Epiphany!

WARNING: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS SELF-ABSORPTION AND PSYCHOBABBLE. Welcome to my world.

Epiphany: Liturgically it is the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles. I like to think of it as light bursting forth in the world. It also describes the flash of realization, that just-got-hit-with-a-bolt-of-insight/Eureka! sensation. I'm writing this on the heels of one of those moments.

All I have to say is thank-you, Mom (something that probably can never be said enough) and thank-you New York Times!

It started innocently enough, as these things often do. Today is my day off from childcare duties. My psyche has not been in a good place (too complicated to describe) so I was just kicking back. Thought I'd spend some time on the ol' computer. The Google homepage had a link to a Laura Bush book review in The New York Times. I read it. It was good. Along the side was the title of another story called "Mind Over Meds." Figuring it was about depression, my favorite bete noire, I read it.

It's been a salient issue for me. I had come to realize that I was starting to isolate myself, pushing coffee and sugar, feeling like it was taking all my energy just to get through a day. I'm depressed. And I was frustrated. It feels so amorphous. There are so many sub-issues going on. I've seen this coming and had the foresight to get me back to therapy. All well and good, except that the intelligent, insightful woman I had been seeing retired. I'm trying to start anew and it's not easy. I feel like so little of what I have to say makes sense without the backstory. It makes for 45 minutes of highly pressured speech from me explaining what's bothering me and why, then waiting two weeks to do it all over again. I didn't see this going anywhere.

It was a really good article by a psychopharmacologist who was reconsidering the split between the medicinal and psychotheraputic treatments of depression. My last shrink had been psychologist who very much believed in the neurobiology of depression. There is a knotty chicken and egg dilemma at the heart of the treatment debate: which comes first, unhealthy thought patterns or flawed neurochemistry? Pat seemed to lean towards the "physical" model. When my thoughts were problematic she would encourage medication to bring the depression under control, which would then help me untangle what was going on in my mind. Zoloft keeps me going. I'm really quite functional and I like to think that I come across as an unlikely depressed person. But even though I've been talking to a professional my interior life still feels like a mess.

Here's where mom comes in. We've reached that neat stage in life in which we are friends, not just relatives. And she's good for commending to my attention interesting things to read and consider. One of them was a New York Times article titled "Depression's Upside" (NYT February 28, 2010). She brought it up to me almost two months ago. Did I mention that procrastination is one of my problems?

So I finally sat down and read it this morning since I was surfing the net anyway, and, as the kids say, OMG!!! Never before have I felt like someone was describing the way my mind works. I ruminate. I go over things, considering and reconsidering. When the issue is positive it is creative, energizing, and inspiring. On the flip side I revisit dark moments over and over, re-feeling, trying to re-interpret, trying to figure out what went wrong (probably me).

Even more fascinating is the fact that ruminators, or "ruminants" as I preferred to be called, tend to be writers. Our prose is more polished because we're constantly editing, re-examining what it is we're trying to say.

Look at how quickly I've adopted the "we" and "our." I'm not a random, hopeless, psychological freak! There are other people who think and feel like I do! And maybe I can learn to manage this, and use it to my advantage, with the Zoloft to keep it from spinning out of control. It's hard to explain the tremendous feeling of relief this gives me.

I liken my blog entries to beach glass. They are what happens when an idea gets stuck in my mind's surf, being tossed and tumbled until even the trash is rendered beautiful.

This also explains why I've haven't been blogging as much. Much of the stuff running through my head right now can't be shared with a general audience. Not yet.

Thanks, Mom. I owe you a phone call.