they run the 100m. Or at least if they did they would probably receive a torrent of abuse from other people! And no one would repeatedly asked the person with their leg in a cast why they aren't running the 100m. It's obvious why not!
Then you have depression. You see depression is a real illness. As real as a broken leg. However, there are two difficulties: (i) not everyone has experience of it themselves and (ii) it isn't obvious unless you tell people about it. And so (from what I have seen) the relative sympathy is significantly less. A lot of the sympathy I have received has been since I have actually told people that I am ill and explained in very simple terms what is going on. I have effectively given myself a plaster cast (metaphorically) so that it is obvious. Thankfully people aren't doodling on me! But they know that I'm unwell, and they know that sometimes I will just be uncontrollably sad for no apparent reason. So I've 'upped' my relative sympathy.
But the fact that other people have not experienced it still means that there is a slight 'sympathy gap' at times. (I'm not complaining about this, it is simply the truth.) Even having been very open with people I am still being told 'to be strong' and 'not to be silly'.
Which leads me to my hated phrase 'snap out of it'. When I have had down days and felt miserable for no reason whatsoever I can't 'snap out of it'. It is as difficult as running an 100m race with a broken leg. I can see that I could do it. It's not impossible. I could just get on with things, but doing that will be painful and difficult.
Having had ten years where my depression was not obvious, I have got used to feeling like I should just 'buck up' and 'snap out of it'. I have got used to days where I am lying on my floor in floods of tears completely inconsolable, or being awake in the middle of the night crying for no reason whatsoever. Just feeling awful. The times when I have been alone I have felt like I needed to 'snap out of it' - there is no reason to be like that, so why am I? The times when people have been with me they have (on occasion) been kind and cared for me, but I have seen the alarm and confusion in their eyes: 'what's wrong? why isn't she snapping out of this?'
And the answer is deceptively simple. You can't snap out of depression. You can work your way out and understand yourself more and slowly get better, like a leg bone re-knitting over time, but you can't force it. Sometimes you have to just let the tears and pain happen.
Relative sympathy works on two levels. On the one hand there is 'everyone else'. As I've said before some people can be empathetic and understanding even though they have never experienced something. I hope by writing these notes I can let people understand a little more of what it is like to have this illness. And maybe that will up the relative sympathy for people with depression to at least the level of the cyclist with the punctured tyre, and hopefully get as far as the broken leg.
But the other level is the dangerous level. Not having enough relative sympathy with yourself when you are the one with the depression. Having a go at yourself all the time for feeling down. Simply put: you can't help it. You are not doing anything wrong. You are poorly, and affected as much as you would be if you had flu or a broken leg. And sometimes that is a hard thing to acknowledge.
I don't want to give anyone advice for how to deal with being depressed. I don't really feel like I have the qualifications to do so. But I suppose what I do have is experience. For anyone who is constantly telling themselves to 'snap out of it' I would say this: up the relative sympathy that you are giving yourself a bit. You may find that actually it does make the whole thing a little less painful.
Hmm, I'm not sure that the cycling example is the best illustration of the point here. A tangent, I know, but an intriguing one all the same.
ReplyDeleteThe more usual variant of the example is the delayed train set against a person stuck in traffic in a car. The person who has been delayed on the train is likely to attract more sympathy because the people giving the sympathy know that, provided that the person caught a sufficiently early train to leave an adequate margin of error, any further delays are quite certainly outside the person's control, whereas, with a person stuck in traffic, there is always the lurking suspicion that the person ought to have anticipated the problem and left more time.
The bicycle example is interesting, because a person would have to be extraordinarily harsh to the cyclist not to give the poor fellow as much sympathy (or, indeed, benefit of the doubt) as somebody delayed on the Underground, especially since a puncture is obviously an improbable occurrence outside the cyclist's control whereas Underground services are untimetabled and delays of some sort are quite frequent. I am somewhat sceptical that a person would in fact be less sympathetic to the cyclist here. Fewer people actually cycle than take the Underground, but surely it's just as easy for most people to imagine a puncture as, say, a broken leg?
None of this detracts from your actual point, I hasten to add: the difficulty, I can only imagine, is that, for people who have never had depression, they cannot begin to imagine what it entails because they lack the tools with which to do so (this does not mean that they cannot know empirically what the effects of depression are, but many people, I suppose, will not have researched this if they have not been affected by it).
In any event, 14 steps forward and one back seems on balance to be a most happy thing to report. Do you find, I wonder, that it helps to realise when you are feeling bad that the bad feeling will be transient, that you will be able to feel happy again in the near future without any extrinsic change in your circumstances and that, just as when you do have some transient physical illness, you'll recover an awful lot better if you don't expect too much of yourself until you do feel better; is this what you had in mind for relative sympathy? If so, that makes much sense indeed.
James - as you may have appreciated the above post really wasn't about transport at all! The conversation was simply a lead in, and I hope an easy way, to see how different people will approach a different situation depending on their own experiences and understanding.
DeleteBy using the term 'relative sympathy' I am referring to the fact that people will naturally be more sympathetic with situations that they understand. Whether that is (i) observing someone else or (ii) a person with depression appreciating what is going on themselves.
As for whether I am able to appreciate that the 'bad feeling will be transient' please see my next blog post.
I think this (the sympathy thing, not the, er... transport thing) is one reason why fiction, especially popular fiction, matters a lot. Seeing / hearing / reading sympathetic and truthful portrayals of people different from us in situations we've never been in helps teach us sympathy for similar real people in similar real situations.
ReplyDeleteTo pick up your 'broken leg' example, we've all encountered enough fictional broken legs to have a rough idea of what having a broken leg involves (pain, loss of mobility), what might help (crutches, sitting down, not being expected to run, painkillers), and (importantly!) what people can still do even with a broken leg (walk with appropriate assistance, have coherent conversations, wiggle their toes, be a worthwhile human being). All this even if we've never broken a leg or even met anyone with a broken leg. Meanwhile, accurate and detailed portrayals of mental illness in fiction are so few (and so overwhelmed by negative, ill-informed ones) that a lot of people have absolutely no idea what someone dealing with depression is likely to be experiencing, what might help, or what they can and can't do.
(It also doesn't help that some of the good depictions aren't explicitly identified. The character Saga in 'The bridge' seems to be generally regarded as a pretty accurate and positive portrayal of a character who is very probably autistic, but nobody in the series ever says that she is, so viewers won't necessarily think of her when they read about autism. 'The bridge' is really good, by the way, if you feel like a bit of crime drama.)
This is probably also true of self-sympathy. The other day I read about a US study that suggests that watching television improves the self-esteem of white boys but decreases the self-esteem of girls and black boys. And, anecdotally, I know quite a few people who have been helped to understand and accept their sexualities, their disabilities, or other aspects of their identities through positive fictional portrayals.
Non-fiction, especially first-hand accounts like yours, are also important and positive, but I suspect they're important and positive for a slightly different audience: one that's already somewhat engaged with the issues. Most people won't read a book or a blog about depression unless they happen to know the author or they already have some desire to learn about depression, or they're dealing with it themselves and want to connect with other people's similar experiences. Fiction reaches much wider and engages people much younger — and yet it's often regarded as unimportant, which is rather puzzling.