Depression: The Options
Male depression is a real problem. It’s widespread and, for many, it costs them literally everything. Men die by suicide three to four times as much as women. Why? So many reasons, but here are some of the main culprits:
Lack of meaning, purpose and power
Stigma - they don’t get help
Male depression is treated the same way women’s depression is treated.
If you’ve been reading this thing for awhile, you know that I’m a “sufferer,” or have been. But let me tell you - I am sick to death of talking about it. The “sad, broken little boy” thing is so completely tedious I would almost rather…I dunno, what’s the worst thing I can think of? Ah yes: I would almost rather work in a bank’s call center for the rest of my life than talk about it.
Nonetheless, here I go…
Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve been exposed to, in contact with, or a part of various groups and men dealing with some level of depression. A lot of it is just “life stuff:” fatigue from trying to manage all the administrative variables, diminishing returns for our labors due to inflation and allegedly “necessary” things like app subscriptions and life insurance. We churchy types take our roles as husbands and fathers seriously, and that’s under incessant attack from all sides. So many men “die to themselves” so often that their wives end up burying them decades too early.
But for many—if not most—it’s something more fundamental. It’s the unshakable feeling that nothing matters. They don’t matter. All of their efforts will result in nothing. Live in that state long enough and you won’t even question it anymore.
So, whether they realize it or not (and it’s more often “not,”) they have a few options before them:
Irrevocably end the pain.
Self-medicate: They fall into a life of indulgence and avoidance with booze and porn which very often leads back to #1: End the pain.
Talk therapy and medication.
Wholeness. Take courage, take action, take control.
Obviously you know what I think is best: #4: the road less-traveled.
Option 1 wasn’t really an option. I had a wife and children. Checking out…permanently…wasn’t an option, no matter how hard it got.
Option 2, self-medicating, wasn’t realistic either. It was just a slower way to get to Option 1, but with more damnable history before it.
Option 3, Drugs-and-Therapy: People ask me all the time why I didn’t just get some pills and sign up for therapy in the bad old days. I never had a satisfactory answer for them or for myself. The truth was hard to articulate. This was “less than.” I didn’t just want the pain to go away. I wanted steel-spined victory over it. I dimly intuited that there was…something…I could do or learn that would free me from that darkness.
That’s why I chose (if grasping in the dark for something not yet conceived of can be a “choice,”) Option 4: Wholeness.
I wanted to be a man in full, not just a man living behind anti-depressant fortifications.
It felt a little arrogant. Foolish. Everyone who had settled with Option 3, drugs-and-therapy, told me I was being irresponsible or proud. I rarely argued the point—everyone in the midst of this battle has to make their own choices. For those people who have found a respite from the pain through these methods, that’s great—if it’s real healing. It just wasn’t the choice for me.
I knew that anything less than complete, total healing, even if it left me with deep, ghastly (and ruggedly handsome) scars, would always leave me wondering if I’d quit too soon, or if I had abandoned the mission set out for me, whatever that mission might be. I’d wonder if I was still incomplete.
Also, some still-vital impulse kept wanting to FIGHT.
It was insane. I didn’t care if it seemed like pride or vanity. It was one of those convictions that resided in my soul despite how I felt.
More importantly, it revealed something else. It revealed my need for Him. The One in the icons. The One Whose divine presence seemed more concealed behind the paint and gilding than revealed.
So, I chose to walk through the cannon smoke. It was by far the best decision. Not the easiest—oh, hell no—but that groundedness and confidence that can only come from suffering was well worth it.
I’m not telling every guy it has to be this way. But I would propose that every guy consider that perhaps the fight beyond the meds is where true healing is found. Where real power is found.
Obviously I’m no psychotherapist. Counselor? No. Theologian? That’s funny. All I know is what has worked for me, and it’s not just theory. What brought me low in the past is nothing compared to what I’ve got on my plate these days. And yet somehow, I think, I’ve crossed some kind of line. I can’t say I love it, but when you escape the imaginary bonds of despair and insecurity, life gets kind of fun.
So, for those inclined to rise above the darkness by seeking wholeness, what are they supposed to do? What concrete steps should they take?
That’s what I’m getting at with the next few newsletters. I don’t have all the answers, but I know two things:
If my feeds are any indication, a huge number of men are just waiting to die, although there are some real fighters out there, and;
We’re just beginning to question the stuff “everybody knows.” (Sad? Pyschotherapy, obviously!) I think this is a very good thing.
I know one other thing, too. You have to believe that it’s possible to leave the darkness. That’s the devilish trap. When you’re in it, it’s all you can see. It isn’t just perception, it’s reality. There are no exits and the darkness reaches eternity.
Trust me, brothers, that’s a lie.
Perseverance in the Crucible:
“We come here as to an ideal place in which all is planned and ordered in function of the search for God, and for the full blossoming out of love towards God and our brothers. Such is our expectation; but we carry within us a very idealized picture of its realization. And so many things turn out differently. There are those who come in search of tranquillity, shelter, a quiet life; on the contrary, they find themselves struggling with forces within themselves whose existence they never suspected. Our faults are a barrier; our brothers are imperfect and different from us; sin affects our relationships; the institution is ponderous and opaque; and God seems to take a malicious pleasure in thwarting our ideas.
In fact he is doing us the great service of stripping us of much of our egoism and childishness, of our attachments and disordered desires. In so doing he separates the sheep from the goats. Only when the secondary benefits we expected from our vocation are seen to be more or less illusory, can the essential aim, union with God, be embraced in all its purity - otherwise one leaves.
Perseverance in such a situation is conducive to contemplation, for we find ourselves poor and naked before the Lord, ready at last to receive the incomprehensible gift which he wishes to give us, and not a construct of our own imagination.
We have to know how to stand firm in pure faith when we seem to be only weakness, seem to be only sin. We have to consent in advance to all that, to the desert of the desert. We have to desire the purity which suffering alone can teach.
It seems to me perseverance is a great school of humility; a gradual coming to know this self which persist in time, whose features become defined, whose character traits recur, whose limits take shape. Through trial one discovers one's own heart, and becomes an authentic person situated in the real."
(A Carthusian)