A Natural Response to Deprivation

Last night as I struggled to find sleep, taking time to flip through my article feed, an article on the stories we tell about mental illness began to pull me in. 

Johann Hari discusses his experience of depression in an excerpt from his his new book. This is not the first time I’ve seen a call to reframe our discussion of mental health, but it was a timely reminder to pay attention to lived experience.

I was a child when I first experienced symptoms of depression. Anxiety came later, creeping in sometime around college then settling in for good after grad school.

By the time I knew the name psychologists had given this dark cloud, I was fixated on the “science” of it, on understanding the why behind this chronic condition that stole months and years from my active, happy life, giving a label to what was “wrong” with me.

Like the author of the article (and book, added to reading list), I clung to the idea that something biological and impersonnal was the cause. Unbalanced chemicals in my brain, not my actions, behavior, or underlying character, were to blame.

Sure I’d seen the studies that admitted they didn’t understand why anti-depressants worked, or the admission that long-term effects of the drug were anyone’s guess. For that reason, that acknowledged and brushed aside uncertainty, I resisted drugs as the answer to my pain. 

Even when I did finally request a prescription from my PCP and signed up for therapy, I went off after about a year. Each time I returned to meds to address my issues, I became more certain the cure was worse than the disease.

I’m angry every time I hear about shortcuts made by pharmacuetical companies and the marketing push that suddenly normalized a pill for everything and the purchase of fake science by companies to support their bottom line.
It was Abraham Maslow and his emerging branch of Humanistic Psychology that began to ask what healthy, whole, self-actualizing human beings had going for them, shifting the focus away from abnormal psychology. 

Something about this narrative makes sense, emotional and behavioral states that are natural reactions to trauma and deprivation of basic human needs. Humans are complex, intelligent, social animals, to accept that we each need more than food, water, air, and shelter to thrive is intuitive. 

We need to connect to others, to feel we belong. We need to know our actions have meaning, make a difference, and provide us with purpose. For each of us, that drive and purpose is our life’s story, our unique experience of this amazing gift.

Maybe we can get by missing out on one human need if we have others, but what if the pull of modern society wears away all sides? 

Our jobs feel pointless, dull, maybe even counter to our own values. 

The growing economic divide in the US makes our security uncertain, personal debt threatens the future.

In growing cities we feel alone, the shifting social landscape divisive, connections hard to find. Technology grabbing our attention away from deep and meaningful relationships.

Humans have lived for millennia experiencing a connection to the earth and their tribe — now we are individuals alone and adrift in an indifferent sea of others. 

Those of us who experience that disconnect and deprivation as grief, as mental anguish and pain may be more well-adapted than we have been lead to believe. 

Resistance: The Big NO in my Head

I just stumbled on a a book looking for something entirely different, but it was what I needed to read: 

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles 

The terminology is new, but the experience is an old one for me. A few years back I started to become aware of the default NO that kept me from participating, rejected the ideas and advice of others, and just generally shut me down to the outside world.

I attributed it to anxiety, to laziness, to fear most of all. I called it procrastination, avoidance, the flight instinct. I’ve not studied Freud much, but his Death Wish theory sounds about right.

For me, it’s been a lifelong dance with creative pursuits – I reach for opportunities to create or perform, then never follow through. This invisible but solid force holds me back and fills me with an overwhelming malaise, restlessness, and self-doubt. I get so caught up in process and planning, and somehow find bursts of energy to do everything but the creative work.

I’ve come to realize creation requires a regular practice, a putting in of work. The message in this book hit heavy and gave me a jolt.

Letting this negative force, this Resistance, win in stopping the creative flow that comes from being present and sitting down to do the work may be easy, but the effects of denying who we are meant to become is torture. Resisting our creative potential is a long, drawn out suicide.

Perspective and Gratitude

Today I was thinking about recent changes in my life that have been both oppressive and freeing. I find myself living in a low population area, where opportunities are limited and my own fortunes (or lack thereof) keep me from moving on.

I have spent countless hours combing through job posts, and as my despair grew I opened a little more. I imagined myself doing jobs I never would have considered, accepting wages so low as to not fit the realities of rent and utility costs. 

I have submitted so many applications and forwarded resumes for future consideration, that when the call came this weekend to interview for an opportunity, it seemed like an unexpected gift.
My significant anxiety has always made job interviews like short torture sessions. Yet today, I feel light and grateful for an opportunity that fits my path.

When I lived in the city and opportunities were plentiful, I didn’t always see the open doors. I was so shut off to the energies of the living world. I was so out of tune with my own self. I imagine I met many opportunities with a No and a closed mind, without even realizing what I was doing. I probably never even took the time to look.

Now I see what I was missing, in job postings in my former cities, comparing what I could be doing to advance my goals in those other places. How easy it could be! 

Regardless of those missed opportunities, I am grateful that I see the potential in myself, grateful to know that there are always open doors, even in out lowest moments. 

Every experience in this life has something to show us. 

A Battle of Values

Even in trying to be our best selves, to seek higher values, we cannot escape the influence our society has.

I never felt that I fit. I couldn’t see myself in many of the roles my peers pursued. I wanted to be everything, to try everything, to experience the world and its mysteries.

They would ask what I wanted to be. They would have career day, a parade of adults peddling vocations. A sense of panic was born, and has not stopped growing, even as I mark my middle-thirties. I should know what I’m good at by now, I should have a plan. 

I played at having a plan, going to college and letting small choices become my paths toward career. Then there was a job, and I became the position’s title. I lived to work, and slowly the spark of curiosity that guided me began to fade. The underlying values lost their meaning. 

I once valued creativity as play, as openness, as discovery of truths deep within. 

I once valued curiosity as the urge to experience life as it happened, exploring the wild places or losing myself in books.

I once knew the joy of connection, sharing secrets with friends and enjoying traditions with family.

I was losing my awareness of self, even as I amassed degrees and certificates. My new compass was career, its values lied in money, purchase power, title, and recognition.

I hid illness for over a decade, ashamed that I couldn’t thrive, accepting the verdict of broken. I tried to fill that hole by nesting, collecting things (and debt). I bounced through the internet dating world and a few futureless relationships.

And so I left. I left a career and a title, and even now I wonder if that was a mistake, with the weight of student loan debt darkening the future. 

From outside that fast-paced world of successful careers and competitive consumption, things changed. I could breath. I felt better. In all the ways that mattered, I was thriving.

But now I nursed another kind of shame. My small savings began to shrink. I couldn’t afford to live in the city, I didn’t know how to get more money, and I had lost any sense of confidence in my abilities. 

That version of reality where job titles and bank accounts equals success clings to my mind. I’ve shied away from writing, because what could I possibly say that matters.

I fight the sense of panic daily – how do I live in a way that fits my values? I am lucky and grateful to have help to get through a difficult time, but what happens when we are priced out of our values?

This post doesn’t have a profound ending, but perhaps a small crack in my mask of positive spin. We are how we act in the endlessness of the moment. Perhaps our resilience to our own suffering is more important than realizing our fullest potential in the good times.

In this moment, I am faced with limited prospects and my own lack of imagination and initiative in creating my own future. I am humbled and grateful and scared (but not alone), I am trying to find a way forward even as my own mind blocks my efforts to see beyond my narrow view.

Opening to Creativity

Humans are meant to be creative.

I used to read about or see others in highly creative ventures, as painters, crafters, makers, and feel a sense of admiration and envy. I valued the production of something useful and beautiful out of raw materials and skilled effort. 

Yet despite this desire to create, I had justifications about why my life and job were boring automations, with the rare application of problem solving. Creativity was a gift only given to the artistic few. These people had true talent, or unique disciple, some elusive qualities I must lack.

In truth, I had been creative in my youth, but for various reasons, creative habits had dropped away, and I was left forgetting how to let go of the micro manager that is the mind, forgetting how to let go of the control we think we have.
As I became more open spiritually, that hold on control loosened. I found myself attempting to ‘be a writer.’ 

Identifying as a thing is fraught with trouble. That mind-nag is always reminding us we are playing at a thing, and so it feels illegitimate. We are frauds pretending to be something, hoping that by making ourselves and acquiring the paraphernalia of a role, we can be it.

Many times I have convinced myself I could not be a writer, an artist, a creative because I didn’t have the successes, the credentials, the years of development or body of work. I gave up before even opening the door.
Recently, I’m of the mind that creativity is a process, a state in which we quiet the mind and open ourselves. It is the practice of an act, any act. Instead of being, we become the process. Not ‘I am a writer, but ‘I am writing’ – until the I falls away. We do not exist independent of the process and connection to the energies of life. To truly do something, we must open ourselves to life, to energy, to the muse – whatever we want to call that connection that is both inside and outside and a part of us.

Creativity is playing at a thing and becoming that process, the pen to paper, the flow of words, the imagining outside ourselves to something mysterious. Creativity is spiritual, it is visceral, it is as simple as breathing and as complex as building worlds.

In my own opening to creativity, I finally had no expectations to be something. I had tried and failed to approach a practice of writing, only to end up battling my own insecurities each time. But in the simple act of learning to braid I found myself disarmed, present, open. 

It happened without trying or even noticing at first. Through practice that was not at all serious, just a casual hobby, I found inspiration, passion, voice. I put aside ego and let myself just be creating. 

And once that door is open, creativity creeps in and grows in every corner, until life is lush and green with possibility.