Dr. Lane’s Thought XXXIII

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Dr. Lane’s Thought XXXIII

1) I think that we all feel glum or sad some days.  It is very modern to casually refer to this time as ‘depression’ and the medical world is happy to embrace this term since it means medicine, therapy, and psychological intervention for you; all of this equals money for other people.  The patient has a quick diagnosis and many people can make a dollar so this ‘system’ feeds itself.

I have been sad and frustrated in my early days and saw no end to my miserable existence.  I use the word ‘miserable’ only because I was deeply sad at what life had handed me in a family and home life and the lack of opportunities to make my path easier.  

Did I have it bad?  Not compared to the life of a man equal to me who was black (white privilege was real and don’t ever forget that.  it is still true) or a woman (sexism was alive and thriving 25 years ago but less so today).  Still, I could not get ahead in life.

I saw therapists occasionally and I talked away all of my friends (I drove them away by talking so much) and I drank a little and I smoked a little but each morning nothing had changed to make my life better.

Even then it slowly began to dawn on me that I needed to ask myself a fundamental question: what would it take for me to be happy?  What was the bare minimum that would lift me out of my sad world and thrust me into the world of my perception that meant I was happy?  Another person who loved me would only love the sad me (and he was someone I despised.  It was not my goal to have the sad me ‘understood’ by a woman – it was for me to be happy and have that version of me be loved), a perfect job would give me challenge and accomplishment but most jobs do not intend to offer you those daily affirmations; they serve as a means to offer a product that can be given a monetary value and for which you are paid for your labor.

What I needed was something from within to bolster me and make the rest of my day a pleasure to me every day; a sense that I was ‘gaining’ in life and moving toward a goal of some kind of success in spirt, mind, and finances.

I am not writing this to continue to illustrate the story of my inner life but to demonstrate what I see as lacking in the world of treating ‘depression’ – the utter failure to make the patient set goals and then assist them in their efforts and means to get on this path to this goal or goals and help them complete a journey to recovery.  

I always say “it is easy to be the passenger, it is hard to be the driver”.  We should move the patient from being a passenger on the medical -money model of treating ‘depression’ and put them in the role of being the driver and move them to a new understanding of what it takes to be a functional member of their own health and mental well-being.

Sure, it is important in the beginning to let them flounder and make them understand their present circumstances by talk therapy but at some point there needs to be a consensus stated that it is time to discover a goal that the patient needs to work toward.  Medications should be offered when that kind of medicinal bridge is needed but it should be temporary.

Talk therapy should not accompany medications; medications should be used sparingly to assist the patient during talk therapy.  Both should be used to move the patient along a path of their own choosing to finish their depressive episode.

2) It doesn’t matter if your teenage son looks like a Hemsworth brother or your daughter looks like Salma Hayak or Sofia Vergara their favorite topic to talk about is having a massive bowel movement.

Trust me on this or just nod your head and agree.  I have raised boys and girls from adolescents to young adults.

3) It doesn’t matter where you go in New Jersey and receive retail service – they all speak Spanish!  No matter what they look like –  white black or brown skin – they speak very good or fluent Spanish.  it is something you discover when you are married to a Latinx.

There was even an odd encounter I had where a Latina I was talking to at the perfume counter of Macy’s in the Newport Mall (Jersey City) not only spoke Spanish (her mother was from my wife’s hometown in Colombia) but informed me she was from Japan (so she spoke the three or the four most important languages of retail.  The only language missing was Chinese).  Her flawless English was a learned language!

4)  My brother lost his job because a woman on the job did not like him.  She was not his supervisor (just another employee) and he thought he could just avoid her and it would be alright for the time they worked.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

That doesn’t work.  He was applying MALE rules to a FEMALE problem.

Let me explain:

Two guys hate each other.  They can work in the same place for 40 years and there is no problem.  They just avoid each other.

A woman hates you and you can only do one thing: work at a way to get her fired because she is planning on doing that same thing to you.  There is no 40 years of working with her at the same workplace; you have to get her ass fired inside of six months or she will get you fired.

My brother lost his job because a woman on the job didn’t like him and he used MALE thinking about a problem with a FEMALE.

Lose yourself with flaming me over my sexist thinking but before you do that, think about what I wrote and stop typing because, once you think about it, you realize that the same thing happened to you or someone you know.

5)  Things I hear in my office and what they mean

“I don’t have diabetes! I have sugar in my urine only because I just ate” = you have diabetes.  Diabetes is when excess sugar is in your urine because your body cannot take it into the cells.

“You see, I have white coat syndrome!”

or

“If you just let me sit in a dark corner for 20 minutes and play soft music while I think soothing thoughts [and so on with a hundred variations about what you ‘need’ to bring your blood pressure down]” = you have high blood pressure

“I don’t need glasses.  I have never needed glasses before!” as said by any person over the age of 35 = you need glasses now.

Simply, if your deluded thinking when you look in the mirror is that a 25 year old is looking back then you need a brisk smack in the head to wake you up.  You get older and so does your body.  You do not have ‘a’ body you have as many ‘bodies’ as you have years on this planet as your body changes and evolves and both improves and deteriorates. 

You can’t see a Snellen chart? Get glasses

You have a blood pressure over 140/90? Get it under control and under 140/90

You have sugar in your urine? Change your food habits, lose 50 pounds, take medicine to control your symptoms.

Exercise and weight loss are the two things that bring the best and most consistently positive results for all medical conditions.

6)  We are all controlled (and sometimes manipulated) by the diagnosis/concept of ‘depression’.  Pretty much any behavior is used as the basis for the diagnosis – too happy, too sad, too focused, not focused, interest in being around other people, not being interested in being around other people and so on.  It is the all-encompassing ‘diagnosis’ that puts the patient in charge of everyone else and everyone elses’ happiness.

Depression is a ‘first world’ problem in that it seems to manifest when people have a great deal of free time to ‘contemplate how they feel’ as well as the necessary therapists and medical establishment to offer ‘treatment’ for this ‘malady’.  The reason that I offer this economic capacity is because you hear about ‘depression’ a great deal less in places where basic survival takes up the majority of your daily activities (as well as the intense socialization that accompanies shared hardship).

There are many reasons that support the ‘need’ to have a diagnosis like ‘depression’ around.  Frustration in a world that makes increasing demands on us by technology and financial/economics constraints that leave us feeling powerless and underprepared, the status of ‘adulthood’ that becomes further out of reach as we leave our teen years in a world of low wages and high rents, a burgeoning market of sexualization in our public and visual life that seems to overpower any other skill set, and the idea that we have no role in each other’s lives (greater isolation and the decreasing need for socialization to accomplish life’s needs).

In years past what we now call ‘depression’ (which is supported largely by the medical-psychological industry that needs the patient load) might have been called ‘normal adolescence’, ‘the blues’, ‘burnout’ or ‘exhaustion’ but now it has an all-encompassing diagnosis which allows for truly terrible behavior by the ‘patients’ who must be tolerated because of a their ‘problems’.

Depression is the ‘super-power’ which covers the omnipotence of being allowed endless excuses for poor behavior, incompetence, poor hygiene, angry outbursts, endless hours on all forms of communication and visual devices, problems with punctuality, and all of the issues previously described as immaturity.  The best part of ‘depression’ is that there is no age limit – you never have to outgrow it!  

Even better – ‘depression’ is everyone else’s problem!  You have a ready excuse that everyone else has to deal with!  You never have to take responsibility for your own issues because…you are everybody’s problem and everyone’s issue!  You go to your therapist and described your thoughts (which look tantalizingly like the mundane issues that we all share as members of a family, members of society, and people involved in relationships with others) but you get that all important extra of ‘sympathy’ which comes with your failing health and shortened lifespan.

Ha, ha! Your body isn’t failing and your lifespan is not shortened – of course not!  Your medical condition is the terminal diagnosis of sadness and social frustration which demands tender loving care from us all for as long as you want it.  You leave the all-embracing world of ‘depression’ only if you want to and you can always return because there are doctors and pharmaceutical companies that need you!

So what happens when all these ‘depressed’ people start growing in numbers and start to bump into each other’s demands for special treatment and accommodations? Is there a protocol for who goes first in their demands?  Do we need to lower expectations on the ‘depressed’ because of this ‘terminal diagnosis’?  Do we let them apply for disability or workers compensation?  After all, to a ‘depressed’ person, we all owe them something!

Person 1: “you should be nice to me. After all, I have depression”

Person 2: “well, I have depression too!”

Person 1: “but I mentioned it first”

Person: “I am pretty sure that I have had it longer”

Person 1: “I thought that you would be nicer to me since you know what it is like”

Person 2″ “I thought that you would be kinder to me since you should understand what I am going through.

And on until forever.  When there is no person without this ‘diagnosis’ then we are all ‘victims’ of each other’s failure to sympathize with our ‘medical problem’.

Further, do we force parents, siblings, and partners to shoulder the burden of these delayed adolescents with their endless problems due to this (very handy) ‘diagnosis? Are we required to pay for all of their devices, food, and shelter and congratulate on when they make it out of bed before 11 AM and go to bed before 1:30 AM?  Are we expected to find ways to ‘cheer them up’ endlessly as they fail to take responsibility for themselves and their own moods?  Do we commiserate as the world around them always fails to meet their expectations (as it does to all of us because success is not guaranteed)?

Or, do we ask them this question, “so, what do you intend to do about this problem you have?  After all, you need to take responsibility for your on life”.

I know, I know, “Dr. Lane you just don’t understand!”  No, I do not.  You see, I have a job, responsibilities, and a long history of ‘getting over stuff’ which you do not.  Good luck with your future of looking for sympathy from anyone and everyone and demanding that we all ‘understand” you.


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