the solipsist in love

“Have you ever made a plan to kill yourself?” the woman asked me while swinging her sandaled foot into the space between us.

“No,” I replied honestly, after thinking about it for a moment. Saying that, at least, left me feeling marginally sane. I can’t say the same for all of the questions I answered that afternoon.

I was participating, for minor compensation, in a psychiatric research study that involved answering a few hours’ worth of written and orally administered questions about my moods over the past, oh, ten years or so. I was fairly familiar with these sorts of questionnaires, since I had been obsessed with diagnosing myself with one mental condition or another in high school. But before this particular interrogation, it had been years since I’d thought about my darkest periods and the feelings that characterized them.

The research assistant had me chart my moods from the age of sixteen, then circled the low points and asked me several questions about each one. There were initially three downward spikes, but as our conversation developed, I kept remembering other times – periods of at least two weeks – when I had almost no motivation to get out of bed or see anyone; when I could barely be bothered to shower or cook; when I was sleeping ten or eleven hours a night; when I would cry nightly over memories I’d dredged up expressly for that purpose. During these periods I did manage to go to work, and in the worst moments I think at least talked to people on the phone. But it’s disturbing to think about how frequently this occurs.

I also happened to notice that my “depressive episodes” were often triggered by a breakup. The length of the relationship didn’t seem to make a difference, though. What does this mean? Am I simply a drama queen? Do I place way too much of my self-worth on whether I’m in a successful relationship? Or am I simply naturally prone to depression and does the end of a relationship merely catapult me into a state that was previously latent but nevertheless present in my psyche? Besides, might it not be true that my psychological makeup draws me specifically into relationships that do tremendous amounts of emotional harm to me?

I gave up on psychiatric diagnoses a few years back after a therapist suggested that I might be dysthymic and followed this up with the remark that “no currently used treatments are especially successful.” Talk about a downer. Luckily, at that same time I was getting into Jungian psychology and changing my thinking about mental imbalances in general. Now I believe psychological symptoms represent ways in which individuals needed to move forward, grow, change – rather than being static pathological states that require constant treatment that comes necessarily from outside of the individual herself. I distrust pharmaceutical drugs that treat psychological disorders, though I do understand the need for them in some more extreme cases, as a way of bring patients into a mental space where they are able to work cooperatively to heal themselves. Because of this attitude, I’ve steered well clear of psychiatrists and their methods, which are based on models of pathology and rely heavily on medication. I prefer growth-oriented therapists – Jungians, Gestalt therapists, Buddhism-oriented therapists, Process Workers, etc. But for the sake of money I exposed myself to this pathology-oriented thinking once again and, honestly, it made me kind of depressed.

First, it’s strange to be asked questions like “In the past two weeks, every day for most of the day, have you felt like you were worthless?” by someone who is there only to record me answer and not to offer any kind of support or even to interact with me as a human being. I never felt that she judged me for my responses, but at the same time her distance and lack of reaction only vivified what I imagined someone might say or think if they heard my answer.

“Have you ever felt like you would be better off dead?” I had to say yes to that one, and yes, even recently – though only in passing, I hastened to explain to her. When I feel this way, I recognize that in a few moments it will be gone, so there’s no reason to dwell on it. Mostly what struck me as I answered this particular question was: these are things I don’t talk about with people, not even the people I’m closest to. There are few things I’m totally unwilling to discuss with my close friends, and it’s not as if they have any illusions about my history with depressive states. I tend toward extreme emotions, moodiness and despair, and these aspects of my personality are things I’d never want to hide from the people who love me. After all, what good is having a friend if you feel like you can’t be yourself around her?

But telling someone that yesterday I felt, for a few minutes or hours, like I wished I was dead, well, I guess that’s crossing some kind of line for me. It’s the kind of information that becomes a burden. It’s very important for me to own my emotions. Most of the time I bring up even my most difficult problems in a way that makes them funny; at the very least I make sure it’s clear that what I need, if anything, is a few minutes of reassurance, and then the distraction that good company easily provides. Telling someone that sometimes I think about killing myself, or that I occasionally despair at finding a sustainable sense of meaning in my life, is like dumping a mangled animal corpse in their lap. It’s just not fair, and it’s so difficult for them to know what they’re supposed to do with it.

To be clear, I’m not saying I think people shouldn’t discuss these things. On the contrary, it’s important to talk such difficult emotions through when they become overwhelming. That’s what therapists are for, and of course carefully chosen friends can occasionally provide some comfort as well. My point is that voicing these feelings after so many years of keeping them to myself – because in general I’ve learned to manage them well enough to create a decent life – made me feel like a complete fucking freak. And it also made me realize that no matter how transparent I think I’ve been with the people I’m close to, I’ve been concealing pretty major information about who I am and how I operate.

Since I participated in this study a couple of months ago I’ve been spending a fair amount of time reassessing the way I see myself in terms of my emotional states. I can’t shake the idea that maybe my mood patterns are pathological, and that what I’ve been basically taking for granted as manageable might need to be looked at more closely and changed in some way. In other words, I guess I’m not quite as happy and well-adjusted as I thought I was. Shit.

Photo by Pixel_Addict.