Depression, It Gets Me Down!

I’ll never forget going to a punk music seminar at East Carolina University. It was not what we expected. A band was screaming this phrase on top of raucously loud music in front of a mosh pit. Depression is a serious illness. I see advertisements for depression-related products all the time on late night TV. Having suffered from depression before and having taken a few years to get it under control, I would like to offer a few insights into the disease. Our medical establishment has not been able to find tangible causes for many of the new disorders that have appeared during the decade of the l990’s. It is common knowledge our drug companies don’t have stellar reputations for supporting the common good of the public. Bill Maher joked on Tavis Smiley and said they really dislike competition from the illegal drugs including marijuana, “That never killed anyone.” (It looks like to me Sandra Bullock might be a toker!) I say that because on my last cruise ship I worked with a musician who was a reformed cocaine addict. He said he had been clean for 4 years, yet his mannerisms and behavior still reflected what appeared to be influences of drugs. When examining Nature vs. Nurture, it seems easy to understand your environment will play a very large part in shaping your personality, emotions, and intellect. Because children, like pets, naturally feel things it stands to reason their behavior may be shaped more readily by emotion than cognitive thought. I have found in my life’s experiences, that it is a fine juggling act you must do between using your mind and your emotional instincts. As human beings, electronic spirits housed in a vessel of flesh and organs, it is normal we would want to feel good in our bodies. I have found there could be three distinct ways we can achieve that goal. First and most obvious is the physical state of our bodies. If our bodies are well taken care of, i.e. not grossly over-weight or malnourished, we have a better chance of feeling good. I find relaxation and sleep contribute to a facile mind and therefore a better state of body. Second, emotion can play a large part in effecting how we feel if we let it! My discovery after 3-4 long years of dealing with depression was, "Emotion is often a detrimental entity." If you rely upon external emotion to be happy, than more than likely you are going to be disappointed. Maybe this is what growing up is all about. The Walt Disney penned world of feeling, caring, larger than life animated characters may not be what is best for us our mental health. Certainly when a child can not understand words such as, “Please be quiet, honey,” and “Stop crying,” emotion can and will play a role in controlling their behavior. Having grown up in the American South, it seemed natural that parents used emotion to control their children. There must be something designed by God in the genetics that miraculously allow parents to override their children’s emotions. This could be a good or bad thing. If your parents experienced positive emotions when you were a child, then this will become part of your own emotional profile. If on the other hand your grew up surrounded by negative emotions, it is likely you as a child will be effected negatively. I think this is common in America and probably everywhere in the world. Because our divorce rate is so high, because millions of Americans have no health care, and because the “family model” of the American dream no longer functions economically, children have been suffering with few places to turn. It used to be our public schools helped. When I was in high school our high school was a social hub. There were all kind of extra-curricular activities that promoted social well-being. Clubs offered opportunities to serve the community. Sporting events allowed healthy, competitive physical activity. That band and chorus allowed the actualization of music. School was the hub of our existence, not our enemy. I’m not sure if that is the case now. In a society in which the family unit is no longer as stable as it once was, it seems crucial the integrity of our public schools be maintained. Back to drugs. Human beings by nature our creatures of habit. When you have been involved with something or have been feeling something for so long, it becomes part of your instinctual behavior. I learned when picking myself up from the American South and relocating to the Midwest, it is important to remain flexible in your emotions. I learned to discard many of my prior emotional instincts and re-learned social behaviors in a different way. This was one of the keys to curing my depression. Negative emotion that was controlling my mood had to be rethought, re-evaluated, revamped, and re-implemented. I had to change the way I knew how to feel and my dependence on that emotion. At that point I began using my brain as the driving force in my life and also my musical expression. Over time I learned how to shape and mold my feelings the way I saw fit in a way that was positive for me. Co-workers often joke, “Your life is only in your m-u-u-u-s-i-c!” That is because like Greek tragedy when you love you are destined to lose. When I invest tangibly in a piece of original music, I know the feelings that I actualize in it will remain there forever. They will not divorce me and take my house and car. I shifted my personal needs from human-based to music, because music seemed more reliable. Being a professional musician is difficult, because to be good one most ‘feel’ the music they are playing. Music at its highest level is expression, so it stands to reason if you are to play music well, you must understand and feel instinctually and emotionally what the music says. This means musicians at their best are actors with great demands for analytical preparation. You must give yourself to the project and allow your emotional psyche to be the puppet of the project. This can become tiring if the expression or emotion in the music is of dischord with your own personal experiences. Emotional memory at its worst can disable the mind and therefore the human being. It is a monumental challenge to discard negative perceptions and reactions to specific felt emotion and reprogram yourself for a more healthy response. I have found this to be the biggest challenge in life, because as human beings our soul is the very root of our existence. It is necessary to make us human, but it also can be chaotic and detrimental to our very survival. Back to drugs. When things of this nature are occurring external substances are not a help. In fact external stimulation is often a large problem in understanding one's own feelings. Eastern religions utilizing meditation and Zen philosophy allow getting in touch with one’s self. This is crucial to free one's self from the negative stimulation of the frenetic pace of television, the remarkable “rat race” that has become everyday life, and an environment whose influences are causing ADHD and the others. When I am left in a room by myself free from the influences of the environment, I usually can find inner peace. It is balancing the need for social interaction with its negative influences on healthy psychological development that is the challenge.