Luin kuinka Nevan (Niuvaniemen nuorten yksikkö) asiakkaita yhdistävä tekijä on vanhempien jämeryyden puute. Se on aivan totta ja oli myös kohdallani. Juuri pari päivää sitten eräs parikymppinen sottapytty sai käskyn siivota. Hän kertoi ettei hän voi nyt kovin hyvin. Nauroin hänelle että mulle ei menis läpi. Vastasi että kyllä mulla oikeasti on vähän huono olo, johon vastasin että sillä ei ole vittuakaan tekemistä asian kanssa. Jos minä olisin hoitaja, sinä siivoisit kun sanoin että siivoat. Ei ottanut nokkiinsa, vaan päinvastoin.
Sama se on näillä kaikilla täällä. Mietin sitä taas kerran ja toivoin lukevani siitä artikkelista. Hyvä että se tuli sanottua. "Sillä on vaan sellanen vaihe" sanottiin broidistakin kun hermoilin isoveljenä. Eikä ollut ja nyt hänellä ei ole enää mitään vaiheita. Asiaan olisi voinut puuttua jo hyvissä ajoin, jota en tietenkään sano, sillä se on jo liian myöhäistä.
Depression is not sadness, it is hopelessness. A depressed person can feel happy (“It’s not gonna last”), but it is impossible to feel hopeful and depressed at the same time. The easiest way to have hope is to be okay with anything.
The anti-stigma campaign conflates symptoms with disease and confuses disease with identity. Depression is a chronic illness, sure, a disability, okay, but when it comes down to it, depression is a series of thoughts. Each thought lasts a moment. And a thought, lasting a moment, is not who you are.
Detachment is the key. Pretend that your feelings are happening to someone else, like you are controlling the videogame of your life: accept that you feel depressed without accepting that you are depressed. “I feel worthless and suicidal today. That’s interesting. I wonder if I can change this feeling?” So you do CBT and it doesn’t work. “That did not change my feeling. Huh, good to know.” If something goes wrong, it is not your fault. It has nothing to do with you. It’s just a thing that happened, once. Maybe it will go right tomorrow. Maybe it won’t. You are not allowed to look backwards, not even for a second. The past has no influence over what you do now. And you can’t look too far forwards, or you’ll draw patterns where none truly exist. For as long as you are depressed, you must loosen your grip on induction.
One last thing—Do you ever notice how artists start out pessimistic and bleak and then steadily go uphill? Modest Mouse did this, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Radiohead, Spiritualized, Of Montreal, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Dr. Dre, DOOM, Tyler the Creator, and the Wu-Tang. Maybe this is sample bias, but I’m pretty sure the down-up trajectory is more common than its opposite, which includes, uh, Beck and Vincent Van Gogh.
Obviously there’s lots of confounders here (e.g. money and fame), but I think this trend hints at something therapeutic. It’s not about “creating art”—it’s about identity.
It seems minor, but there is a vast difference between being an Artist (who happens to be depressed) and a Depressed Person (who happens to putz around in Ableton). An Artist can stop being depressed, a Depressed Person can only stop making art.
Defining yourself differently gives you the opportunity to change. Your identity doesn’t have to be an Artist: it can be a Performer, a Parent, a Partier, an Intellectual, a Healer, or even a Villain. Art is the time-honored answer to pain, but anything that lets you become someone new works.
And so I don’t begrudge those who want to communicate feeling, who want to figure out who they are and announce it to the world. But don’t just talk about mental health. Sing.
https://www.tumblr.com/hotelconcierge/1 ... tal-health