The January Resolution, Redux March 11, 2023

In July, I posted “The January Resolution” regarding last year’s determination to grapple with my recurring bouts of depression. I mentioned a bit about my experiences with depression as well as my quest for a skill set that would allow me to hold depression at bay in the future. While I mainly described the meditation-based cognitive therapy approach of Zindel Segal et al., I failed to talk about another aspect of my inner work that has proven to be just as important to my well-being: soaking in the good. 

Here I turn to the little voice in my head from Rick Hanson, a local psychologist who has a wide online presence. Rick combines neuroscience with Buddhist meditative practice in a way that is accessible to me and to his many followers. One of Rick’s sayings is that the brain is “Velcro for bad and Teflon for good”. What he means is that in our evolution, it is imperative for survival that we be alert to potential harm, but we pay less attention to the rapture all around us.

To this end, over the summer, I started to devote attention to this particular aspect of cognition. I recalled Laurie Santos talking about “savoring” the good things in our life (posts in 2020), as well as the profound effect that the movie About Time had on me (post in 2014), namely its thesis to live each day twice, once with all its ups and downs, and second simply relishing the experience.

Recently I’ve noticed that when people ask how I’ve been, I find myself surprised to say, “I’m doing really well!” and to actually feel that way. What a change for me! In the throes of depression, it is nearly impossibly to feel joy. 

In the end, I have come to view my commitment and my process as a kind of recovery, just as I have watched my daughter go through recovery for addiction. Like her, I need to be vigilant on a daily basis. The reality is that life often has setbacks that trigger sadness; I have learned that I can acknowledge that sadness yet not let it automatically morph into a depression. As people age and especially as people live alone, they become more vulnerable to depression. As I am both old and have lived alone for a decade, now is the moment to resist my proclivity for a downward spiral. Would that I had done this sooner.