I had really night’s sleep a couple of days ago(*) and when that happens, I lie on the couch with the lights off and You Tube videos playing quietly. I drift in and out of dozing. I ran across some videos on High-Functioning Depression (HFD). (Yep. That tells you about my browsing.)
A lot of the videos don’t list the diagnostic criteria for HFD. They do the ‘people with HFD may do this’. That’s not quite the same thing. People with HFD may also support Arsenal, but that’s not a symptom. Some talk about Major Depressive episodes, and Persistent Depressive Disorder, and those are way more serious. Some of them admit that the ‘High-Functioning’ bit makes the whole idea moot: aren’t depressed people supposed to be having problems functioning? I liked the comparison with so-called ‘functioning alcoholics’, and the comment that when you look at how someone with HFD describes their life, it’s all the stuff they are obliged to do (get to work, do the job, pay the bills, wash clothes, etc etc) and nothing about family, friends or hobbies. Which has nothing to do with my life at all.
Some of the videos attempt to link it to dysthymia, and that makes me wonder if they have ever seen someone with dysthymia. Think depressed teenager, but less communicative and without the attitude. Or try to imagine how it would feel if you could not name anything that might happen in the normal course of your life that would make you feel good. (My answer is warm air and sunshine, not too hot, and being able to enjoy it. That happens on three days in the normal course of anyone’s life in the UK.)
A lot of this is pseudo-medicalisation of the age-old condition known as you don’t have much fun, do you?, by therapists looking for clients. (Business gotta business.) Describing the condition like that implies that the answer is to have some fun. Like that’s something I can get at the same time as the kitchen paper, olive oil and bread. ‘Find a hobby was another one’. And of course that old favourite `find some like-minded people’. Yes sir, like-minded people, Aisle 13, next to the power tools, but don’t bother because we haven’t had any in stock for a while now.
Let me describe the Good Life as therapists and even more high-powered analysts don’t quite spell it out:
Good health, sound sleep, a sensible diet and regular effective exercise
A collection of friends and acquaintances whose company we enjoy and who enjoy our company, and with some of whom we can speak openly and honestly about whatever (congenial milieu)
A supportive domestic partner who just loves to have sex with us
Good relations with our family of origin and the in-laws
A reasonably secure income that we can earn and still have time, energy and attention for all the preceding
A role in a community (optional extra)
These things are almost a guarantee of happiness and a sense of fulfilment, and if you don’t have these things, and especially the congenial milieu, then you will feel a lack, and that sometimes you’re pushing the load of your life up a long hill with a low gradient: each day doesn’t take a lot of effort, but there are no days off.
The sense of connection with people is important. If all I have in common with the guy next to me in the scrum is that we’re both in the scrum, I’d better like playing rugby for its own sake. If there is no after-the-match camaraderie, I may as well roll in a mud-bath and then do a workout at the gym. Without the connection, most activities involving people are as satisfying as a puffed rice cake. The High-Functioning bit may keep us playing rugby, but it won’t be fun, at best it will be an goal met, a box ticked.
The therapists have the causality backward. HFD’s are not depressed and therefore have no friends, a sporadic sex life, distant relations with their family and no supportive partner. Rather, some people realise that there’s no connection with their ‘friends', that they aren’t meeting the kinds of people who would be supportive, loving partners, and so their sex life tends to be sporadic, and as for their family, the less said… and whether they cut those activities out of their lives or not, they will be at least slightly depressed, and get the HFD label.
People talk about rejection as painful, while there’s less said about the effect of a never-ending lack of opportunity. Another day, and still no pleasant feminine women. Another day, and still no job openings. Another day, and still no sunshine. Lack of opportunity disheartens us. That’s an old-fashioned word for exactly the old-fashioned disposition I need to describe. ‘Heart’ is a mixture of dispositions: optimism, courage, kindness, mercy, bravery, determination, and above all, a zest for the good fight. To be disheartened is to be pessimistic, reluctant, reserved, and above all, unwilling to engage in the good fight, perhaps because one has come to believe that it is not a good fight at all. Lack of opportunity makes us unwilling to engage, and believe that the combat is not worth the spoils. Lack of opportunity saps our vivacity like the taxman saps our salary. And it is a natural reaction to the realities of our lives.
I have to go on working because my pensions aren’t worth a damn. I’m too old to be attractive to women I find attractive. Too much single living has made me too quirky to make connections with anybody - there’s always going to be something significant that I’m not or the other person is not to trip up the communication. One of the dirty secrets of life in post-modern capitalism is that cultural consumption can be far more satisfying, and far richer in content, than spending time with people. Get into the habit of high-quality cultural consumption, and the people you meet will have to compete with the book on your iPad or the movie you’re going to watch. On a probability-weighted basis, most people will not come out of that comparison ahead. And don’t forget, I don’t drink, or smoke, or do drugs. I have to abstain. No taking the edge off of any of my days like you can. I’m booked five days a week and Saturday morning. No spare time except Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening. The diary of everyone who wakes up early and has a one-hour commute.
After a while, it is easier to treat the world vaguely and politely, and pass it by with benign indifference. Focus on our own lives, on what we have to do, on work, on domestic activities, on the ideas in the books we are reading, on whatever our pastimes are. Let the world carry on in its own little bubble, because it has nothing for us.
Dis-hearted-ness can spread, and when it does the result is low-level depression. We let things slide - the untrimmed lawn, the dirty car, the washing that piles up, the un-watched movies and the un-read books, the missed visits to the few people we do know - because it seems silly to have a bright shiny life on the outside when the inside is a little dull and drab. Sometimes it’s not always us: a string of cold wet weekends will leave cars dirty and lawns messy, because who wants to go out in that?
So yes, I am dis-heartened about never having the Good Life. It’s caused by the facts of my life. Not the other way round. However, now I understand what’s happening, I can ask: is that the (justified) dis-hearted-ness overspilling into parts of my life where it has no justification? I can also stop thinking there is something inexplicably wrong with me, because it’s not only explicable, it’s a consequence of decisions I’ve made, and it is therefore unseemly of me to whine about it. I do things not because if I do, I will find friends and lovers, but because I will feel better if I do.
Because if all I have in common with the guy next to me in the scrum is that we’re both in the scrum, I should not waste my time playing rugby unless I really like playing rugby.(**)
(*) Still made it to work on time, did a day’s work, and hit the gym. Slept like a log that night.
(**) I don’t. Not even close. It’s a metaphor.
(***) I know. First burnout and then HFD. What’s next? Call my nephew when you’re my age, still working, still lifting weights and generally keeping your life rolling. Otherwise, STFU.
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