Valuable Life Lessons from Dark Times: Don't Go It Alone
"You see," the doctor explained, "the human animal is a social animal. Our
beings and our senses are designed to gather data that allow us to react both to
our environment and our fellow human beings" (The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Tom Clancy).
Prologue
Are you living with or in dark times? Here are thirteen lessons I learned from living with darkness. Lesson #4--Don't go it alone.
The Need for Community
I didn't notice the darkness of depression right away. I was rightly otherwise occupied. I was newly-married and teaching high school English and German. We were busy putting a home together, finishing college, learning classroom management on the fly, and otherwise occupied with adulting and married life in general. Sure, we noticed some things--increased paranoia … less interest in hobbies and fun activities … how she was fatigued more often and took less joy in life … waking up on a Saturday morning three months into this marriage-thing and wondering what we had gotten into!--but with all that was happening in our new lives, those things didn't really seem that noteworthy in and of themselves. Meanwhile, the dark, grasping tendrils of depression crept ever so gently into our vision until we finally awoke to find ourselves entombed in darkness itself! And this was no warm, fuzzy, comforting darkness. This was a lifeless void, empty of mirth and joy and life and compassion and intimacy and light. And we were all alone …..
Depression isolates, alienates, and separates. It thrives in the darkness, severing connection for both the depressive and the depressive-adjacent. Unsure of what was happening, how to help, or even whom to trust, and caught up in the faulty idea that what was happening was shameful and therefore to be kept hidden, we hid our woes from everyone and began walking through this valley of the shadow of depression on our own. We epitomized Jesus' warning in Matthew 15:14, If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. And we indeed fell into a pit. But we didn't stay in that pit because we learned this valuable lesson--
We don't heal in isolation but in community.
"Avengers, assemble!"
The American ethos has long been one of a rugged individualism. Sayings like, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "Paddle your own canoe" and "You can be whatever you want to be" have all fed into this mythology of the lone American, fighting against the wild and succeeding on his or her own merit. In the last few decades, however, this sense of the mighty self has reached the inevitable conclusion of loneliness, a lack of belonging, and a loss of community. Robert Putnam, at Harvard Kennedy School, kicked off the warning that Americans were losing their social capital in his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, published and released 26 years ago in 2000. Since that time, the growing political polarization, growth of social media usage, and breakdown of a standard American culture have exacerbated the symptom and Americans are deeply lonely (learn more here).
This is where we found ourselves, caught in a steamy soup of "figure it out," distrust of our neighbors, and perhaps shame and guilt for suffering from a mental illness. The breakthrough came when we quit hiding and pretending it wasn't there, even from ourselves. Once that happened, something amazing started to take place--we found companions willing to walk through the darkness with us.
4 steps to companionship
#1: Practice vulnerability--let me be honest here, this is hard. Keeping secrets fosters the illusion that no one else is experiencing or has ever experienced whatever we are going through. Our cultural mythology that each person is so unique as to be nigh unknowable relates to our problems, as well. "You don't know what I'm going through!" … "Unless you've walked a mile in my shoes, you can't say anything" … "You can't understand my pain/grief/insert negative emotion here" are all statements we use, and they merely increase that sense of isolation while remaining patently untrue in so many ways. As Jennifer and I began to tell our story and to admit our struggles with depression, we heard time and time again, "I didn't know anyone else felt this way" or "Nobody ever talks about this" or "I have always felt so alone; it's nice to hear someone else has experienced this." You don't have to go complete "open kimono," but begin practicing vulnerability, whether that means opening up to a close friend or just connecting with a therapist!
#2: Practice active listening--take the time to hear others' stories. Listening actively has many benefits. It provides a safe space to really get to know another person; it builds those relationships as you find connecting points within your stories; it takes the focus off of self for a bit; finally, active listening, especially when practiced mutually, builds intimacy and a sense of belonging. I'll admit, this did not happen for us as quickly as we wished. Nonetheless, we have found some lifelong friends through this. These are friends we can talk with at the drop of the proverbial hat. They will listen, admonish, guide, weep, rejoice, and simply be with us. They truly model Proverbs 18:24b, "… there is friend that sticks closer than a brother."
#3: Practice staying connected--confession time! I am not a great connector. In fact, I've had to learn from my older daughter, who practices staying connection the best out of the family. When she moved out of the house after high school, I fully expected that we would not hear from her all that much. After all, as a young adult, she would be busy building her own life and I figured it would take a while for her to incorporate us into that new life. This is often the normal state of affairs in such situations. And to be honest, there was some of that. Yet, she took the time to build familial connection into her calendar! She has set times and days that she calls the parents, the grandparents, and the sister. She ensured she had the birthdays for her relatives and puts them in her calendar so she receives an annual reminder beforehand. Staying connected is a habit that we so often must train ourselves for. I have a list of people on my work computer to remind me when I last connected and when I should do it again. My other daughter, while living overseas, instituted a practice of sending out postcards to relatives from different European cities she visited. It is, quite frankly, far too easy to fall back into isolation, and there is no shame in the game of utilizing modern technology to help us stay connected.
#4: Practice going deeper: Americans love to ask, "How are you doing?" and then not wait for an answer. It's just who we are (Tell me you're an American without telling me ...)! "How's the weather?" and "What did you do today?" and the like have their place in conversations, but companionship is built on the deeper questions. People of faith might ask, "Is there some way I can pray for you today?" After hearing "I'm great" or "I couldn't be better" as a response to "How are you?", one could ask, "So, what makes this a great day?" Those deeper conversations allow a person to feel seen … known … understood. And as those fibers of connection grow, life is woven into the fabric of one's very being.
"Two are better than one ..."
In The Cardinal of the Kremlin, author Tom Clancy describes a secret agent who is placed into a sensory deprivation tank. When I first read this passage, it scared the crap out of me. Nothing could be worse than to lose all external stimuli, and thereby lose touch with physical reality. No touch, taste, smell, sound, feel, and no way to orient oneself in the physical world? Ugh … no, thank you! The emotional and spiritual darkness of depression is similarly disorienting. One begins to feel out of touch and lost, disconnected from what is real. However, when a hand from outside reaches into that world, it anchors, it connects, it orients! And suddenly there is a breath of life and a light--be it ever so small-- pierces through. Proverbs 4:9-10 (NIV) neatly sums up the need for companionship in dark times:
9 Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
10 If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
When caught in the darkness, the best advice I have is to not go it alone, lest there be no one to help you out of the pit. Finding companions for the journey requires practicing vulnerability, active listening, staying connected, and going deeper and puts others in place to catch you when you fall.
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