(This is the second in a series. You can find Essay 1 here)
Heads up, this essay discusses the topics of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Why So Sad? What happened to me is not my fault
We’ve talked about how we all have different experiences growing up while our brains are developing. As our brains take in that vast array of childhood experiences, automatic stress-responses get set up. It’s a good thing for survival. Bear attack does not warrant time to reflect poetically. To survive, your body needs to respond like lightening. So, over time patterns get impressed into our brains. Signals from our senses are attached to appropriate levels of stress response. Brain senses unfamiliar dog growl, or the rattle of a viper’s tail? Danger alert! Deploy adrenaline, action stations! This is great in many situations, but we have also developed our highway-laced, fossil-fueled, cheap-abundant booze-filled, internet-connected world faster than evolution can keep up. In this new environment these same systems can become what we call “maladaptive”.
Here’s an example: for me—and my little sister—growing up in a house with a terminal alcoholic, keys rattling in the door equals possible ruckus. Auto-brain goes “get ready, deploy adrenaline!”
This kept us vigilant as kids, but those patterns stay with us as we become adults and venture out into this wild, uncertain world we’ve built. When those over-revved systems keep revving and we are not aware of everything we’ve just discussed, the whole thing has the potential to make us feel all types of crazy.
A related factor that feeds this automatic stress response is that we humans have survived by co-operating as trusted groups. One of the reasons humans have naturally selected to this point is because we have an innate need to ensure the wellbeing of our trusted group—the group is vital for survival. And in turn, being disconnected from your trusted group is a severe threat to your survival. To be ostracized evokes feelings of existential dread because to be shunned from the group puts an individual in literal danger of death in the wilderness. So, the need to belong to a trusted tribe or clan of peers who have each other’s backs is deeply woven into our brains’ survival systems.
Now, to add insult to injury, post-industrial-revolution, as we have built and scaled this wild modern world for ourselves, we have increased the amount that we are in situations with large amounts of strangers, increased the amount of time we spend disconnected from family; moving cities and countries to work, sitting alone in cars and as a result we are in near constant stress. The degree of stress will vary for each of us based on our unique brain set up1. I’m not saying go back. We can’t. I am saying what Hari points out in Lost Connections, that finding new ways to build trusted relationships with the people we are near is a huge factor in reducing emotional stress in this world. One example: I think skating, sport activities in general, art, music—also, grandmas2 —are vastly under-utilized tools in this game called life. There’s more on specifically why later.
In the meantime, when we think about it, the fact that we all have unique sets of traumas (big and small) to deal with as kids, means that we all have different triggers; your brain might associate keys rattling in the door with feelings of joy.
The point is that the same set of inputs evoke different responses in our adult brains. Does that mean with eight-billion humans we need eight-billion tailored solutions? Kind of, but here’s one of the things I’ve found helpful as I’ve read through findings from therapists, psychologists, neurobiologists, over the years. Yes, we are all the result of different experiences. At first glance that means that there are eight billion unique sets of problems to solve. That seems like a lot. But then again, each one of us only really has one set of problems to deal with. Our own. And luckily, when it comes to heightened sensitivity, there is a set of common themes. We are all unique…but we are not random.
There is a pattern.
Richard Heckler studied humans who have been buffeted by the frantic winds of life all the way through suicidal ideation and have tried to end their lives. Extreme but unfortunately not uncommon. In getting to that point the themes he observed were a history of:
- Extreme family disfunction
- Traumatic loss
- A sense of alienation
I’ve pondered on these three a lot as I’ve ridden my bike around Portland—and a little in Scotland. Those three factors are key drivers of depression. And then, with that sense-of-alienation piece, the messed-up thing about depression is that we end up in a vicious loop.
Here’re my observations on what depression does… First, as we’ve been discussing, our childhood experiences created triggers in our brains that fire off cocktails of neurochemicals, in-turn generating a cocktail of what we perceive as emotions that ultimately get translated into thoughts. This is where it is REALLY important to acknowledge that very often we are not intentionally thinking the thoughts that arise in our conscious cortex. Thoughts manifest based on the situation we are in, based on our unique lower brain set-up, depending on our history, through no fault of our own. A lot of what we think is the result of the random set of cards we were dealt as kids.
Because we do not by default make that connection—that these feelings are not our fault—when those thoughts (seemingly logically) begin to describe a negative sense of self, we tend to believe them. “I feel this way therefore I must be flawed, broken”, “I’m damaged goods” my sister, Katrina, would often say.
Without boron control rods Nuclear Fission Reactors end up with a runaway chain-reaction. Destination? Total meltdown.
The other day I was following the mental runaway-chain-reaction that is depression and it occurred to me—this is pure John theory—that the deep need to be connected to your group, and more importantly the innate need to also protect the survival of the group—sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice—might be the adaptation in us humans that in situations of extreme prolonged stress becomes maladaptive and manifests as suicidal ideation. “I am damaged goods…therefore I am of no value to the group…therefore the group will be better without me…” fear kicks in again and the cycle continues until it is broken one way or another.
So, what are those boron control rods we can use to help break the cycle? What are the tools that can help defuse the time-bomb, to help us return to a state where we can reason with ourselves from the fair playing field of a well-regulated brain? What sticks do we have to jam in the spokes here?
We talked about the ACE test which asks a specific set of questions and that page on the Harvard site points out what’s missing:
- Stressors outside the household(e.g., violence, poverty, racism, other forms of discrimination, isolation, chaotic environment, lack of services), AND…
- Protective factors(e.g., supportive relationships, community services, skill-building opportunities)
The extra stressors here are unfortunately more common than we’d like. But at least we’ve identified them. “Better the devil you know” my gran would say. Now that we’ve got a working list of demons to battle, how to battle them? That “protective factors” item starts to point at some tools we can use to begin to defuse this ticking stress-bomb we’ve inadvertently tripped into existence.
Supportive relationships, community services, skill-building opportunities…I will add, as mentioned, I think that skating, sports, art, music (and well-regulated grandmas) are all way more important than they get credit for. Also—it’s the soup du jour at the moment but I think for good reason—mindfulness is a simple, essentially-free practice that helps us learn to notice our automatic thinking and in-turn then have the opportunity to intervene on ourselves.
In the next essay we’ll get into the mechanics of why and how certain activities help us to self-regulate. In the meantime, I’ll wrap this essay by pointing you to a good resource that’s been adapted to be available in a growing list of countries around the world.
There is a short course called Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).
It’s structured according to this 5-point plan:
- Assess for risk of suicide or harm
- Listen non-judgmentally
- Give reassurance and advice
- Encourage appropriate professional help
- Encourage self-help and other support strategies
Part of the work we did with Real Skateboards on the Why So Sad? project was to get a cohort of skate industry personnel together to run through the MHFA training session. I encourage you to do the same.
- Assess is about asking directly. “Are you thinking about suicide? Have those thoughts come into your head? Have you thought about a plan to take your own life?” Clear and direct, ask.
- Listen non-judgmentally is a subject we discussed at length. For me non-judgement is deeply intertwined with the concept and act of radical forgiveness. Forgiveness, for me at least, is all about leaving judgement at the door. When I say forgiveness, it’s important to point out that I mean forgiving ourselves as much as each other. What happened to us is not our fault and identifying what has happened to us is a key element in the healing process.3
- Give reassurance and information…that we can get through this. If you are having suicidal ideation or chronic negative ruminating thoughts, this is a temporary malfunction based on identifiable factors. We can get through this. First, let’s agree to stay safe, not act on the thoughts, and get help.
- Encourage appropriate professional help: As challenged as this avenue is, it is an important step to take. Luckily, given the barriers to getting professional help, it is not the only step. Personally, I have found it valuable to talk with professional doctors about what’s going on. I think that a big part of that was simply that taking the action of visiting the doctor helped me feel like I was regaining some control.
- Encourage self-help and other support strategies: This one for me is huge. Professional help is fraught with challenges but also is only one part of what needs to be a multi-pronged approach4. What Dr Perry’s work has shown is that those self-help strategies can happen in two ways, top-down or bottom-up. We’ll get into those in the next essay.
Footnotes to Essay 2:
- Some people’s baseline stress response is a mellow string symphony, others baseline is the Johnny Greenwood score of There Will Be Blood. This is no one’s fault, it is the result of what has happened to each of us as our brains developed. The good thing is, there are ways to manage and change the soundtrack.
- Checking your judgement is also very much about remembering that everyone is different. Each nervous system on this planet has developed according to its unique ACE score. The same set of circumstances will affect each of us differently. If you like electronic music, then an analogy you can think of is the same audio signal being run through different sets of analogue filters. Basically, telling people how they should be feeling based on your filters misses that simple critical point. We all have a unique set of filters.
- You can learn more and find a local trainer:
- In the US:
- In the UK:
- In the World: