Just months after being elected to the US Senate in February, John Fetterman joined a treatment program for depression. In an interview last month on CBS News during the show Sunday Morning, the Pennsylvania politician reflected on the stroke he suffered in May 2022 and the grueling senate race that followed, which had a significant impact on his mental health. “Yes, I had won, he recalls, but depression can completely convince you that in reality, you have lost. »
For what ? Because depression lies.
Depression tells you that you are not good enough. She whispers in your ear that you are full of flaws, that you are not up to it and that your life does not matter. When things are particularly bad, she seems to be shouting these lies from the rooftops.
Depression subjects your life to an impossible passing grade; it inevitably ends up telling you that you are in a situation of failure. It makes you feel like the person you once were, or rather the person you think you should be, is broken. This idea of a “broken” or “fractured self” shows how depression tries to push you to self-destruct and convince you that ending your life is a way out.
We try to eliminate what we hate. However, depression makes you believe that your life is shattered forever, and it sets up suicide as a solution to destroy the person you can no longer endure.
Depression doesn’t care about logic and it doesn’t create rational expectations. I remember a doctor who took his own life after a member of his sibling died of the exact disease in which he specialized. There is no doubt that the depression had convinced him that he should have been able to save this person. And he reacted by destroying the one he considered responsible for not providing a cure. The trauma of losing a loved one confronted him with the limits of what was possible, to which depression responded, “You should have been able to do more. »
Trauma and feelings of control
Trauma – whether physical, emotional or spiritual in nature – has the potential to shatter your sense of control. No matter what type of trauma you have experienced or witnessed, it results in an increased risk of suicide.
But why?
Victims of physical or sexual assault discover that they can be defeated, which makes them feel weak and fragile. Those who are confronted with domestic violence or child abuse discover that the family unit is not necessarily a guarantor of security, which makes them feel helpless. Imprisoned people learn that they cannot regain their freedom by sheer effort of will, which makes them feel trapped. The bereaved discover that love is not enough to protect those they love from the ravages of illness or calamity, which makes them feel helpless. And people who witness trauma learn that their aversion and horror are insignificant, which relegates them to the role of helpless spectators in their eyes.
Feelings arising from trauma such as fragility, weakness, vulnerability, helplessness, or feeling trapped are completely inconsistent with the person these people were or seek to be. This is how by turning the rage inward, they destroy the person they deem broken, fractured, unworthy to live.
Depression will try to convince you that no one can help you, that neither words nor advice nor any kind of awareness would be able to loosen the pathological hold it has on you.
And trying to conform to the impossible expectations of this psychological monster will not set you free; it will only torment you further as you attempt to reach an imaginary finish line that shifts as you go. A situation that will make you feel inadequate, full of flaws – like a failure. This, of course, plays into depression.
Like so many others who go through a depressive phase, I suspect that Mr. Fetterman will emerge from this experience with a sense of humility – a keen awareness of his own faults and limitations.
But I will tell you the truth. Pay attention, because depression will try to make you believe otherwise. The flaws and limitations you perceive in yourself have nothing to do with failure; they have everything to do with being human. All humans are vulnerable and deadly. All humans stumble, struggle and are overwhelmed at one time or another by forces beyond their control.
Everyone, without exception, can have their self-view fractured and life sometimes makes us feel broken. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything. This is how the light gets in “. This light is our glorious, fragile and collective humanity.
Depression lies all the time; it wants to hide the truth and longs to let you wither in the dark.
May the light come in again.
* Harvey Max Chochinov recently published Dignity in Care: The Human Side of Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2022)