Mood Watch - 44

Overall, I had a very nice holiday break. Didn’t notice any real shifts in mood. I did, however, notice a couple of fluctuations in energy level — the first in mid-December and the second at month’s end. The duration for each was about three days.

Mood Watch - 43

Since my last “Mood Watch” I went through yet another depression. This one lasted about eight days. It’s hard to know exactly when these things begin, although they lift so abruptly that there’s usually no ambiguity about the terminus. As in most cases, it didn’t prevent me from doing everything I absolutely had to do, but it wiped me out in terms of getting anything else done.

I’ve been OK — in good spirits, actually — for about ten days now. But the depressive spells have been so frequent since mid-September that, although individually I can correlate them to a particular circumstance, in aggregate it now looks more like one long depression with brief reprieves, which certainly suggests a strong biochemical underpinning. However, that’s really just an educated guess. I suspect that would be the case even if a gaggle of psychiatrists observed me every minute. There’s just so much about mood disorders we still don’t know.

One thing we do know: you can’t “snap out of” or “power through” a depression. I don’t get that kind of thing as much as I used to — in fact, most of my close friends are very supportive — but occasionally it still happens. And when it does, for the most part it reflects not a concern for me but rather for the person offering the “advice.” They find it inconvenient to be around someone who is depressed, and the easiest solution is to talk and act as if it isn’t an illness but a character defect.

Ironically, the effect is generally the reverse of the one intended, since it simply increases the sense of shame and isolation felt by a person suffering from depression. Those who experience strong, consistent support generally recover more quickly.

Mood Watch - 42

From October 31 through November 5 I was on the road again, this time for a brief research trip combined with attendance at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, which has a deserved reputation as one of the more pleasant conferences in the historical profession. Unlike my previous trips, I had no responsibilities that put me in the public eye, I made sure to rest and relax more often, and I had a thoroughly good time. It was almost like a vacation. I returned to Columbus, still in good spirits, and had exactly three more good days. Then I fell into one of the blackest depressions I can recall.

This particular episode lasted about six days. As usual its onset and departure were abrupt. But it felt existential rather than biochemically based, and the very fact of its occurrence exploded the hypothesis that the connection between travel and follow-on depression was principally a function of adrenalin, stress and fatigue. In fact, it plainly points back to an earlier hypothesis, namely that the travels are good for me, and my return from them necessarily involves returning to an environment I do not like and which both my therapist and psychiatrist have warned me for years is a “toxic” environment that, in their view, is heavily complicit in the depressions. Which is to say it plays a significant role in both their frequency and severity.

This is actually good news, I suppose, because it gives me something external to address, instead of supposing that it’s all biochemical and therefore beyond my reach except through pharmacology. The trick, however, is going to be finding a constructive way to address the problem. But I’ll think of something.

To repeat a point made earlier, isn’t exactly easy to set down these thoughts in a forum that anyone with an Internet connection can read. I would imagine that while some people consider it courageous, others consider it self absorbed or even exhibitionist. I wish I didn’t care what people think, but I do. And so writing these entries is often a matter of just gritting my teeth and doing it. Still, emails like this one underscore the fact that I’m performing a needed service. I received it at the end of October, and am sharing it with the writer’s permission:

I just wanted to take a moment to respond to your most recent posts. I’ve been through two periods of depression / anxiety (about 3-6 days each) since moving out to ______, and I wanted to say that reading your post helped me to feel something — “better” or “more normal,” I guess, for lack of a different word at present.

While I obviously wouldn’t wish depression on you, I’m glad that you shared your thoughts. Additionally, I noted your post from 9/21 and frankly, I hope that you decide not to discontinue the blog. It seems like your decision towards openness, including the blog, has made a difference to a number of people (myself included), and I hope that it has brought you more peace and strength than you’re aware of.

Mood Watch - 41

Since my last post I’ve been through three periods of depression, each of about four to five days’ duration. They’ve followed the same pattern as most of my depressions. That is to say, my energy level will drop, usually for some plausible reason, so at first I just seem tired and in need of rest. I take some time to recharge my batteries, but they don’t recharge. Instead — and quite quickly — my mood drops into such a trough that I can hardly stand to do anything but sleep, and I sleep as much as I possibly can. At such times, not only do I have no interest in my regular work (or anything else), I feel a sense of foreboding about it. It makes me anxious even to check my email. When I go down to campus to teach a class or attend a meeting, I feel no sense of emotional connection. I can’t “read the room” to understand its tone — whether, for instance, I’m making any sense to my students beyond the mere fact that I can speak complete sentences. If I have to type something, I can hardly figure out how to organize my thoughts, and I notice I make a lot of typographical errors (I’m generally a pretty accurate typist).

All in all, the effects are about as debilitating as a bad case of the flu, except that the hallmark is a pervasive sense of misery and shame, as well as the fear that I will never return to normal. Cognitively I know that this is distorted thinking, but at a gut level this is simply hard to believe — it’s striking the extent to which one’s biochemistry informs our impressions of what really makes sense and what doesn’t.

Lastly, although I remember feeling OK, I literally cannot remember what that actually felt like. It seems amazing that I ever enjoyed life or could ever enjoy it again.

In formal diagnostic terms, one would have to exhibit these symptoms for fourteen days to qualify for a major depressive episode. Mine generally last three or four days; occasionally five, but that’s unusual. When I bounce back, it’s abrupt, just a matter of a few hours.

It’s always tempting and sometimes useful to look for correlations with external events which may act as catalysts or triggers. Over the past year a very strong correlation has emerged between business travel and depression. I return from a trip; a depression ensues. My therapist and I have theorized about the possible connection. A couple of explanations have seemed plausible and it’s possible it’s not an either/or question. But at the moment, the front runner is that these trips, in the nature of travel, are tiring and disruptive of my normal routine, and also usually involve giving a public presentation — often two or three in quick succession — so that I have to “gear up” to be animated, energetic, etc. Taken together, it’s no surprise that this would have an effect on my biochemistry.

Since I can’t avoid business travel — it’s pretty much a bedrock component of my professional activity — the issue now becomes whether to just accept the fact that depression will be the likely sequel or, more imaginatively, to find a way to manage the problem. One possible solution would be to make sure I get periods of regular rest during these trips and as far as possible adhere to a normal schedule.

I should have a fair degree of control over my time when attending, say, academic conferences. Invited lectures are a different matter. Having gone to the trouble of flying me in, putting me up in a hotel, and paying me an honorarium, my hosts generally try to get as much mileage out of me as they can. My most recent trip, for instance, involved:

a. dinner with students

b. a 90-minute workshop

c. breakfast with more students the next day

d. a meeting with yet more students at mid-morning

e. lunch with faculty and students

f. another meeting

g. a 90-minute public lecture, including Q&A

h. dinner with faculty

… to which I myself added item g(1): a few afternoon beers with some grad students.

It’s not a question here of being exploited. I liked everyone I met and had a very enjoyable time. Indeed, one could almost posit a connection based on the abrupt transition from a warm, validating atmosphere to, well, the regular workaday world. But if there is something to the thesis of these depressions emerging from my having to remain “on” for extended periods, notwithstanding the wear and tear of travel — then in the future I’m going to have to request what might be called “reasonable accommodation” for the disorder; i.e., a lighter schedule.

Mood Watch - 40

Plainly this blog interests me a lot less than it used to. I maintain my professional blog with a fair degree of regularity — in part because whenever I attend conferences, visit archives, etc., I invariably meet readers who appreciate the blog and tell me so. I feel therefore as if I’m performing a useful service.

With this blog, however, I feel very differently. I’m not sure I’m performing a useful service even to myself. True, on the positive side I have this year encountered at least ten individuals with bipolar disorder or similar conditions. It’s not that hard. A few have contacted me after reading the piece I did a year ago for Inside Higher Ed. But most contacts have occurred after I drop into a conversation the fact that I have bipolar disorder. The opportunity occurs more often than one would think. When I do so, invariably I am approached afterward, rather furtively, by some individual who also has bipolar disorder. Without exception they have kept the condition a closely guarded secret. They’re afraid. They worry what their families will think, their friends, employers, lovers. Often the conversations they strike up with me mark the first time they have spoken openly about the disorder. They are full of questions — what medications I take, what strategies I employ to lead a (more or less) “normal” life, etc.

But mostly they wonder how it is that I have the courage or foolhardiness to treat the condition as if it were an illness like any other. Don’t people look at me funny? Aren’t my colleagues skittish about dealing with me? Have they not written me off as anyone who could produce work of consequence? And in truth, I am morally convinced that some people regard me as the ghost of a once promising historian.

Too bad. I’m convinced that in being open about the disorder I have made the right decision. It enables me to draw upon the support of friends. It helps me to grow in a spiritual sense: I feel more at home with myself; and I can look at my increasingly middle-aged face in the mirror and believe that I possess at least a smidgin of courage and intgrity. But much more importantly, it gives me the chance to talk to people who are similarly circumstanced. Most of them have hidden their disorder to such a degree that, regardless of what statistics may say, they simply cannot believe that there are others like them — still less that this and similar disorders are as common as dirt.

Anyway, as to my mood itself: Overall it has been surprisingly good for the past several months. And I notice that the occasional bad spells correlate strongly to circumstances. Fortunately I’ve enjoyed considerable success in distancing myself psychologically from those circumstances. I’ve truly been amazed by what a difference that has made. In my opinion it has been a greater factor than any of the several medications in my arsenal.

Mood Watch - 39

Things have been good, generally speaking, since the last installment of “Mood Watch.” I’ve been productive around the house (especially yard work) and also in my writing. Last week, for instance, I completed an 11,000-word essay for a forthcoming edited volume. I was able to adhere to my writing schedule and on most days composed 1,500-2,000 words.

The one glitch occurred this past weekend, starting on Friday the 27th and extending through Tuesday of this week. When this stuff happens my first thought always runs to biochemistry, but I’m learning to look more closely at my circumstances and the way in which they may be influencing my mood. In this instance, I concluded it was the latter more than the former.