Tag Archives: bipolar

Is Depression worth it?

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I read a very interesting article in the New York Times. It investigated a question I’ve asked for a long time: Is there an evolutionary advantage to depression? In other words, why is it still around? Does its hanging around confer an advantage to live stronger lives? Because of my bipolar disorder, I’ve lived with bone jarring depression most of my life. It’s dark, miserable, can decrease life spans, and wreaks havoc in almost all areas of a sufferers life. Is depression worth it?

I won’t bore you with the details of the article here, but I encourage you to read it. When all was said and done the conclusion stated that even if depression did give us some sort of advantage as human beings, it doesn’t make it any more desirable than other maladies such as cancer and heart disease. I concur.

Depression is an expert in wringing out hope from your life and knows exactly how to decimate one’s confidence and self-esteem. It’s all about suffering. It strains relationships and stalls careers. I have to work everyday to free myself from its persistent grasp. But I’m not alone. I have an amazing wife and family; fantastic friends, a God who cares, and the gift of treatment options that weren’t available even five years ago.  I am learning to thrive. It’s what I have to do everyday. It’s what we all have to do. It’s what we all need to do.

Given the massive disruptions of our modern world, depression is only going to increase. According to the World Health Organization depression is the leading cause of disability and projected to be the second leading contributor to the global burden of disease. It’s debilitating. Does its increasing prevalence portend some hidden asset to help us through the human condition? Is it setting us up for some kind of big breakthrough? I don’t think so.

But ask me if bipolar and its depression has been worth it for me, nine times out of ten I will give you a resounding, unequivocal NO! But there is that one time, the affirmative answer that haunts me. Despite its cruelty, depression has connected me to the deep angst of people’s pain and  compelled me to be thankful for every moment it’s not around. Though I desperately want it out of my life, it has given me the passion to “re-imagine a hope-filled world”. That’s my big why. It’s my desire for every keynote I give, training I conduct, and relationship I have. Maybe depression has set me up to be uniquely relevant and useful in this shaken, uncertain, and disruptive world. Curious that.

We’re all bipolar

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There are two ways to respond to adversity, setbacks, and losses. You can either survive or you can thrive. In other words, you can be weak or strong. The choice is yours. Two people can be laid off from work. One will start his own internet company and become successful, the other will wallow and be paralyzed by self-pity. The circumstances are the same, but the responses are wildly different. I am continuing to explore why that is. Resilience is key. The answer to how one bounces back and thrives is essential to succeeding in today’s whirlwind changes and challenges and makes all the difference in the world.

Living with and managing the emotional oscillations of bipolar II disorder (manic-depression) since I was 15 has been the defining and most challenging aspect of my life. It wasn’t correctly diagnosed until I was 47, so any treatment up to that time was ineffective. Back then we didn’t know what we were dealing with exactly, and if we did, there weren’t many treatment options available. The result has been bone jarring depression through most of my young and productive years. One needs to bounce back from a painful past as well. Many do; many do not.

When the manic moments kicked in, I misperceived them as my normal self. They, too, however were irrational and detrimental.  It was a rough go for a long time.

I now have an amazing doctor who helps me manage my illness and an incredible support system that encourages me in my journey. Particularly me wife, who is a model of resiliency as she continues to bounce back from the ramifications of my illness on our lives and is instrumental in helping our family thrive in spite of it. I married way over my head, and one of the most resilient persons on the planet!!

All that is to say, my experience has given me first hand knowledge, and the “scar tissue”, to explore the dynamics of being strong and weak (manic and depression) in responding to events in life. Depression could have led to many tragic responses, but I resisted those. The mania could have gotten me into big trouble in many ways, but I resisted those. Why is that? I believe it was resilience, and the openness to allow crisis to grow into a better, stronger person.

I also realized that life itself is bipolar. There are ebbs and flows, ups and downs, weakness and strength. It can often seem that there are more lows in life than highs. There is no getting around that. We need to accept that that is life and move on. To do so requires resilient skills for dealing with the relentless and accelerating challenges of life, and making the choice to live effectively in its oscillating, wavelike reality.