Transcript: Goals, Depression and Real Life 

Welcome to the Us and Kids podcast. I am your host Jan Talen. I'm a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a wife, a mom and a grandma. This Us and Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent  together.

Today we're talking about a depressing topic, but we're going to talk our way through it so that we're not depressed anymore, but instead we'll have more hope. Our topic today is about depression and depression can make us feel really dead. Not like dead, as in not alive. But dead and alive, but not able to engage in life. Our lungs breathe, our heart beats. But our brain can't think, and our body can't move. And this is almost literal. That's what intense depression often feels like. It's not a fun place to be. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, "I think today, I'll be depressed."  It's too heavy. It's too intense. And it is often about as impossible to stop as it is impossible to stop a car from running over you. 

Many moms and dads live with depression every day. They don't want to. No more than they want a car to run over them. They just don't want it. It only takes superhuman strength to push a car off from you, and then get up and walk away as if nothing happened. It is also true for depression. The emotion and this psychological pressure can be so heavy and so life squishing that just shaking it off is impossible.

So for a minute, let's be clear. Depression can come from many different places and ways. It can be depression from grief where there's a loss of a loved one, or a job, or friend. Depression can become complicated by miscarriage or early pregnancy loss or struggling to reset pregnancy hormones. Depression can also happen when one loss piles up upon another upon another. When these things happen, the chemical makeup in our brain can change. And that creates then an inability for brain processing, thought processing and emotional processing to happen very efficiently. It's very sluggish, and it often just gets lost in the weeds or lost in the pain. And for a while we can pretend like everything's okay. Often as months go by and the adjustment to the loss, whatever it is, is not very easy. Depression slowly builds in. Less people want to talk about it or even acknowledge it. And then depression grows, that deep sadness entangles around our heart, so that the heart muscle feels like it can hardly move, the brain can hardly work, and the body can hardly move.

I agree, it's not a pretty story, is it? And yet it's true in many of our families. So I want us to understand, if you are working with depression, you're going to learn some things here today that I think will be helpful.  But also if you're living with someone who has depression, you will also be able to know how to help them better, and how to be empathetic towards their struggle.  

A side note here is that if depression makes us unable to move and unable to function, working with a good therapist can really help. We have developed good therapies in ways to help move this depression around and break it up into pieces that are more manageable. So if you're in this space or if you know someone in this space. I encourage you to find a good therapist near you. If you're stuck  and don't know how to do this, then quickly send me an email at [email protected]. And then I'm going to send you to some websites or connect to some places that can help you find someone in your area. 

It's also wise to continue to work through depression on your own. If you were hit by a truck or by something else, then you would be working on your own personal health and strength at home, as well as with qualified professionals. Depression fighting skills are good skills for a lifetime because sad things and confusing things will happen throughout our life. Knowing what to do with them is a really good skill. 

So we're going to talk about some basics. And then we're going to develop those skills a little bit more.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time on some of the basics because I feel like we've talked about them before and I don't want to be too redundant. One of them is, remember to eat real food. Real food, not no food, and not just sugar or crunchy food.  Your brain, in order to function, needs protein in a serving size about the size of the palm of your hand. It needs this three or four times a day,

Your brain also needs complex carbs. These are complex sugars that you eat with a protein, to build brain pathways. Your brain needs new ways to think so we have to build new roads. That's what protein and complex carbs do. The other pathways are really pretty worn out. So some new ones might be really helpful.  If you eat that real food several times a day and drink plenty of water, that really helps build those pathways and clear out the junk that is in your brain.  Lower your sugar. Lower your wine. Lower your alcohol.  As you can, lower your nicotine, and your marijuana, then the brain becomes far more free to work the way it was meant to work. 

You want to boost it up a little bit more? Remember to move your body. Because moving your body will move your brain. This is not easy. I don't want to make it like, well just move your body just get up and go for a walk. I understand that sometimes making it to the slider door, making it to the mailbox, is a monstrously overwhelmingly big success. It's important, move your body. Move your feet, move your arms. This helps to reset those chemicals in your brain, so that the good chemicals can start to bounce around again and not be eaten up by the stressed out ones. 

Moving your body is important, but so is moving those muscles in your face. And this means smile. This isn't an emotional smile. This is a physiological muscle piece that when you smile, your brain starts to change how it's working. I know it's weird, isn't it, but give it a try. Do 10 seconds 2X/ hour for two weeks, along with some moving your body, eating less sugar and eating real food. Now, add some touch. Hold hands, give hugs. Give and get some nice eye contact. You will feel less dead. We have neurons all over our body that are meant to wake us up and make us emotionally whole. And when we snuggle down in our blankie, or in our bed and nobody touches us; if we don't touch anybody, we forget to shower and even care for our own body that gives our depression room to just continue to creep in. 

And when we touch other people, when we move our body, when we smile fake or real - all  of those things help the depression to begin to sort of lose some of its power.   And, finally, use less screen time. Stop the scroll, put your screen down, get up and do something. Do something pretty, do some cleaning, or be a little helpful. This moves into the next idea of helping someone else. Bring in the mail or put the dishes away or go for a walk with them, or just smile and say hi. Buy somebody a cup of coffee. Any and all of this helps us. It helps you if you're depressed. It also helps those of us who are trying to encourage you. 

Those are your basics. We've talked about them before. We'll expand on them again in a little while. But right now those are your basics. Now we're going to add on to that. Because we think of depression as being in a longer term emotion. It's not going to go away in two days. This is something that often, ebbs in us, overtakes and then fades away a little bit and then overtakes again. It has the waves to it. 

For people in this situation, here are some additional skills. One of them is set to small goals. These are going to feel like big goals to you and others may look at you like, that's all you got?!? It's a big deal for you if you can get off the couch and walk to the backyard and back to the couch. For some of you, it's a big deal if you can get up off the couch and go eat a glass of water and get back to the couch. If that's what you can do, do it. Set small goals. Remember we just talked about this depression as if a car had run over you. And if a car had actually run over you and you were home doing rehabilitation stuff we would give you a lot of grace and a lot of kudos for being able to walk to the backyard and back again to the coach. We discredit it because it's physical energy... that if you broke your legs, that would be physical energy.  We don't give you credit if it's mental energy. And yet mental injury and pain and stress is also real and true. And it takes just as much courage to get off that couch and walk to the backyard as if your legs were in braces and you're using a walker.

So, set small goals and go for them. Make those goals specific. So, say the goal is to walk to the back of the yard once today. That's a small goal, and it's specific. As you work to do that you might only make it to the slider, or you might make it out onto the grass. No matter how far you get is better than sitting on the couch. And now your internal language is going to be really important to be able to say, "I got this far! I took 22 steps. Tomorrow, maybe I'll make 24." Give yourself credit for what you did do. Not what you didn't do. 

Depression wants to make us notice what we did not do. And then berate us for it and blame us for it and accuse us of being lazy and worthless. This is the deceit that lies within depression. If a real person lies to us we become angry and we tell them tell us the truth!  So now, give yourself a bit of that same energy. And when you hear yourself lie - Come back to the truth. The truth is: I made it to the slider. 

The truth is it took all of my energy to do it. That's the truth. 

The truth is: I am a hard worker and I was determined. 

The lie is that I'm worthless. And I won't ever make it past this slider, and I'll never amount to anything. Those are the words of depression and of deceit. Those words need to be deleted and removed, so that the words of truth such as, "I work hard. I'm giving it my all" are within your reach. And within your focus. 

It's sometime in the self talk that we can find ourselves going in circles. The long word for this is rumination and rumination in my mind is like a funnel cloud. It slowly circles down into a pinpoint of a  place that feels like we're dead. It's thinking the same thought and the same ugly pattern of thoughts, over and over and over and over and over, and we can't get out of it. So the way to get out of this funnel cloud is to change what you are doing. Doing. This is not about thinking.  This is about your actual body movement. I understand that in rumination often your body is doing nothing. Your brain is swirling. Your body is often sitting, just frozen. Think about what you can do differently with your body. If it is moving in a different way. If it's deciding to do some jumping jacks, or if it's deciding to go wash your face, or if it's deciding to put on a sweatshirt and take a walk in a different space. If it's deciding to go sit on your kid's swing set or jump on the trampoline.  Work with someone else and work within your own self to move your body differently. If you move your body you move your brain and your brain energy, so that going for a walk, doing the dishes, taking a shower, singing takes different brain energy and that steals it from the rumination so you can do those other things. Even if you clear up 7% of your energy it takes a small step out of this depression and slows down this funnel of despair.

So, like the walk to the backyard. If that's something that will work for you to slow down the rumination pattern, then do it. And as you walk to the backyard, or if you choose a shower or if you choose doing the dishes... As you do that, work towards that more positive thought about

•  how courageous you are, and 
• how you are in charge of you, 
• your depression and its deceit are not in charge of you, 
• you are in charge of you. 

And as you continue to build this positive thought about yourself, the lies will slowly be slaughtered. 

Positive thought is powerful, and it slowly slices up the lies and they begin to die.

Now I agree with you. These are tiny steps. Just like pennies, they add up. And when you keep adding one penny after another after another, just like one of my friends did.... He bought himself a Harley motorcycle fighting off his depression. He saved the pennies. And as he did it he worked on building his thoughts towards himself in a more positive manner. He gave himself a penny. Every time he did it. Over time, he became more able to focus on what was right and what was true. And what was good. He paid more attention to healthy thought than he did to the depression. And as he paid less attention to his depression and more attention to his good thoughts, he noticed that good thoughts begin to breed better thoughts, begin to breed more energy, begin to build more strength. 

I think it might work for you if you chose to pay more attention to doing things that were good and right. Now remember these are small steps. So, even if the first step is I'm going to pay more attention to my kids for the next seven minutes, and I'm going to smile at them, even though I don't feel like it. If that's your first baby step, take that baby step and give yourself those pennies! 

So, for my friend, as he kept living in the present, he noticed that it also took on that rumination stuff and helped it mellow out. It isn't like he didn't still ruminate and worry about the past and rethink things over and over again. It just slowed down the run into the past so if he didn't want to go there. He could actually make a turn away from there.

He said (inside his head or out loud), "No right now, I'm fine."

"The past isn't going to eat me, I'm okay."

He focused on that, and stayed in the present. He was able to stay more grounded and balanced. That helped him set more realistic goals. So on a day that he could feel that his depression was going to be pretty heavy and pretty thick, he gave himself permission to adjust some goals. And then days when the cloud wasn't so thick, he upped his goals a bit, and then went to the backyard, two or three times, instead of just once. 

You see, as he stayed in the present, no matter how much (depression) he felt, he began to understand that the present was the safest and most sane place to be. The past was scary. The past created rumination that made him run in circles and the future was full of foreboding. And that wasn't helpful either. Then he noticed as he grew these skills each day, (These are tiny skills they're adding up like pennies), he noticed the future seemed less scary. He just lived in the moment of today and said,

"Right now. I'm fine."

" Right now I'm strong."

" Right now, I have achieved three goals for the day."

You see, the more skills we have the more confidence we grow that whatever comes our way, in the future, we'll be able to figure out. It's living in the present and building those skills, teeny skills bit by bit, that help us figure out how to move forward and gives us just even 3 or 5% more confidence. It goes a long way. Cheer your depressed friend or spouse, on in these things, but also practice them yourselves. 

One of the other skills that he learned early on, and I think it's a good idea,  was the skill of staying with a schedule. He couldn't do it every day. There were days that he was internally embarrassed by his perceived lack of confidence and growth. He could hear that harsh language all around inside of him, and the internal judgment wanted to just overtake him. That's smallness, that insignificance of meaninglessness, it's gonna run him over like that car. The schedule helped him to not pay as much attention to those thoughts and do what the schedule said. 

So it said, " Time to get up time to take a shower. 

Time to go eat breakfast. 

Time to make phone call to a friend. 

Time to move the laundry. 

Time to hopefully get ready for work." 

It helped him move those (depressive) thoughts aside and gave him back that glimmer, that little sliver of truth and hope that he knew was important. That helped him remember he is important, loved and helpful to those around him. So it continued to help him live well, regardless of how crumby he was feeling. This gave him more pennies. It also empowered him to realize it over and over again, in little little spaces, drips and drops, that he was in charge of himself. The depression was not the boss of him. And as he felt more confident he saw that he was the boss of depression.

 The depression became less debilitating. Now, what he had done, really, was begun to take more responsibility for his own life. He knew he had had ugly, sad, bad awful things in his past that he didn't have any control over. And he was not responsible for them. Instead of staying in that place of chaos, where he had no power over his life,  he, bit by bit, took these tiny steps, tiny steps. Remember, tiny pennies moving him into a space that went from:

" I don't have power over my life? to..

" I didn't have power over my life back then. I do now." 

And now, is what mattered. That moved him from being a victim, where other people were in charge of his emotional space in place, and help him stay connected with himself and live peaceably in the present.

 Everyday is work for him.

And he works it everyday.

He succeeds almost everyday. 

If you are living was suffering with depression or if you are someone who has depression, I hope that you see that continuing to take tiny steps in behavior and in self thought, will lead to a better path that gets you out of that heavy car, and move that old rusty car that has been sitting on you and smooshing you off from you. Lighten the load.

Tiny steps add up. Just like pennies, tiny steps using your muscles - emotional muscles, mental muscles, physical muscles - over and over again builds strength and strength helps us to see and live in the truth. 

I encourage you to practice it by yourself. Practice it with others, build in a spiritual practice with Jesus wherever you can. If you want more support with this, just send me a little email and I'll do what support I can for you. 

I also know that learning the skills in the DNA for Fun Communications Course helps us understand oppression, helps us learn how to work with it so that our marriages and our families are still very freeing, very fulfilling and very, very good. 

Thank you for listening. 

This is not the happiest of all topics, yet really important for us to understand. 

Cheering for you and wishing you a ray of hope and joy today. 

Bye bye