In this article I am distinguishing between depressing as a behaviour and Depression as a long term condition. They are both associated with painful feelings that are sometimes incredibly strong, are very debilitating and last for various amounts of time but there are important differences.

I am using the ‘ing’ version of the word as William Glasser and Albert Ellis would, to indicate a behaviour that we carry out with a purpose though we are probably not conscious of this at the time. I am also going to contend that depressing, a behaviour, as distinct from Depression, a disorder or condition, is not necessarily a bad thing…! You might think that’s crazy talk because depressing is really painful and horrible. I agree, but like all the behaviours and feelings we have, there is a useful purpose to it. If we put our hand on something really hot it hurts because we are doing damage and we immediately retract our hand - that’s a good thing. In the same way, it is actually a good thing that when we feel the pain of depressing we respond to the signal and react quickly to protect ourselves.

When we depress we usually withdraw from people and situations, our feeling is pushing us to do that as it is trying to protect us from doing anything else that might hurt us. When we withdraw we shut down as our mind spends all our available energy on trying to process our problems. Whatever has happened we need to think through and process it, we can’t afford to be distracted by other issues in our life because this is something major requiring all our energy. Also, when we withdraw, other people notice this and see something is up, in this way depressing helps us call for help even if we don’t have the strength to say anything or even put our hand up. In all these ways, the short term painful behaviour of depressing is doing a good job of protecting us and helping us process what has happened to us.

Here is an example. I am going to use a case of a heterosexual young male because it helps illustrate a couple of important points about this type of behaviour. Let’s look at the example of a 25 year old young man who lives in a small house he has been renting with his girlfriend. However, it’s all gone bad and she has dumped him and gone back to live with her parents and to try her luck with a new beau.

This young man is in real pain and goes into depressing. He goes to his room and gets into bed, and is really upset. A couple of friends hear about what has happened, he is not responding to texts or calls so they come round to visit. The young man summons up all his energy to let them in, he flops on the lounge and blurts out his story.

At this point, depressing is working well. He is too embarrassed and upset to do anything stupid like go and ask another girl out straight away and run the risk of humiliating himself even further. He is also too down to get angry and lash out impulsively at his friends, blaming them for everything going wrong and so wreck the relationship with the very people he needs to help him through. Most importantly, in depressing, he is not in a position to be violent to others or himself. He is weak and withdrawn, physically and emotionally, to the point where eventually all he might want to do is sleep, a good, safe activity that will help his mind recover a little. If depressing wasn’t in his behaviour toolbox, instead he might go straight to angering and raging. He might go out and get into a fight or he might go home and grab a gun, go to his now ex-girlfriend’s house and murder her in a fit of rage and maybe even kill her parents or anyone else there as well. In our case this hasn’t happened and his behaviour system has done a good job in protecting him and others. It could be worse, it could be a lot worse.

While depression is certainly closely associated with suicidal ideation sometimes friends and family make the mistake of taking their eye of a loved one because they seem to be getting better and coming out of a depressive episode. What can be happening is that the person is now energised not because they are more hopeful about life but because they have come up with the determination to stop the pain by taking their life. In our example, while depressing, the debilitating suffering is actually protecting this young man from taking this action.

The situation could also be a lot worse in another sense. We now know that many men in particular don’t have a behaviour toolkit like this. It seems that many don’t learn the useful behaviour of depressing when they are boys. They learn tantruming when they are little like most kids, but they also learn angering, they learn violenting… It’s not the place here to explore this in detail but it is pretty clear that there are a few things going wrong in how we raise our kids and especially boys. Many boys (more so than girls but not exclusively) are still taught, or are given the impression by their available role models, that to be angry and violent is the way you deal with painful emotions and being upset, to withdraw and think and be emotional is weak. If more boys could learn how to depress I suspect our society and families would be safer and better off.

So in this way we can see a not-so-bad purpose in depressing. But let’s just say this goes on for a fair bit longer. Our young man stays home. He contacts his boss and asks for a few days off which he is, quite justifiably, granted. He drags himself out of bed to get to his GP who gives him a certificate granting him a few days off and he puts the word “depression” on it. He now tells people his doctor has told him he has Depression. A couple of his mates bring some takeaway food round for him. On another occasion a sibling who is a good cook, comes over and whips up a nice meal that cheers him up, a little. Another mate notices the grass is looking pretty ragged so actually gets the lawnmower out and makes the place look a bit more respectable. All nice things….

From here, maybe our young man, with support of friends and maybe even a Counsellor or mentor, is able to gradually recover and set out in life again with a new sense of direction having learned a bit about himself and relationships in the process. That would be nice but it doesn’t always go that way.

Let’s say that instead, a couple of weeks later his lawn mowing mate gets a phone call and our young man tells him that he is still feeling terrible and can barely get out to go to work and… the lawns are looking a bit bad again… He rings up his sibling to say how much he enjoyed that last meal and suggests that perhaps he could come over and make it again… and maybe clean the kitchen and vacuum the house at the same time…

I can’t see his friends keeping this up for long. There is the danger that depressing is becoming a pattern of behaviour where the initial purpose is being taken over by another one. Where his depressing is morphing into victiming and he is now actually exerting a bit of control over others and feeling stronger because of this. Not all depressing moves in this way… but it can and everyone I know will admit to doing this in a very small way at least or of feeling a bit resentful when a good friend, ‘who is going through a hard time’, leans on them a bit too much or a little too often.

Another path the initial depressing can take is when our young man goes back to work only to find he is about to be retrenched, then a few weeks later he learns his mother has cancer, then he sees his ex-girlfriend and she’s now wearing an engagement ring… The emotionally painful events, which he can’t control, start compounding. Maybe he also has a genetic predisposition to depression as it runs in the family. Maybe he makes a couple of social gaffs and loses a friend. It all compounds and spirals.

These can move someone further along from ‘depressing’ as a painful but purposeful behaviour into an overwhelming sense of despair and a build up of emotions that can be processed but… it’s very hard and would probably take a while. Depressing becomes a highly organised, reinforced and strong behaviour in his toolkit as the neural pathways get thicker and stronger in his brain. Whenever anything bad happens now, including things that are not as serious, depressing has become his default, go-to behaviour. At this point, at some very hard to pinpoint stage, it becomes Depression with a capital D. Whether you want to call it a mental illness or a disorder or something else doesn’t matter a lot, it is tough, very tough. The situation now needs more than just a couple of mates coming round to give a bit of emotional support. I’m not saying it definitely needs medication but medication might at least help with the symptoms and help him start moving and get his mind in a place where he can start considering what he can do to change his thinking and then his actions and also his feelings to get out of it all. He probably needs more than one kind of support: friends and family, a GP, a psychologist, a therapist. Probably a combination of these will be needed but he is also going to need to work hard himself to feel better, then get better and then stay better.

If you need to talk about any of these issues for yourself, a friend or a family member, please call, text or email me at Bunyip Blue Gum Consulting.