Understanding Depression

Understanding Depression: A Powerful Metaphor

Legacy Place Society has been commissioned by the Mental Health Commission of Canada to teach Mental Health First Aid. It’s a 12-hour course that covers numerous mental health topics, including the symptoms of depression and the importance of a personal mental health self-care wheel. Noted above are two examples of these topics.

Understanding depression

It is crucial in recognizing its impact on mental health. Through the metaphor of snow, we can explore how living with depression feels and the importance of supporting those who are struggling.

Noted below is a candid conversation on depression, sent to us. Continue to seek professional care on a regular basis. We are all in this together.

Understanding Depression:

When you have depression, it’s like it snows every day. Some days it’s only a couple of inches. It’s a pain in the butt, but you still make it to work, the grocery store. Sure, maybe you skip the gym or your friend’s birthday party, but it IS still snowing and who knows how bad it might get tonight. Probably better to just head home. Your friend notices, but probably just thinks you are flaky now, or just a jerk for not showing up.

Some days it snows a foot. You spend an hour shoveling out your driveway and are late to work. Your back and hands hurt from shoveling. You leave early because it’s really coming down out there. Your boss notices. Understanding depression is difficult.

Some days it snows four feet. You shovel all morning, but your street never gets plowed. Not making it to work or anywhere else for that matter. One is sore and tired so you just get back in bed. By the time you wake up, all your shoveling has filled back in with snow. Looks like your phone rang; people are wondering where you are. You don’t feel like calling them back, too tired from all the shoveling. Plus, they don’t get this much snow at their house so they don’t understand why you’re still stuck at home. They just think you’re lazy or weak, although they rarely come out and say it.

Some weeks it’s a full-blown blizzard. When you open your door, it’s to a wall of snow. The power flickers, then goes out. It’s too cold to sit in the living room anymore, so you get back into bed with all your clothes on. The stove and microwave won’t work so you eat a cold Pop Tart and call that dinner. You haven’t taken a shower in three days, but how could you at this point? You’re too cold to do anything except sleep.

Sometimes people get snowed in for the winter. The cold seeps in. No communication in or out. The food runs out. What can you even do, tunnel out of a forty-foot snow bank with your hands? How far away is help? Can you even get there in a blizzard? If you do, can they even help you at this point? Maybe it’s death to stay here, but it’s death to go out there too.

The thing is, when it snows all the time, you get worn all the way down. You get tired of being cold. One gets frustrated hurting all the time from shoveling, but if you don’t shovel on the light days, it builds up to something unmanageable on the heavy days. You resent the hell out of the snow, but it doesn’t care; it’s just a blind chemistry, an act of nature. It carries on regardless, unconcerned and unaware if it buries you or the whole world.

Also, the snow builds up in other areas, places you can’t shovel, sometimes places you can’t even see. Maybe it’s on the roof. Maybe it’s on the mountain behind the house. Sometimes, there’s an avalanche that blows the house right off its foundation and takes you with it. A veritable Act of God, nothing can be done. The neighbors say it’s a shame and they can’t understand depression; he was doing so well with his shoveling.

I don’t know how it went down for Anthony Bourdain or Kate Spade. It seems like they got hit by the avalanche, but it could’ve been the long, slow winter. Maybe they were keeping up with their shoveling. Maybe they weren’t. Sometimes, shoveling isn’t enough anyway. It’s hard to tell from the outside, but it’s important to understand what it’s like from the inside.

I firmly believe that understanding and compassion have to be the base of effective action. It’s important to understanding depression, how it feels, what it’s like to live with it, so you can help people both on an individual basis and a policy basis. I’m not putting heavy stuff out here to make your Friday morning suck. I know it feels gross to read it, and realistically, it can be unpleasant to be around it. That’s why people pull away.

I don’t have a message for people with depression like “keep shoveling.” It’s asinine. Of course, you’re going to keep shoveling the best you can until you physically can’t, because who wants to freeze to death inside their own house? We know what the stakes are. My message is to everyone else. Grab a frickin’ shovel and help your neighbor. Slap a mini snow plow on the front of your truck and plow your neighborhood. Petition the city council to buy more salt trucks, so to speak.

Depression is blind chemistry and physics, like snow. And like the weather, it is a mindless process, powerful and unpredictable with great potential for harm. But like climate change, that doesn’t mean we are helpless. If we want to stop losing so many people to this disease, it will require action at every level.

— Anonymous