(Warning, this post as NOTHING to do with RPGs, it’s another of my Stream of Consciousness stories about my health and my musings on them).
A few weeks ago, I was officially diagnosed with my second severe depression in 4 years. Like many people out there, I am often fighting what I call inner demons. Such demons manifest themselves as anxious thoughts and recurring fears of failure and a certitude that I will end up losing everything I have obtained in life.
The ironic thing about it all is that by letting those fears take over me over these last few months, I ran the very real risk of losing everything: my job, my wife, my kids and my friends.
Because I became such a nervous wreck, I was prescribed an extended leave from work (as well as anti-depressive drugs) and I’ve been home for the last month. Some days have been good, many bad.
A lot of this time has been spent feeling guilty about not having been strong enough to weather this.
Try as I might, I failed to recognize the sources of my fears and I was unable to face them and change how I react to them.
In the last few weeks, I’ve tried the tricks of this book (excellent I might say) and I’ve gone to weekly therapy sessions. While all this has helped me, it wasn’t enough. Anxious thoughts still creep in my head and stay there for hours on end.
Little piece of advice to those suffering similar disorders: sitting idly in an empty house is NOT good therapy! Only the evil voices keep you company and its impossible not to listen to them.
Then two things occurred over the weekend that may be showing me the way out of this mess. First, both my physician and my therapists forcefully reminded me that I had to exercise more if I was serious about recovery. A psychiatrist once told me that regular exercise was a better anti-depressive therapy than drugs were. I believe that. Its just that when things go sour, exercise is the first thing you stop doing and you rationalize a gazillion reasons for having stopped.
I also recently read that an anxious mind can’t occupy a relaxed body.
That’s why I fished out the dusty Wii Balance Board from underneath the living room’s sofa Saturday morning. I fired up Wii Fit, and took on the gentle reminder that I hadn’t used it in 316 days. I’ve been using it for the past 3 days (including a full 30 minutes this morning) and for the first time in a few weeks, I felt fine on a Monday morning.
That’s an encouraging sign!
Secondly, through my friend e of Geeks Dream Girl, I stumbled upon this post by James of Men with Pens. It discusses how to stay sane and alive if you are a creative person. In it was a 20 minute video by author Elizabeth Gilbert.
You don’t have to watch it all, but it’s very good. In it she talks about the anxieties of being a creative person (in her case a writer) and how daunting each success you have can be because you start pressuring yourself and doubting that you’ll ever again be able to create something at least as successful.
Then she hits on a subject that rang so true to me about how ideas and inspiration often feels like they are given to you by an external, intangible “thing” and that you as an artist/writer/etc are just the vessel of that idea. I was struck at how real this felt to me. I will often be walking along the street and an idea will strike me like lightning and I know that if I don’t reach a keyboard within the next hour or so, the idea will slowly fade and won’t come back.
Now here’s the thing. Gilbert says that she uses that belief as a psychological construct to help her deal with all those anxious thoughts and feeling of inadequacy. By believing that you are not the only one responsible of your own creation, by externalizing part of the creative process, you can detach yourself from the huge self-imposed pressures of performing all the time.
Interesting!
Now this morning I was thinking, if ideas come from whatever external source you decide to define for yourself and if you can choose to be receptive or not to them, then maybe anxious ideas and dark thoughts can also be modeled like that.
Now instead of feeling guilty about how anxious a thought makes me feel, I could say “Okay then, if I don’t concentrate on this dark idea, if I don’t give it life like I do when a crazy cool idea strikes me, then it will go away like all ideas do. Thus, I can free my mind to focus on better ideas and thoughts”.
Nothing of this is based in science or in facts. Yet, the thing is about the human mind is that it doesn’t so much care about what’s true. Rather, it cares very much about what it believes!
And I choose to try to believe this. Very much so.
Lastly, yesterday evening I came to terms with the fact that in spite of my scientific background, training and experience, I was first and foremost a creative person. I’ve always been about ideas and creating stuff, not running them.
And therein lies my salvation.
Here’s to seeking a healthier body and mind… and finding them!
I admire you for your transparency on this topic. I wrestle with similar demons myself, but I don’t have anywhere near the courage you just displayed in talking about them. You can be certain that some of your readers, myself included, can draw some hope from what you shared.
Thank you.
Thanks Alric,
We’re not alone living this, I know this and that’s my way of reaching out to similar people. I urge people to talk about it more, just maybe not in such a public way as I do now. 🙂
Hey bro, hang in there. I know it’s hard and there are days where you just want to stay in bed because you can’t face getting up, but you have to. And because there are people counting on you. Like me 🙂
So chin up. This too shall pass. Promise.
James Chartrand – Men with Penss last blog post..What a Rotten Roof Can Teach You About Your Business
Thanks for the kind words James!
Things are actually looking up and that’s why I wrote the piece 🙂
Keeping busy, active and hopeful is key!
Thanks again!
Good Luck and keep hanging in there (I’m thinking you are going to get a lot of responses like this, but I assure you that we all mean it from the bottom of our hearts).
One thing I have found that helped me deal with all the negative thoughts that can find root in one’s head is martial arts. Since I have started training about 8 years ago, I have found amazing improvement in my health. Not just physical, but also in the fact that it brings a level of mental exercise with it and the addition of meditation to my life has been a great benefit.
So stay healthy and keep plugging away. I know I speak for just about everyone when I say, we look forward to many more great posts from you over the years to come. But don’t do it for us, do it for your family and for you. 🙂
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Too bad Inner Demons can’t be slain with an appropriate magic weapon 🙁
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@Rauthik: Thanks man! I’m wasn’t fishing for shows of support but they are always dearly welcome!
@HermitDave : HA! If they were, I’d be the richest man on the planet, selling metallurgic exorcise kits.
Best of luck, Philippe, with your creating and your demons both.
I think you may be in exactly the right frame of mind for these lectures by David Milch. They’re longish – each podcast runs between 60 and 90 minutes – but worth it. For me they’ve been life-changing. The context and nominal topic of the lectures is the recent WGA Writers’ Strike, but their true purpose is to ask: ‘Why do storytellers despair? How can storytelling help us find connection to one another?’
Only they’re a lot less dippy than that might sound. Funny as hell, profane, spiritual too. Milch (creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue) is maybe the most fluent, complexly allusive speaker I’ve ever heard, and after working through the first couple of lectures you’ll start to get a sense of his grand plan, the coherent philosophy that’s threaded through every anecdote and motivates the construction of the whole series.
He’s a little crazy, no question, but down inside you’ll find something extraordinary.
Well, I mean inside you, of course.
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@Wally: I’ll put the lectures on during my morning exercise routines then! Thanks!
Oh which reminds me: I think exercising – turning suffering into pain – is one of the best things you can do to prime yourself to escape from anxiety. When I get depressed I don’t want to work, which is precisely the time I need work most. Exercise is an easy way to win something every day. Good on you!
Wallys last blog post..Nobel Prizes explained!
Chatty, This may not mean much but it comes from the heart. You’re in my prayers man.
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@Wally: I’m all for feeling physical pain instead of mental anguish… Pain I have no trouble with.. it goes away with enough training 🙂
@Vulcan Stev: It means a lot to me man, thanks so much!
Hi Chatty,
I read your site a lot but I’ve never posted before. Anyway, I also have extreme depression. For me, it’s a combination of sorting through some trauma and a medical thing – lack of serotonin in the brain. Anyway, I can relate to what you’re going to *very* well.
The best thing I’ve found is definitely exercise – but in moderation. For a while, I was going to the gym for 3+ hours a night and while I was in phenomenal shape, it just exasperated the problem. But running for a half hour or so a night has helped out tremendously.
The second best thing is exactly what you mentioned, not giving voice to the evil thoughts. If I talk about them, they get much worse. It’s one thing to open up and say, “Hey, I’m having problems here.” It’s another to say, “I’m depressed because I suck” or whatever.
As far as the creative thing goes – I’m a programmer, and I can say I never feel more alive than when I’m trying to figure out how a new program will work. Writing a program scratches the creative itch for me. And honestly, I’ve never felt like the ides come from an outside source. I mean, I have the same fears you do – how will I do as well as I did in the past? But we’re smart people. We’ll have new and better ideas every day!
You can get through this, but it takes effort and support.
I don’t want to scare you… but we are so much alike it’s uncanny.
I’m 34 years old and 3 of my friends took their life over the years. The first when I was 13. Another when I was 17 and the last 8 months latter.
They all had one thing in common. Their suicide were the first sign they gave to everyone they were in depression.
Write it, talk about it, sing it, exorcise it. But don’t keep it to yourself.
If they had asked, I would have helped them. Maybe they thought we knew and did not care. The truth is, in our lives we are so much in our own head most of the time. We forget that no one can hear what is in it. Just say it.
Just like Phil did.
Just like you did man.
Take care.
Way to go, CDM. Kudos and bonus XP for opening up about this, potentially the most personal of ailments.
I remember reading a paper back in the ’80s that linked incidences of chronic depression and role-playing gamers. This ways just after the “D&D is teh Devul” outcry, though thankfully the researcher kept a level head throughout and came to pretty sensible conclusions: literate, highly imaginative people tend to need some kind of outlet for all that pent-up brain activity. For some, it’s music, painting, acting or novel writing. Role-playing is one more outlet. It’s a tool of the psyche, and a darned useful one too as it’s social by definition. That’s why virtual gaming is a poor substitute to actual face-to-face play.
We are who we are, and the swings and roundabouts of the emotional rollercoaster we call life is just….. um…. ok, I’ve lost the thread with all of these theme park analogies. Bugger.
Anyhow.
Add in the physical exercise, and I’d say you’re doing all of the right things. You’re a good guy, Phil. Hang in there, ok?
R.
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Best of luck with this. As Greywulf wrote, creative types often struggle with high mountain peaks of creative expression and deep valleys of depression.
I’m very glad you’ve realized that it’s not your fault. It just *is*, and needs to be dealt with compassionately and carefully.
I’m pulling for you.
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It takes a lot of courage (and a big set of you-know-whats ^_^) to admit something like that.
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Thanks everyone for sharing your similar issues and showing all that support.
Now time to go back to writing cool RPG stuff!
You have my respect for being able to cope with depression; I have a friend with similar issues and have an idea about how difficult it really is. (But only an idea.)
Dang Phil, I didn’t even realize you were having that rough a time (though it did seem you were laying low). I can attest to the fact that mind and the body are linked and both need to be exercised, or neither is well. Keep it up (I’ve lost about 30 lbs in 2 months and I am feeling great)!
“…that in spite of my scientific background, training and experience, I was first and foremost a creative person…”
I think that science has an undeserved reputation of being unimaginitive; science would not be where it is today without creative people full of imagination to wonder and see beyond what we already have.
Keep on trucking and run over those demons.
Mad Brews last blog post..The Church of the Radiant Polyhedron
I really am glad that you’re doing better! Hope you’ll manage to keep it up!
(I put it down three months ago after holding it for over a year. Grr. My only physical activity now is wrestling with my son… which is pretty fun now that he’s starting to put up a fight)
I know too many people that has to deal with that kind of stuff.
Maybe, one day, I’ll tell you about my mom – how horrible she was going and how fantastic she is now.
I secretly fear that, should I actually allow myself to relax, the sheer weight of all that I have and want to do will catch up and crush me.
Oddly, I don’t pressure myself too much when I get a new ideas – I already have too many as it is (and barely enough time to keep up – which explains the state of ZombiesComic.com among other projects) … and I know from experience that there’s always a new, shiny idea on the horizon.
Or maybe I kid myself?
*sigh*
Back to work…
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As was said above, being a scientician doesn’t mean that creativity and imagination have to go away. I am a PhD (Chemistry), and the knowledge that i have on the science that surrounds us just opens my mind to the possibilities and realities of all the stuff that we just don’t know.
In any case, if you need to get away from it all, just let me know, hit the road up to Gatineau, and I will see about grabbing some friends and throwing together a game, be it D&D, or just a silly/stupid movie-o-thon.
I do really appreciate you sharing though. While it has never happened to me (knock on wood), I know people that sometimes get to very bad places, and your insight on what is helping you will enable me to, when needed, help them.
That is a good TED Talk.
I recommend these other talks on TED
Happiness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-4flnuxNV4
Creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atn22-bmTPU&feature=channel_page
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I know that science does not have to be uncreative, I just wanted to point out that fact I preferred to build systems rather than run them. I choose science because it was what “opened all doors” way back when I was a student.
I just never really looked back since.
I am now, pondering and resting.
Thanks again one and all! I’m touched with your concerns and words of support.
I just want to add some further words of support and empathy. I’ve been in similar places. Depression, creativity, productivity, and all the rest of it are all wrapped up in one big ball of yard that’s impossible to disentangle. I’m glad things are looking up.
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Chatty,
Similar situation last year, though I guess mine wasn’t as severe as yours.
Never think of yourself as weak. Weaknesses are almost always over extensions of strengths. People who are meticulous may not be able to react quickly. People who are impulsive may have poor long term thinking capabilities. Same with emotions.
I hear you on the exercise. Before my downturn, I was so up I nearly joined a gym and got back on track with it. Waited too long and had no desire to return. It’s tough.
Hey WizofIce, long time no see!
The link between exercise and mood is almost scary in my case. I’ve had one of my best weeks in a looong time last week. And then I’ve started slacking my exercise regimen for the weekend and my mood’s taken a hit.
Yeah, I think my path is marked for me and I know what I must do. 🙂