Outrunning depression.

Great piece by Kim McLarin on depression, race and all manner of interconnection.

OUTRUNNING ESHU: ON FINALLY SEEKING TREATMENT FOR DEPRESSION

Some highlights for me:

On "mental illness" as a white category which alienates communities of colour:

Mental illness, mental disorder of any possible stripe, was definitely white folks’ mess. White people had nervous breakdowns; black folks just got tired of shit. White people had anxiety, black folks had nerves. Black folks got the blues sometimes, but only white people got clinically depressed. White people listened to Prozac. Black folks listened to their mother, their pastor, and God.

Some stats:

In 2014, an estimated 15.7 million adults (6.7 percent of the adult population) experienced at least one major depressive episode, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A major depressive episode is defined as a period of two weeks or longer during which a person experiences depression, loss of interest or pleasure in everyday life, and at least four other symptoms that reflect a change in functioning: sleeplessness or excessive sleeping, loss of appetite, or problems with energy, concentration or self-image. (An important note: the NIMH did not make exclusions for depression caused by bereavement, substance abuse, or medical illness.) 

Women are 70 percent more likely than men to experience depression in their lifetime, says the CDC. On the bright side, depression among women improves after age 60, which is not true of men. 

Not surprisingly, people living below the poverty level are more than twice as likely to experience depression as those living at or above the poverty line.
An estimated 92 percent of African-American men with depression do not seek help, according to the CDC. Which makes it reasonable to consider the statistics off.

On what we know and highlighting how much we don't know:

I try to meditate. Psychological research, including a 2014 JAMA Internal Medicine analysis of forty-seven studies, suggests that meditation and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can be moderately effective in treating depression and perhaps more so at preventing relapse. Then again, psychological research (a 2015 meta-analysis published in the journal Science) suggests that 60 percent of psychological research is, essentially, crap.

On the fear of sad people, and the reminders present in the melancholia of others:

The deep American suspicion of melancholy and its contents is connected to the deep American suspicion of intellect, of complexity of thought and perspective, of wakefulness.

On writers, creatives and depression:

Not all writers are tortured geniuses. I know many stable writers, levelheaded and content, writers who don’t drink or take drugs or require antidepressants, writers who use, without irony, words like “optimist.”

Still, there’s no denying some subtle connection between creativity and mental anguish. Several studies have confirmed the link (Andresen, 1987; Jamison, 1989; Ludwig, 1995) even if they fail to explain it. The largest study to date to examine the connection was conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. That study found that creative types, writers in particular, were overrepresented among people with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety syndrome, and substance abuse problems. Writers were also almost twice as likely to commit suicide as the general population.

Are we sensitive, thus we need to express creatively or is our need to look at things and think deeply, responsible for our melancholia?

The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa famously said, “To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” How much toll does it take to not look away? Ecclesiastes says: “And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”

On "molecular residue":

But there’s even more than that. I am fascinated by (what I can understand of) the exploding field of behavioral epigenetics, which posits that the experiences of our recent ancestors leave molecular residue which adheres to their DNA— and therefore to ours. In other words, not just physical but psychological and even behavioral tendencies really can be inherited. If your grandmother or even your great-grandmother struggled with depression because she escaped from the Holocaust, or narrowly avoided a massacre in My Lai, or was enslaved and raped repeatedly or watched her father being lynched—or was simply neglected and unloved during childhood—it matters to you and in you. Whether you know it or not.

I gotta admit, when I was in my late teens and early 20's I  had this foreboding reoccurring thought that my sadness was karma. I must have been a terrible, monstrous shit in another life. Like researching philosophy and religion, it was an attempt at explaining why I felt the way I felt.

Read the entirety of McLarin's piece of you can.

That "creative" life.

meeting your hero pic.twitter.com/9720yHHuKJ

— Alex Norris (@dorrismccomics) February 1, 2017

I guess I feel like less of a piece of shit when I'm "doing" something.

It's happening again, I'm thinking about graduate school. This time, a Master's of Fine Arts in Print Media at Concordia.

Something along the lines of Creation as Coping: Compulsion, Creativity and Mental Illness. 

I need to look into what part-time study looks like in terms of time commitment and cost.

Maybe I should apply for 2018 just so I can stop fucking coming back to it.

Creativity for dealing with existential dread.

Turns out creativity might be linked to the shedding of existential dread.

And a study published earlier this week in the Journal of Creative Behavior added another perk to the list: Creativity can be like an existential security blanket, helping those who possess it to get over their fears of their own mortality. The more creative you are, it seems, the less concerned you are about death.

I just think it's more about acceptance, really. If being creative is linked to self-reflection and exploration, then you're more likely to think about death and mortality, and as such, you're less shocked that it exists, and that it's coming for ya.

Some people are "level 1." This is a loose translation of something my friend S and I use a lot in conversation. "C'est premier niveau," means "it's on the first level." Contextually we'd use it to refer to someone who has a basic understanding of something. Like a movie, for example. A movie might be rich with symbolism and deep themes, but someone might watch it and think "it's just a movie about a guy buying an orange." Sometimes folks just see a guy buying an orange, and not a metaphor for life and death.

There's also the possible correlation that those who are more open to thinking about death, dying and fragility, are then drawn to art and creative mediums as a way to understand those notions, or in order to ease into the acceptance of the nature of existing.

The findings here are complicated but interesting: For people who prized creativity, having more creative accomplishments under their belts meant they were relatively chill about that whole death thing, even after they’d been forced to imagine themselves passing away.

Maybe that finding says more about the notion of "accomplishment." Those with creative pursuits might be more likely to feel as if they've expressed themselves, and left something behind. The researchers conclude something similar:

“The current findings support the notion that creative achievement may be an avenue for symbolic immortality, particularly among individuals who value creativity,” the researchers wrote.

I'd add that having an exploratory nature that asks questions and communicated through art means dealing with the big themes of sex, love, mortality and death. You can't navigate art without thinking about death. 

Well you can, if you're a level one type.

Happiness makes you less creative.

According to some research, happiness makes you less creative:

Rigor is the key to overcoming obstacles and completing tasks—and good mood doesn’t improve problem-solving, which involves judgments that almost by necessity won’t feel good: critique and evaluation, experimentation and failure. The stress that arises from problems may be unpleasant but it also motivates us to complete tasks... In other words, negative emotions are actually beneficial to the creative process.

I mean, duh, in some ways...

This study seems to be based in the workplace, which in itself creates a very specific frame in which to work. 

I'd argue that highs and lows are necessary as a writer or as an artist who communicated heavier narratives. But, I think it depends on the art. Happy-people-art doesn't really speak to me. It's not in my language. Art about someone getting shat on by a bird, that speaks to me. That's relatable. 

Since this study speaks to work-place stress/happiness, I'd argue that people who feel less secure at work or aren't as happy also have work-place performance fears and pressure. That also changes the way you function and produce.

In my experience creativity also takes time and energy, and the correlation of that time and energy isn't easily dropped into a capitalist framework. 

I've always had a shit time charging for my time. I hate it. It's why I can't work for myself creatively. When I'm depressed I feel like my time is worth shit, and when I'm not I just feel a tremendous amount of guilt and pressure asking for a livable sum.

Recently I referred a potential client to a friend, what he quotes 600$ for I would  have done for 20$ an hour. No doubt he'd walk away from that in a much better place than I.

I resent needing to ask for money. I don't want to sell my wares. I'm my own patron for now. Etsy'll have to do. 

Our radical survival.

Available for purchase at this Etsy store. 

Uncharacteristically warm days.

It's been beautiful out lately. It's warm, and the sun is out. It's warmer than it would usually be this time of year, people seem in great spirits because of it. In denial maybe, of the upcoming winter. Last winter was so brutal here, it's as if we've all agreed to collective denial.

This past weekend we moved the clocks back an hour, doing our best to save some daylight. Usually I don't really have much to say on the matter, but this year it's made a difference for me. Maybe it's because I'm more aware of how much daylight affects my mood and my sleeping so I take greater care to get sunlight and to sleep at-least 8 hours (I need 9-10) or maybe it's because my higher dosage and vitamin regimen are taking effect, whichever the affecting party, it's been helping my mood.

I ended up waking up on Sunday and just getting a load of stuff done. I felt productive, and was happy with myself. I cleaned. I put tons of clothes away. I folded up clothes that are one and two sizes smaller than what I wear now, and stored them in a large moving bin. It's the plight of a woman with weight struggles, having a closet filled with a variety of sizes in it. There's always that pair of pants that's just too small. So, I put it all away. If I lose weight again, I'll have clothes to start me off. If not, at least those clothes won't be a lie I tell myself. This unhealthy inspiration, that's really just flagellation through fashion.

It's as if, after over a decade of living as someone who is recovering from an eating disorder, and disordered thinking, I can't think about the word diet, or certain marketing "health" terms anymore. They just make my angry. But beyond that, really, they don't register with me anymore. I just hear sick bullshit. Total garbage.

I still have a lot of stuff to work through in regards to my physical health, but I'm getting there, slowly.

I cooked a lot. I made (and ate) the best lasagna I've ever had in my life. Being able to cook on Sundays usually means having access to healthier lunches and meals during the week. This week I made a Gruyere, spinach and turkey meat sauce lasagna, with a vegetable potage of leaks, sweet potatoes and peppers, and some chicken salad.

I guess this helps get me off on the right foot for the week. I don't feel like a useless bum. I also spend less money going out, and eat more balanced meals.

I just finished reading M Train by Patti Smith. I'd read Just Kids, and loved it. It's an interesting read. She's a phenomenal writer, and is really gifted with language and in describing her own creative process. That's what I liked so much about Just Kids, the talking about the daily life of a creative person, in a way that's almost mundane. The ritual of it. It's just the way she is, it's a priority in her life, she still lives that mythic beat of being an artist in the romantic sense. The way it's represented in a film taking place in the 60's, with a hero that is barely unkempt, slender and androgynous, who moves slowly from place to place, with no wrist-watch and no seeming embodiment of pressure.

I read Smith's stories. Her traveling. Her reading. Her writing. Her adventures. She's seemingly unimpressed by herself, but there is no mention of money ever, no worry about money. This is where she loses me.

I would have, years ago, dismissed my own criticism by citing my age. When I'm older, I'll be making money (because we get older, and we support ourselves, naturally), things just seem difficult now because I'm a student. Or because I just started working. Or because I'm still paying off my debts. 

There seems to be so much privilege in writing. In taking the time to really imbibe someone else's art. In being able to travel in a way that isn't offensive, that isn't privileged horse-shit. In a way that's honest.

As I'm looking toward 2016, I can't help but think of this series of warm days, and my own lived experience of creativity. I am not Patti Smith. I do not have decades of work behind me. I am not a recognized artist. I struggle, often, to even identify as a creative. And on these warm days, more seems possible. Opportunity doesn't seem as exterior to myself.

If I want to dedicate time and energy to creative pursuits, what does that mean for me? Working less to have more free time? Seeing a 9 to 5 as a means to an end? Will I be "working-poor" for the rest of my life? Can I accept that as a reality? Is choosing a creative life, choosing poverty?

What does living on less look like? Smith survives on coffee and brown toast. I already live paycheck to paycheck. No financial safety net. Is a financial safety net a luxury of the 1%?

Am I unable to be original at times, because what plagues me is wholly unoriginal? Are the ghosts around me, ghosts of habit? Not only my habits, but the habits of this place, and my generation, and of my gender? Are these ghosts in my blood? Am I haunted by not only my regrets, but the regrets of my ancestors? If that my depression? Are these my anxieties?

There's something about being so near a large decision. This purchase of a home. A place to live. Something that would be mine and mine alone. This responsibility. This financial burden. All of a sudden money means something concrete. It's now a limit. It represents what I can and cannot afford. Where I can and cannot go. These numbers represent the way in which I will live my life. Spend too much and I will be shamed, I will be chained to payments that will suffocate me. Do too little, and then there's the voice of the "positive friend" saying you'll regret your choice, you'll eventually meet someone, you'll want more room, you'll eventually get a raise, you will make more money.

But I am the working-poor. If my little amount of savings can grant me land ownership, is that not an achievement? It is to me. To be near-dead for so long, and to then own something for myself and of myself,                        that                           is                    something.

All of it is noise. To a certain extent, so is Smith's representation of creativity. Just another barometer against which to measure myself.

There is something around all of this that circles around the notion of being established.

An established creative. Someone whose creativity matters. Is recognized. Is quantified.

An established person. Someone with a home. A space. Roots.

I would have something. Something in my name.

And though in the past I often felt this would tie me down, now I see it as a refuge. A safe space. My money leaves me regardless, at least this way I pay into something being mine. Even if it's just for a short while.

Sometimes all of this just seems like a question of luck and talent. Smith has talent. Some people have luck. Being born gorgeous. Being born rich. Being born convinced of your worth, and of the value of your production. These are things I was not born with. I get bursts of hard-work, book-ended by just doing my best.

Something Smith's book did bring home for me though, it how much longer I might have to figure all of this out. Smith is 68. I am 31. I could write, and try, for a very long time.

That is exciting but it also makes me tired.

Pavana पवन.

I've been knocked on my ass by the work and words of Pavana पवन. Initially saw her words on Ayesha Siddiqi's Tumblr, I googled the name and didn't find very much. I followed the source link and found the original master-post, but I had assumed this was a published author, that these were words that were older, and an established part of the canon.

I'm just blown away. Check out Pavana's site, Maza-Dohta dot com.

“I believe pain breeds wolves
and joys give rise to moons.

We grow forests in our bones
so our memories can’t find us.
I believe we hide and haunt ourselves”

― Pavana पवन

This is almost the exact wording to express the tattoos on my body. 

“Since the age of nine, I have felt an unbearable heaviness in my soul, an unpronounceable ache for a different time and place. I feel for things that have nothing to do with me, for budding flowers caught in the rain, for petals lost to the wind. I know what the earth must feel like, the way it serves as both the coffin and the womb for new life. I feel its heavy, heavy weight of loss, as if with every passing year I am both ending and beginning. Perhaps this is what growing up is, and perhaps some of us must die, over and over, before we are born again. Since the age of nine, I have been buried beneath my soul, and I believe I am beginning to bud again, like a strange flower grown from its own decay. I am in bloom, I have always been in bloom, and I am now just learning my own name. ” 

— In Bloom || Pavana पवन

A testament to maturity, and feeling the immovability of womanhood. I can relate to the feeling of a certain certitude of self, but the deep wound I walk with, never leaves me.

“
I am half a moon
where I once held
a heart.

I am not
broken,
I am simply
coming back
to myself.
”
— Pavana पवन

It's the hope I hold - that that's my direction.

“
love yourself.
this is how
we become
lovers.
”
— Pavana पवन

I have my work cut out for me. 

“
‘What should I
look for in
a man?’ 

The woman in him.
Search for her.”
— Pavana पवन

The loves of my life are the friends I have, I have had, and I will make. There is no love like that of a woman. The selfless. The giving. The empathy. The nature of the feminine in its maternal roots. I am not a mother. I will never be a mother. I reject that role. But there are parts of me that have that unquestioned reactive caring. If we're gendered to have certain roles, certain strengths, certain values to be valued, the feminine is it.

“We age not by years, but by stories.” 

— Pavana पवन

A story can age you terribly. A light-hearted nature can keep you young. You're an old soul, they said. Maybe that's why I'm so tired.

Check out the words. No doubt better read without my reactions. 

UCP-UMCG.

Laura Hospes, a Dutch photographer was able to use her camera as part of documenting her experience being hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. She struggles with depression and disordered eating. In an interview with The Mighty, she's quoted as saying:

At first, I made this complete series for myself, to deal with the difficulties and express my feelings.After that, I want to inspire people who are or have been in a psychiatric hospital. I want them to see my pictures and recognize themselves in it. I hope they feel taken seriously, less crazy and less alone.

Check out the photographs.

For me, this one is it. There's this sense of gasping for air, or of being on the precipice of crying. Often, I feel like I'm stuck in that moment. The moment before the release. Just being held, in that moment of pain and anxiety, needing to breathe, needing to cry, but being unable to. For that, this picture is successful.

The pep talk generator.

Babe Vibes has this great feature on their website called the pep talk generator.

Check it out!

The creative imperative and depression.

I'm not feeling very creatively fulfilled these days. I haven’t created anything significant in months. I'm tired and just feel creatively drained. My 9 to 5 has been quiet, and I haven’t been doing any creative side-lines. The last freelance job I took was really basic stuff.

It’s hard. The flow of energy to create that comes with inspiration can’t be faked. It really worries me. I worry about being able to work. I worry about being good enough to work on something if something does come along my way. I worry about talent. I worry about starting over. I worry about my relevance on the job market. I worry about my worth. My hourly rate. My ability to pay my bills. My ability to take care of myself. 

I know that people who make a living out of working creatively often hit a wall. Is that feeling compacted by my depressive nature? 

I reached out to a few friends who are also graphic designers, who were sympathetic. 

This friend is really talented! Her designs are clean and modern and she has a really pure, feminine aesthetic. She's also really clean with her technical skills. She's good! She works as a full-time graphic designer for a major fashion brand! 

I mean, it's difficult! You're totally dependent on your own creative impulses. It also can take a lot of time. Editing. Research. Ideas. Originality. Processing what it is you want to do. Revision. Even the silliest things can take a lot of time and consideration. So how do you charge for your time? By the hour? By deliverable? If you don't work quick enough - what does your hourly rate become? 

These are all things that weigh you down. I don't make good money at my day job. I'm under the average, and in my group of friends, that's also the case. I made more at my last job, which was 2 years ago. At the job before that, I had way more vacation time. The perks here are lacking. 

But, having known unemployment, my gratitude for "at least having a job" is strong. But I have good days and bad days in that regard. 

I think it's especially hard right now because it's been weeks since I've had a creative project. Most of my work lately could be qualified as marketing assistant work. Usually I would take skill-share classes, but my subscription is done. 

I have this "free time" now. It's summer, folks are on holiday, days are quiet and I have to sit here for 8 hours a day regardless of my work-flow - so I have the opportunity to work on my own personal projects, to take tutorials on-line - to create something.

I'm just really blocked. I'm creatively constipated. It's very uncomfortable. It makes me feel uncertain and leads me to questioning my "career" and it's validity. 

I'm a Highly Sensitive Person.

My initial reaction to opening the Salon article What your levels of sensitivity say about you by Scott Barry Kaufman, was that it made me laugh, because, naturally, the banner image is Claire Danes crying.

The article starts with a quote by Pearl S. Buck. It irritates me that she uses the male pronouns here, especially since she’s the creative person she’s referencing, but I guess it’s a sign of the times.

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, and create— so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

This rung true in me, since I'm sensitive to a lot of things. Crowds, noise - I'm easily over-stimulated, especially when I'm tired. It’s not unusual for me to get home some days and need to sit quietly and decompress. That might sound like meditation, but it isn't It just me sitting down and attempting to allow my brain to release some of the stimulation it’s still processing. I almost shut-down. There are definitely ways in which creative output help me feel productive with my sensitivity. It’s difficult, and rare, to feel sensitivity benefits me. I know it benefits friends and those around me, in certain situations (situations where I can provide support) but for me, it’s as if I'm carrying something fragile at all times.

The article discusses how different types of sensitivity are measured in people, and how being sensitive can affect you:

On the one hand, this research confirms that ease of excitation and low sensory threshold are related to negative life outcomes. This is consistent with prior research that has found that these forms of sensitivity are linked to lower levels of meaningfulness and self-efficacy, and are positively related to anxiety, depression,poor social skills, poor attention details and difficulty describing and identifying feelings, avoidant personality disorder, social phobia, and agoraphobia.

On the other hand, this research suggests that sensitivity need not be negative. As the researchers note, “for some sensitive people, sensitivity does not necessarily have to be debilitating. Rather, it could enhance their complex inner lives, and possibly lead to higher subjective well-being.” Prior research has found that aesthetic sensitivity is related to a variety of beneficial outcomes, including greater attention to detail and communication skills, and higher levels of affilitativeness and openness to experience.

The author goes on to mention an Elaine Aron book The Highly Sensitive Person:

...highly sensitive people may thrive in a more peaceful environment. In such solitude, these individuals may be better able to take advantage of their sensitivities. Indeed, many famous artists, musicians, humanitarians and scientists were exquisitely sensitive to their environments, and used their experiences as grist for the mill of their extraordinary creativity and compassion. Sensitivity is not only associated with creativity, but also with spirituality, mystical experiences, and a connection to nature.

The article is pretty thin, but I appreciate the research dealing with sensitivity. Yes, there are many kinds of sensitivity, and different kinds, coupled with the difference of individuality creates a myriad of experiences with sensitivity.

This article doesn't touch the socio-cultural readings of sensitivity, but by experience it isn't something appreciated in working spaces, the corporate world, capitalism or in structures of power.