Editor’s note: I did not write this. I could not see myself doing justice to the final two topics of chapters 6 and 7. I wanted those to be the words of people in the throws of these conflicts. The following piece is written by a Hutterite who struggled with depression and offered to share her experience of navigating mental illness alongside the age of technology in her teens, and how she overcame the “worst” times of her struggle through coming to find Vitality, Long-Term Meaning, and Relationships.
This is the last of the papers for this long, ongoing research project. You may even find that like all these projects, while we started with a question on “What to Do about Today’s Youth in the Age of Technology and Digital Media?” we keep ending up in a place that is not the internet, a guidebook, or a set of rules. Rather, it seems that the answer lies somewhere within our Huttarian and Christian lifestyles. It is as though we are equipped to implement the “solution” which happens to be offering those things that technology cannot.
Read this is the same way you read Chapter 6. Feel free to annotate, comment on, and jot down notes about which parts you enjoyed, which you would like to discuss further, and which you don’t agree with!
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It was nothing new, this not being able to sleep because of the terror clawing its way down my throats into my lungs, rasping out each breath, building pressure in the pit of my stomach as I tried desperately to keep myself in one piece, to keep myself sane. I had felt it building for several days and now it was exploding into an incorporeal, irrational monster feeding off my doubts, my insecurities, my hopes, or lack thereof. “There is no reality, you have nowhere to go. This is your only reality.” It was nothing new but the sheer force with which it hit terrified me. It had never been this bad, crushing my lungs, calling into doubt the very value of being. And there underneath it was a genuine fear that I was not strong enough to stand against this onslaught. I did not want to die, but I wished to not be, to not have to feel this. To wish to oneself out of existence must surely be an affront to being itself because it calls into question the intrinsic value of the individual. I didn’t want to be and yet I didn’t want to die. This was bound up with a fear that I was losing my grip on reality and that if left unchecked, this could very well be my last night. I didn’t trust myself not to go to any length to escape. I wasn’t sure that I had a truth or a story I identified with strongly enough to keep my anchored in this world, a foundation that could bear the weight of the full force of the fear that threatened to crush me.
I wrapped a blanket around myself, fumbling for my phone. No coherent thoughts, just please, please, please, oh God, oh God. If God was real, that should have at least been something I could grab onto but somehow it slipped out of my grasp. Somehow in the midst of my muddled thoughts, the idea of waking someone up with my choked sobs was completely out of the question so I headed for the porch. I wasn’t at home and there were only two people with whom I dared share this side of myself. I didn’t need someone telling me that my thoughts were irrational, I was perfectly aware of that. Knowing my thoughts were irrational and still not being able to overcome them was what terrified me. Was this what it felt like to go insane? To feel and dread every step of the descent into madness? The terror felt real and more substantial that the cold wooden deck boards as I stepped onto the porch.
Pulling up my contacts list, I didn’t know what I would say, I only knew needed someone to bring me back to reality.
Please pick up, please pick up, don’t be asleep.
A long pause and then a ring. Once. Twice.
“Hello?” A voice gruff with sleep answered.
A phone call at 1 a.m. speaks for itself. My dad didn’t doubt my feelings as he and my mom talked me back down into a semblance of ease, praying with me, grounding me in the real world. The tight knots in my stomach unwound themselves and I relaxed enough to finally be able to sleep.
Luckily the younger me didn’t know that this was only the beginning and that she would be facing almost two years of the depression punctuated by anxiety attacks. I don’t think she could have handled that knowledge, that dread. My experiences are not unique. They are not even rare. Young people are experiencing depressive symptoms at increased rates we need to start paying attention. How are we to make sense of this growing pandemic and how can we help those who are struggling with and being overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness and an utter lack of direction? Technology is far from the whole explanation and blaming technology for all of our problems tends to become an excuse for us. What we really need is connection.
Recovering from depression is not about becoming happy, it is about regaining the vitality of life that depression steals from you. In the words of Andrew Solomon, a journalist living with depression, “The opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s vitality.” How do we protect the vitality of our young people? How can we better understand what depression is a what the common causes are?
Before we even get into the statistics surrounding depression, it needs to be stressed that depression is a complex situation. There are as many different experiences and causes of depression as there are people who suffer from it. Attempting to pin down one single thing, such as technology as the ultimate cause will likely keep us from seeing the whole picture. I am not a psychologist and I have little more than my own research and experience with depression to go on. Furthermore, while my depressive symptoms persisted for about two years, mine was rather mild and sporadic in comparison to what other people I know face. What I really want to stress in this essay, is our responsibility and agency in the situation. If we take responsibility for our lifestyles, health, and the health of our children and communities we will begin to see progress as we gain a better understanding of depression and the support systems that can help to prevent it.
The Depressing Facts
Depression affects one in four Americans and in Manitoba suicide is the leading cause of death in ages 10-17. It is reasonable to assume that the comparative stability of our Hutterite lifestyle acts as an insulation, protecting us from the most extreme risk factors, but that does not mean that we can pretend that depression is not a problem among Hutterite youth. Just within my social circle, almost everyone has experience depressive symptoms at some point, some even reveal that they were suicidal. According to the current rate at which the number of depressed people is rising in each generation, by the time my generation, Gen Z, reaches middle age, half of us will have experience major depressive disorder. A staggering statistic regardless of how you interpret it.
A common objection to these statistics is that fail to account for the way in which stigmas surrounding depression and mental illness have fallen away, allowing for more open discussion in which people will more readily admit they are depressed. I disagree with this interpretation because while mental illness may be difficult to measure, we have very objective data on the rising number of people using antidepressants, the rising number of girls being hospitalized for self-harm injuries, and the rising number suicides. If indeed the rising rates of depression are due to the fact that more people are willing to discuss their struggles with mental illness, then self-harm and suicide rates should be falling as people choose discussion and conversation as the preferable means of escaping the hellscape of their emotions.
Given the rising rates of suicide and self-harm, it would be misleading to reduce the data to a reflection of the greater openness in conversation we are witnessing around traditionally taboo topics. Of course, this is a positive development which allows us to find solutions through collaborative discussion but there is something more to the story.
Something about our lifestyles, especially recently and especially in the youngest generation, is triggering a stress response in our brains which leads to depression if left unchecked. Depression is not an illness in and of itself. New studies are showing that depression is best understood as a symptom of underlying problems. Depression rates skyrocketed in my generation around the same time smartphones became the norm. Studies have also shown depression rates to correlate directly with the prescription of antidepressants, which seem to be part of the problem rather than the solution they promise. I don’t think the problem can be reduced to “phones make us depressed therefor we should get rid of phones.” Depression has many possible causes and one of the greatest difficulties with addressing depression is how little we really know about it. Some potential cause of depression are chronic stress, lifestyle and nutrition, genetics, environment, hormonal imbalance, chemicals, and heavy metals and toxins. What I hope to do is discuss my experience with depression and the things that contributed to it and the things that helped alleviate it. Technology was involved, but not central. For other young people, technology seems to be a very obvious cause.
Disease of Civilization?
“[My depression] manipulated and lied its way into making me think that ending my own life wasn’t just best for me, but actually it would be best for everybody. Because that is what depression does: it overpowers you, it takes the wheel and steers you away from everyone and everything you love and it takes you down a dark tunnel and when you’re in that tunnel it hugs you and tells you that this is where you’re supposed to belong.”
- Jake Tyler “I’m Fine” – Learning to Live With Depression TEDxBrighton
In his Ted talk, Dr. Stephan Ilardi describes depression as a disease of civilization or a disease of lifestyle. In particular, the kind of lifestyle which most of the western world has adopted. Among the Kaluli, an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea who have maintained a traditional lifestyle for thousands of years, anthropologists found only one mild case of depression among the two thousand people they interviewed. One mild case in two thousand as compared to the one in four we face, and number that is only predicted to rise and most of which are worse than “mild.”
Describing depression as a “disease of civilization” is helpful because it breaks down the idea that depression is somehow inherent to the person. It also makes the clear the disconnect between many of the staples of the modern lifestyle and the things our bodies and minds need to function well. The first step to finding a way out of depression is to responsibility for lifestyles that may be contributing to the problem. In his book The Depression Cure, Dr. Iladri offers a 6-step program to beat depression by building a lifestyle that gives your body the support it needs to escape the stress-response cycle.
- Engaging, anti-ruminative activity
- Diet
- Physical exercise
- Sunlight exposure
- Social support
- Healthy sleep
Most psychologists writing about depression have come to similar, lifestyle-based solutions. Leonard Sax in Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and Why Gender Matters; Kelly Brogan’s A Mind of Your Own; Nicholas Kardaras’ Glow Kids; and Jordan Peterson in Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. All of these people have years of experience helping themselves and others overcome the challenges that our modern lifestyle presents for our mental health.
Dr. Ilardi’s explanation for why a therapeutic lifestyle helps combat depression is simple: “We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, socially isolated, fast-food-laden, sleep-deprived, frenzied pace of modern life.” I laugh when I read this quote because it perfectly summarizes the lifestyle of the average Hutterite ITV high school students. And we wonder why teens are depressed! Also, I don’t think it is mere coincidence that five of these six lifestyle pillars are significantly affected by our current infatuation with technology.
When faced with something potentially dangerous or stressful, our brain engages the “fight or flight” response, triggering a cascade of reactions.
· The hypothalamus sends signals to our adrenal glands, through the pituitary gland, to produce hormones
· Those hormones communicate with almost all our other systems to initiate what is called the stress response.
· Our heart rate and blood pressure increases, glucose is dumped into the cells for quick energy, our pupils dilate and our muscles are primed for action. In this mode, digestion and reproductive function are diminished.
· When our immediate stress is over, the body switches back to its “regular” state which calms down the body systems and returns everything back to normal.
· When we live in chronic stress mode, the body finds it difficult to switch off this stress response. The system gets tired and ceases to work effectively after a while. Most of the chronic diseases that plague the modern world have a connection to stress overload.[1]
The modern lifestyle keeps us in a nearly constant stress response and there are almost no diseases that are not causes, exacerbated, or maintained by a chronic stress response. In the short-term depression is adaptive, shifting our focus to something that demands immediate attention.
What is it about our lifestyles that trigger this constant barrage of stress signals and what can we do to halt the stress response so that we can live healthy lives and jump-start our brains and emotions back into functioning order? Incorporating Dr. Ilardi’s 6-step program is a really good place to start for anyone trying to beat depression.
Engaging, anti-ruminative activity: these are enjoyable activities undertaken specifically to get your mind off of the stressors. Meditation, reading, knitting, cooking, and gardening are just some of things you can do. In the midst of our hectic schedules we often claim we don’t have time but maybe if we replace some of the time we spend on social media, movies, and video games with engaging activities…
Dietary: our bodies – immune system, hormonal glands, brains, etc. cannot function without the support of a good diet. It’s seems rather obvious, but it is an often over-looked area of depression and mental illness research and consideration.
Physical Exercise: exercise is more effective than any antidepressant at releasing the hormones the brain needs to counterbalance a stress response, be it chronic or acute.
Sunlight Exposure: We weren’t designed to sit indoors all day. Our body’s natural rhythms are designed to align with the natural day/night cycles, but our current lifestyles have upended that. Just go outside sometimes. It helps.
Social Support: This was by far the biggest factor in my depression. We need honest and vulnerable relationships to keep us grounded in reality and to help us see new perspectives. We are be design, social beings. Technology offers many “fake” social supports that simply don’t cut it. I will be discussing this aspect extensively.
Healthy Sleep: Your body does most of its repair work when we are sleeping and all too often we sacrifice sleep to spend more time on our phones, social media, shows, and video games. This is usually the first area to suffer when we think about how technology may be connected to depression.[2]
Taking responsibility for our lifestyle choices and making informed and thoughtful decisions is the first step to overcoming depression. Supporting others in moving towards a more mentally healthy lifestyle, however, requires that we listen to those who are suffering to try to understand what they are going through and why experiencing depression can be so distressing and debilitating.
“Just a Phase”
The understanding of depression as a symptom of an underlying problem and a natural part of the stress response helps us see how depression is not simply imagined, that it is a very real condition. It also offers hope because we are in control of many of the underlying stressors causing the stress responses. We are literally sick, our brains suffering from chronic stress overload and as a result, pain manifests as depression.
To take this problem seriously, we need to understand how distressing the emotional and psychological effects of depression are to those who are suffering from them. In the introduction I mentioned how the irrationality of depression and my inability to think my way around it made the issue worse, increasing my worry and creating a stronger emotional response in a vicious cycle. I felt I had lost control. Depression convinces people that they are somehow at fault for how they feel, that their very being is at the heart of the problem. The depression becomes the only real thing, and all too often manages to convince people that they and the world would be better off if they did not exist.
Almost everyone’s reaction when I describe what depression and anxiety feel like is, “Are you sure you’re not overreacting?”
I find this question amusing because it misses the point. Obviously, I am overreacting! That’s the entire problem! I am physically, psychologically not capable of not overreacting. That’s what a run-away stress response does and why depression is considered a mental illness: it skews your ability to react and act appropriately in the world. Everyone with depression has probably been told at some point to “just be happy,” as if happiness was something that healthy people could summon at will, never mind depressed people.
Depression warps your thoughts and emotions into something that even you can hardly recognize, that is, until it becomes the only reality you know and you come to distrust happiness as too good to be true.
For example, someone struggling with anxiety will see massive hurdles in situations that are easily dealt with by mentally healthy people. Presenting a project in class, having to make a snap decision, introducing yourself to someone, or just the blindsiding, sudden terror that your relationships are all false. Rationally, you’re well-prepared for the project, know exactly what you want, would love to meet this person, and have many supportive friends and family members. But your brain shuts down.
Human beings are adaptable enough that we can usually counterbalance a shortcoming in one area of our lives. The problem is that technology effects so many areas that counterbalancing is not possible. Depression is the flashing warning lights telling us that something about our life’s, environment, or lifestyle is damaging.
We need to learn to identify and address the underlying issues triggering depressibe symptoms rather than treating depression as the illness itself, treating the body from a holistic approach that addresses the whole person in all the different facets of life: emotional, mental, physical, interpersonal, and spiritual.
Technology does not cause depression, but it makes maintaining a healthy, stress-minimizing lifestyle difficult to maintain. In cases where depression has already set in, technology becomes a means for escape but with a costly trade-off. Describing depression as a disease of civilization makes the very helpful connection between what we do and the societies we grow up in and how we feel. It’s foolish to think that our moods and emotions are completely separate from the world we inhabit.
Adding Teechnology
In the modern world, practically our entire lifestyle is a stressor from the foods we eat to the tweets we like. As Hutterites, our communities have somewhat protected us, but we are still facing the reality that hundreds of our youngest and most vulnerable members are severely depressed.
The time spent with technology means you don’t have that time to spend elsewhere. Which of us has not spent hours binging a show, grinding through a game, and scrolling endlessly? In these situations, we’ve made a tradeoff, perhaps unconsciously, but one was made non the less: expediency at the cost of meaning. This idea was developed by Jordan Peterson and is a helpful framework when we try to direct ourselves towards a goal. Are we taking the meaningful, perhaps difficult, but necessary steps towards our goals, or are we choosing the expedient, the dopamine rush, the quick-fix? All too often we choose the stimulation of technology over real experience. This has been a problem for humans for all of time but technology has made the expedient more stimulating and easier to access than ever before. The real world requires patience and resilience, hard work, constant input and strategy reassessment. The real world is filled with pain and loss and is not always rewarding. Depression makes the real world an unbearable place to be, especially when a lack of direction makes progress and any feeling of accomplishment virtually impossible. The easy answer is to get a quick fix from your drug of choice, which for most of us in the modern worlds is technology.
Sleep, cognitive function, and social interaction are the first things to suffer when we start trading the meaningful for the expedient. Physical activity and sunlight exposure follow close behind. The danger here is that the very things you sacrifice are the ones that you will be dependent on in the future if you find yourself stuck in an addiction that you now have to escape. If you sacrifice social connection in favor of video games for long enough, eventually the video games will become a replacement for the social connection you lack. Because overcoming addiction is nearly impossible without social connection you are putting yourself at great risk by making these types of sacrifices. Technology can be a tool, but it can also be a cage.
Another example of how we sacrifice meaning for expediency is the young child trying to get his mother’s attention, “Mom… mom… mom.” To no avail. He tugs at her dress, touches her shoulder. She shrugs him off. She is scrolling through the Healthy Cooking group she recently joined on WhatsApp. What assumptions can the child be expected to draw from this interaction? What value judgements will he make based on this interaction, especially if this has happened before and continues to happen throughout his developmental years. His dad plays math and racing games with him on the iPad but otherwise they have no interaction. Parents are a child’s first exploration into interpersonal associations. If technology causes a breakdown in this area, the other social circles the child is part of will have to work very hard to counterbalance the effects. At all levels, technology is creating rifts in meaningful connection.
If we sacrifice the pillars of our health for the sake of a quick dopamine rush, we leave ourselves vulnerable to depression. When we face challenge in life – a new job, a fight with a friend, the death of a loved one – we will not have the necessary support systems to calm the stress reaction. Depression is almost inevitable.
Social Media, Truth, and the Sense of Self
As far as technology is concerned, I was luck. I got in late and got out early, but not unscathed. My computer time was strictly regulated as a kid and when I made my first Gmail/Google+ account at age thirteen, I wasn’t allowed to chat with boys or even add them to the acquaintances circle on Google+. Google+ was a relatively positive experience; the dopamine rush of getting a like or a comment, of having one of the cool 9th grade girls from ITV accept your friend requests, and the thrill of discovering Google+ communities of people sharing my interests. I joined a community devoted to discussing Rick Riorden’s Percy Jackson series.
I was a Perchel shipper, an uncommon and looked-down-upon minority of the PJ Fandom. One day I made a post in support of Perchel and got more backlash that fourteen-year-old me could handle. My solution? I fudged my stated opinion, just a bit, so that it seemed like I was a Percabeth shipper just like everyone else and was merely making fun of Perchel. I recognized the dishonesty in myself and although this was a relatively low stakes betrayal of myself, it was none the less pivotal: the moment when I realized that to reap the benefits of the social media heirarchy, I would have to dance to everyone else’s tune or I wouldn’t get the validation I craved. Over time it became almost instinctive to pick up on and deliver what people wanted on Social Media and then farm the rewards in likes and dopamine.
Social media, like all of our social interactions has a built-in hierarchy. The allure and advantage of climbing the hierarchy is that those highest up – those with the most followers – receive the most validation translating to dopamine hits. This provides a huge incentive to post only that which will help you climb the hierarchy. You must be edgy enough to give followers that much sought-after experience of the novel, while simultaneously delivering that which is valued on the media network. That might have meant a cute and quirky bio on Google+ 10 years ago, but today it might mean angled selfies or profanity to fit in.
We make our value judgements based on two things: 1) how much something helps us move towards our goals and 2) what we see those around us valuing. The dopamine rush from social media is a quick fix for our natural desire for meaningful connections with others, but it is a grotesquely exaggerated and disproportionate parody of the real thing. Living your life based on the value judgements of people with whom you interact with almost exclusively through the shallow interactions of social media is a great way to make sure your value judgements are also grotesquely exaggerated, disproportionate, and a mismatch for dealing with the problems of the real world.
Real human interaction is impossible as you dilute your opinions, personality, and interests in a bit-sized, easily absorbed online caricature. You become something likeable, but you never become a real person with all the complex dynamics of experience, actions, philosophies, interests -or most importantly- flaws and vulnerability.
This became an incessant problem for me as I made the switch to Instagram. I knew myself well enough to know I was being dishonest with myself and my followers, but the allure was too strong. Despite being fully aware that I was projecting misrepresentations, somehow, it didn’t occur to me that others were doing the same. Contrasting the struggles of anyone’s real life to the online representation where everyone’s posts about their friends, good times, their adorable dogs, their beautifully well-managed cook weeks, their new dresses, and selfies filtered to perfection, it starts to feel like you are the one out of touch with reality. Why are you so miserable and out of it? Why does your life suck so much in comparison to everyone else’s?
Shel Silverstein’s poem Masks perfectly encapsulates the deficiencies and poverty of social media interactions and how we have come to see ourselves.
She had blue skin,
And so did he.
He kept his hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by –
And never knew.
Even when you realize that it’s all an illusion, you’re still drawn to stay in that world of fake perfection. Maybe it isn’t real, but it feels real enough for the time being, and it’s so much easier. You don’t have to face responsibilities and the real work of building lasting friendships. In the end, I deleted my Instagram because I was wasted too much time watching all the dumb one minute comedy sketches rather than any high-minded well thought-out attempt to rediscover the “real me.”
I started texting regularly with a guy I liked and looked forward to receiving messages on Google Hangouts and texts. We developed a friendship and something more than that. Through a combination of many factors though, we began drifting apart which was when I started realizing how fully I had come to define myself through others’ reactions to me. I didn’t have a firm sense of self outside of the validation I received from others so as I sensed the relationship collapsing, I panicked. I interpreted the more sporadic texts as my fault. I twisted myself out of shape trying to word my texts in such a way that they would illicit the responses I had come to depend upon. At the same time, I didn’t want to appear desperate. But I was desperate! My value system and story were collapsing. A large part of my sense of self was tied up in a relationship and this is the biggest fear for especially teen girls, who don’t even know who they themselves are, trying to have romantic relationships. It is far too easy to lose yourself in that mess. It makes sense, in a messed-up sort of way, that most of my anxiety attacks revolved around the terror that all my friendships were fake.
I no longer had a firm grasp on who I was and where I belonged in the story.
Story: A Beautiful Lie?
Stories play a larger part in our lives than we give them credit for. Jordan Peterson, a clinal psychologist, writes extensively about how we derive our sense of meaning, goals, and feelings of achievement from the stories that we believe: the story of the Hutterites, the story of Our own lives, the story of Jesus of Nazareth, etc. They inform our actions and choices and the way we see our place in the world.
For a long time, I was completely focused on school. That was my story with graduation as the end game. So, when I graduated, I was set adrift, and being cut off from my story and my sense of direction, triggered a stress response that lasted for almost two years until I found a different story by which to orient myself.
Technology was not the cause of this aspect of my depression, but it became a means of escape the problem. At this point I was no longer using social media but there was a whole world of movies, shows, and YouTube videos. I could live in these stories for a little while to escape the lack of meaning and direction in my own life (expediency for meaning).
Nicholas Kardaras, observed in Glow Kids that “[western culture] are the loneliest and most directionless society.” Operating on fake stories and fake connections, it is no wonder that we seem to have lost our sense of direction, connection, and meaning. This is one area in which we have failed the young people of our Hutterite church. We have failed to give them a strong enough sense of direction, failed to invite them to take their place in the story. If the church does not provide a story, the Zeitgeisten and the trends of popular culture will through the media they consume. You can’t tell someone to get up for breakfast if there is no WHY worth getting up for.
With some overlap, shows and movies are the drug of choice for girls while boys usually gravitate towards video games. In each case it is our desire to see the story archetypes, heroes, and villains played out in a story that has a clear beginning and end. It is a comfort.
At first, I thought my lack of direction was just a short-term problem I would be able to work through quickly. Sometimes, when I felt better for a week, I started to believe I was over it but then another wave of depression would blindside me when I least prepared. I became outright jealous when I saw other people genuinely enjoying themselves. How dare they?
I didn’t understand my lack of direction as a collapse of story until I read Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. My new goal became finding Truth: a story that I could live and die in. Something that was meaningful enough that it would give me a reason to take on the harsh realities of life, even if I never really felt “happy.” My problem at the time lay in the fact that I had no story of my own and was basically living within other worlds rather than taking my own place in a story. The digital realm usurped the place of the real world.
I started building friendships completely separate from social media and was incredibly blessed to have parents who encouraged me and were understanding listeners as they helped me find a way out of the darkness. It was my dad who introduced me to Jordan Peterson’s Twelve Rules for Life. They didn’t pretend the goal was to be happy. They helped me see that the lifestyles and stories represented in popular culture and social media did not align with reality, which is pockmarked with negative experiences. We need stories that can prepare, ground, and guide us when disaster strikes, to keep the stress from becoming a chronic issue which leads to depression, anxiety, and hopelessness.
The grounding truth I eventually arrived at was a simple one: God is Truth (with a capital “T”). This didn’t cure my depression overnight, but sitting in the bathroom of a friend’s house in a different colony, trying desperately to stave off the onslaught of anxiety. In those times, that was the truth that I clung to. From there, I could work my way back into reality and over time I discovered the story that went along with it and chose to take my place in it. There wasn’t a moment where I instantly knew I was better, but there came a time when I realized I wasn’t living in fear that the next panic attack would be the one that would break me. Somehow, I knew I would survive it.
Let’s take a turn with this paper:
Memeing and Demeaning
Depression and anxiety are issues that must be taken seriously and dealt with in a purposeful and compassionate way. We have to be informed about the facts but also willing to listen to people’s stories. However, in a bewildering shift of trends, depression has also become the new cool. It’s become a personality trait that people use to garner validation. Because of the sheer number of depressed teens seeking an understanding community, posts and memes about depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and suicide find a ready audience. Sarah Liberti points out how discomfort, humor, and relatability seem to go hand in hand, making up the foundation of online content.
We can safely assume that everyone making depression jokes are truly depressed. Suicide and depression jokes are a cry for help. Tragically, we usually assume that if someone is joking about their depression, then they are ok. Memes have become the communication of choice for depression culture Besides being a cry for help, depression jokes are also quickly becoming the currency of choice for the value hierarchy of the internet.
It’s a reasonable payoff: my highly relatable joke about wanting to die for your validation in the form of likes or upvotes. The “jokes” above are taken from Reddit, one of the less talked about, most popular and private social media platforms.
What exactly are we to make of this “memeing” of depression? It demeans the all too real problem faced by thousands of people. The discussion needs to happen in an informed and intelligent way, not farmed for validation in a way that glorifies and incentivizes mental illness. The whole situation is counterproductive.
Also, Posting openly about mental illness and personal struggles is quickly becoming “mood” to the point where such discussions are becoming valued as a personality quirk and something people can “like.” Openly posting or even talking about vulnerable topics is not necessarily the same as being vulnerable. Remember in earlier talks: social media is not designed for vulnerability.
In the same way that overly happy feel-good posts create a shallow persona incapable of portraying the full person behind the account, depression posts also create caricatures of taboo topics. People will assume that because you discuss these topics so openly, there must not be much else below the surface. Conversation and connection may not reach those areas of your life that are truly in need of honest understanding, and these types of discussion cannot happen when the information is being broadcast to hundreds and thousands of people.
Our knee-jerk understanding of social media is that it makes us more connected. This assumption ignores the facts of human psychology which does not allow for such a large number of deep, truly meaningful connections.
Furthermore, when a friend, or even a stranger whose wellbeing you genuinely care about posts about depression, you feel compelled to respond and often end up getting dragged into a one-sided support system in which your compassion is used and abused by the other person for their validation drug.
We need parents and adults in the conversation to inform wise decisions and provide the mental maturity and stability necessary to tame the run-away stress response. Depression culture has replaced the feel-good online culture in the hierarchies of social media, essentially monetizing depression for popularity points. Teens may be aware of the negative effects of depression culture but because they are invested in the hierarchy, they cannot easily escape it. This is where adults who don’t have the risk of status loss in teen social circles must step in as monitors.
In depression culture, people identify with their depression. Identifying with the illness is an understandable development in the young people who have lived with depression for years and can’t even remember what feeling truly, genuinely happy feels like. For myself, the depressive symptoms became a protective layer, an excuse. Depression causes loss of motivation and I would often let myself off the hook because I was depressed, all in the name of self-care. This attitude is incredibly dangerous because it comes across as using it to gain attention, reinforcing stereotypes that have hindered the much-needed discussion of mental illness that is finally happing.
Hush Hush
There are certain stigmas attached to mental health disorders, depression and anxiety, creating a hush-hush don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude. Not having conversations keeps everyone in the dark.
I blame our inability to discuss vulnerable topics partly on technology. We have lost the ability to overcome the discomfort and vulnerability that honest conversation requires and instead, we resort to distracting ourselves. Lacking conversation and the meaning and direction we get through shared stories, many people turn to social media, pornography, movies and shows, and video games to recapture the sense of meaning. But as we all know with expedient pleasures, as soon as you eat the cake, close the app, role the credits, or achieve that new high score, there’s nothing to do but hit that pleasure button again in hopes of staying on that quickly fading high.
With a better understanding of the underlying causes of depression, we can begin to combat the stigma. When we understand the brain as an organ that must be kept healthy through stress-reducing lifestyles in the same way that we know to keep our hearts, lungs, and skin healthy, we can begin to preventively engage with depression and anxiety rather than trying to shore up defenses after the fact. This cannot happen, unless we have conversations and our research instead of falling back on stigma-generated assumptions.
I’ve attended many funerals and the careful attention given to bereaved loved ones during this time is very encouraging when I consider the changes that need to happen in our support systems for youth struggling with depression. We Hutterites are usually very good at sitting with people who have suffered loss and offering a shoulder to cry on. This type of support and willingness to listen, coupled with a willingness to help and get involved in another person’s life is exactly what young people need. If it had not been for the support and love on a daily basis from my parents and my entire community I don’t know if I would have had the strength to fight my way through the depression. Most of my community wasn’t even aware that I was struggling with depression but by their day to day lives they were able to provide stability and point me in the right direction. There were clear expectations, which were challenging but also of such a nature that they helped me to take my place in our shared story.
Recapturing Vitality
Growing up has always been difficult: learning to navigate social settings, finding your place in the world, building strong value systems and stories, and learning to take responsibility for the future. However, the playing field has changed as the world becomes faster paced and simultaneously more and less connected. Now more than ever we need strong foundations to help inform our decisions as we move forward. Staying rooted in place is not an option the current environment offers. The rise of technology has utterly changed the way we perceive and interact with the world and how we understand our place in it. It has affected our brain’s physiology and psychology. The way in which children grow up has probably been irreversibly changed, so we need to be prepared and armed with good information on the pros and cons and how to engage with it. Beyond the technology, we need to stay connected to people, to each other.
The goal of overcoming depression is not to become happy; it is to recapture a sense of purpose and direction in life that make it worthwhile. As Andrew Solomon wisely observed, “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.”
God has created a world that is good and beautiful. We speak of God’s goodness, beauty and truth as essential characteristics of His being. Furthermore, our baptismal questions, affirm that we are created by God, in the image of God which is His goodness, holiness, and everlastingness, to rejoice in his creation and delight in living and serving Him. Life is often difficult, but it should not be impossible to feel any joy. We were not created for depression, but that does not give us the right to be dismissive. The Christian response is to treat those who are suffering – as we should treat all people – as part of God’s good and perfect creation, seeking to bring them back to a place where they can feel and live in the beauty and community we were created to experience with God and each other.
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