Listening To Depression: Getting Out From Under Depression, Part Two
�?by Robin Rice

“If you listen carefully, Robin,�?Grandma Pearl said to me, “you can hear the rain sing.�?/P>

I cuddled down under the afghan on top of her bed, grateful for the warmth, for my grandmother’s presence, and for the first time in my short five years, the rain. I found that when I listened carefully, I could indeed hear it singing as it hit the roof and poured out the downspout. No longer was rain only a spoil-sport to sunny days. There was something more to it. Something worthy of listening to. Little did I know, lying there with Grandma Pearl 35 years ago, that this metaphor would carry me though a thousand lonely days—some raining outside, some raining from a place deep within—as I faced the daunting task of getting out from under an inherited form of cyclical depression. It was an illness that began at puberty, continued on for 17 years before being diagnosed and medicated, and lasted another 8 years before I was able to live medication free.

Often people, not the least of whom are dumbfounded psychologists and psychiatrists, ask me how I did it. How did I recover from a severe inherited illness that was supposed to leave me biologically in need of medication for the rest of my life? And more important, did I have any tips I could pass on to others who suffer? Though I am not a medical professional and can only speak for my path, I do believe that there are natural ways to move ourselves toward a happy, healthy life. It is my delight to share them with anyone who asks.

As it turns out, listening to the rain of depression was key from the start. This listening—truly listening—began when none of the general doctors I’d seen could diagnose me. My moods were cyclical, but were not in tune with my menstrual cycle, so it did not fit with PMS. It was a combination of a few highs and a lot of lows, but it didn’t match the traditional bipolar structure. I knew there was something wrong with me, yet over and over I was dismissed because the details of my condition hadn’t yet made it into the general medical texts.There was only one thing to do. I devised a way to prove my moods had a medical basis.

It was simple. I took a piece of graph paper, wrote down the days of the month along the bottom, and the numbers one to ten (one starting on the bottom) on the left-hand side. Every day, I took my “emotional pulse.�?I didn’t tune into what was going on that day, because that was connected to other people and events. I just went into the pit of my stomach at about the same time every day, and asked myself how well, on a scale of one to ten, I could cope with whatever was going on. One was so bad I would have already killed myself. Ten was so high I would have died of heart failure. As a result, I never went below a three or higher than an eight-and-a-half.

At the end of three months, I hung the charts next to each other. There was a pattern of moods so detailed, I became able to predict the onset of a depressed mood (which always lasted fourteen days), an especially good mood (which always lasted three days), or a full-blown suicidal mood (which always lasted two days) down to within a few hours.

With this information, I was able to receive an accurate diagnosis. Having listened to myself so well, it was easy to get a specialist (I went all the way to the National Institutes of Mental Health to find him) to listen to me. As a result, I was able to start planning my life around the illness that, at the time, seemed to be planning my life for me.

Using the chart, I was able to give myself a break on the bad days, not feeling so guilty for all that did not get accomplished, and not going into fear that I’d never accomplish anything in my life. After all, I knew the good days would come. And when they did come, I was able to push myself past my usual limitations and get a lot accomplished. The “two steps forward, three steps back�?that had been my life for as long as I could remember was finally beginning to shift.

Once I began to realize that depression had a powerful control over the patterns in my life, I began listening in a new way. I learned to listen for what I came to call Depression’s Voice.

Anyone who has suffered from depression knows this voice, though they may mistake it for their own. It’s the one that says: “You idiot! You never do it right. You’re a loser. Always have been, always will be. You’re never going to amount to anything. With a mother like you, how are your kids ever going to grow up healthy?�?It is, to say the least, a depressing voice.

Yet when I really listened, over and over, I came to realize this voice didn’t have a large vocabulary. It was a broken record that just kept spouting the same old thing. Even more amazing, I had a brilliant idea: If depression had a voice, might it not also have ears? It was then that I took what I believe is the most critical and empowering step there is in getting out from under depression: I began to talk back to that voice.

That’s right, I began to have conversations with my own Depression.

“So, you say I’m an idiot,�?I would say when that particular slam came in. “Why do you suppose that is?�?Or I’d say, “It may be true that I’m never going to amount to anything, but I’ll consider that on a day when I’m not depressed.�?And if Depression’s Voice was being particularly obnoxious, I’d simply plug my ears with my fingers and scream, “I’m not listening!!!�?/P>

I knew I looked stupid. I didn’t care. (Nonetheless, I didn’t do it out when anyone else was in the room—looking stupid and being stupid are two very different things.) Over time, the more I talked back, the less depression spoke to me in such a degrading and manipulative way. In fact, the less depression spoke to me at all. Amazingly, I was winning the war with whatever dark part of me wasn’t working right, just by refusing it its say.