Rethinking Depression: Symptom or Problem?
As a mental health professional, I have believed, even known, for years that our widely accepted beliefs and approaches to depression are fundamentally wrong and seriously flawed. When I say known, I mean like on a deep guttural level. I can feel it in my bones. I’ve been doing this type of work for almost nineteen years now and I’ve learned to trust my gut and it never fails me. Part of the trick is knowing the difference between your gut and well… the storm of all the other feelings floating around in there.
Problems versus Symptoms
Part of the trick of being a good mental health therapist is dividing the problems from the symptoms and it’s extremely important to know the difference. The symptoms themselves are naturally their problem but unless you treat the problem itself, you can expect the symptoms to keep nagging you.
Years ago I met a gentleman that had a nagging cough that he just couldn’t shake. He didn’t ever remember getting sick and no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop coughing. He could use lozenges or take a cough syrup to treat this symptom but he got little help or relief. The doctors ran test after test and after following a trail of medical bread crumbs so to speak, they found the problem. The wall of his heart aorta was bulging and pinching a nerve in his throat area, causing him to cough. This bulge was a big problem because the wall of his aorta was wearing thin and if it broke, he’d be dead before he could say “What the hell…?”
Unfortunately, this was his fate. His surgery was scheduled to repair the aorta wall and just days before, he was home alone when the pop happened. The 911 dispatcher sent emergency services over right away because of the strangeness of the call and what the first responders found was a dead guy in a pool of his own blood.
This just illustrates the need to pin down a problem instead of just treating the symptoms. Perhaps in a different world where we treated problems instead of treating symptoms, they may have been able to find the problem sooner. Instead, there was one goal initially, get rid of the cough. The medical model just states simply that if you’re depressed it’s because you have sort of chemical imbalance in your brain. There’s not enough serotonin intermingling among your synapses and so, therefore, you’re depressed.
Your Life Sucks
As a therapist, I don’t prescribe pills. I don’t want to. We dish out more anti-depressants in my city than almost any other and yet the suicide rates remain extremely high. If SSRI’s are treating the problems and not the symptoms, why do people keep offing themselves? There are many medical studies that indicate that exercise is a natural way to boost mood-enhancing endorphins in your brain. But that’s inconsistent with the widely accepted idea that depression is just the result of low serotonin?
I can tell from extensive experience that depression is not only a symptom but something that you can solve by dealing with the inherent problems or causes of depression. Depression is certainly it’s own problem but it’s also a symptom of one thing that many of us likely live in denial of. Our lives suck.
The problem isn’t that your brain is broken and can’t regulate it’s own chemicals. The problem is that your brain is using depression to tell you that your life sucks and that you need to fix it. If your leg was broken to the point that your bone was sticking out of your skin you wouldn’t take a fistful of oxycontin and call it good, you’d obviously need to fix the bone itself. The pain of this wound is there to tell you that something is wrong. Physical pain exists to tell you that something is seriously wrong and that it needs to be fixed.
Depression is the same thing. There’s something wrong and you need to fix it. Physical pain is the symptom of a problem. If your car is making a weird noise you don’t just turn up the radio so that you don’t hear the noise anymore. You fix the damn problem. And just because I want to run with this metaphor, you don’t break out the spray pain when your check engine light clicks on. You don’t use the spray paint to paint over it and hide the light. The problem will not be solved.
Authentic Satisfaction
Understanding what makes for a happy or satisfying life versus one that is not is tricky because our modern plague of acquiring expensive and nifty stuff is a false flag of happiness. Studies have been done that have shown us that these extrinsic ideals ultimately leave us empty. Our lives are lacking a sense of purpose and responsibility. Life just doesn’t challenge us enough naturally. We don’t gain strength anymore because of the natural resistance required for daily living. If we want to be physically strong we have to intentionally life heavy objects that were made for the very purpose of creating strength.
There are mental equivalents to this. We need mental heavy lifting and we don’t get it through finding the paths of least resistance. We don’t get that mental heavy lifting. We put too much value into ease and convenience. It’s a lie that has been packaged and sold to us. A good life and a happy life isn’t one where we totally lack responsibility or positive challenges. Instead of looking at challenges and responsibility as a trial that needs to be eliminated, we can adopt a more resiliency based mindset that looks at problems as something to overcome. We can adapt and when we don’t, we start to look at ourselves as weak. And that’s seriously depressing.
