DEPRESSION AND ITS BENEFITS

I was listening to a man in a support group talk about depression. He definitely believed he had the perfect answer. I could feel my anger rising to a dangerous level. This idiot said the solution to depression was to pick up the telephone and cheer someone else up. I had a vivid mental picture of putting down a shotgun and picking up the phone. Perhaps I was saving the shotgun for the man with the perfect solution.

I realize most people have suffered from depression at some point in their lives. I would suspect that this level of depression is causal, something unhappy happened in their lives and the result was mental depression.

But, just like my father I have suffered from depression all my adult life. In my case it is not a cause-and-effect condition. Absolutely nothing can be wrong for depression to form suddenly in the depth of my mind.

Over a long period of time, I have learned all kinds of things to deal with this. I have been taking antidepressants for 34 years but it seems there are times when this medication does not completely remove depression.

At those times I have gone to the 24/7 nurses of my health insurance company. From them I learned the gift of listening. So few people really know how to do that. I want to be one of the people who does practice this because with these nurses I discovered how wonderful this really is. But with these women I have learned that talking about how I feel is only so much help. When I would hang up, the feeling of abandonment and depression would settle…