What is Depression?
A down and dirty way to think about depression

So here's a way that I find helpful to think about depression, about what it actually is. Depression is:   

1) A mechanism

2) A switch

The Mechanism      

Mechanism: depression is embodied, and there is a mechanism in the body and nervous system which, when triggered, causes "de-motivation" in four different fields: body, emotions, mind/cognition, and relationship.    

--In the body, there is: physical pain/ache; increase or decrease in appetite; increase or decrease in sleep; decrease in physical energy; decrease in motor coordination. 

--In the emotions, there is: despair; hopelessness; general sense of negativity; sadness; flattening or magnification of emotions in general.   

--In the thinking mind, there is: negative thoughts; rumination (repetitive, cycling thoughts); generalized interpretation of life as futile; and generalized criticism of self and others.       

--In relationships, there is: withdrawal; isolation; inability to feel connected; or to want to be connected.

This is the mechanism, and when the switch is thrown, a collection of these "symptoms" click into place (not the same for everyone, but the list above is what our systems "choose" from). Why is there such a mechanism? Evolutionary thinkers have several explanations, and the most compelling that I've seen is that depression helps guard against futile effort. If a primate (primates being organized in hierarchical societies) cannot stop in its pursuit of status or power within the group, it or the group will be destroyed. So depression (from this theory) was advantageous to survival because those groups of primates that had this "circuit breaker" mechanism in its individuals kept from destroying themselves.

That's the theory.  But regardless, there is a mechanism in the body/nervous system called depression. 

The Switch

So, then there's the switch, what turns on this mechanism. The common "on" button for depression seems to be the experience or interpretation of futility, when that which is sought or attached to is not then let go of. Like the raccoon who grabs the fruit in the log, and then cannot get it's balled fist back out, and neither thinks to let go of the prize...that's pretty much us in depression. Grasping without the ability or willingness to let go.

However, not all depression is triggered from a psychological position. A friend tells the story of how he had the realization that, when their world was grey, despairing, and useless, eating a peanut butter sandwich would quickly open the heavens. In other words, in their case and in this particular form of depression for them, the body was out of balance (presumably in its need for protein or fat) and that condition triggered the cascade of depressive symptoms. Correcting the body turned off the depressive mechanism. Voila!

At other times, depression is triggered by an emotional experience: a sadness arises from the loss of a promotion, and that carries a sense of futility or overwhelm, and then the switch is flipped and depression sets in.

Or with thinking, we are presented with a problem that seems insurmountable, but we feel we have to keep at it, but we can't figure it out...we see it as futile but impossible to let go of...and then depression gets turned on.

You can see how these fields are woven into each other (thoughts, feelings, body), but the starting point (the "on switch") can be quite different and therefore what will help turn off the depressive mechanism can be quite different (finding a fix to a worldly problem vs. another sandwich).     

 

The Upshot

So the main point with this down-and-dirty model of depression (i.e., there's a circuitry, and a switch to turn it on or off) is to point to how depression is an impersonal mechanism, which is turned on or off in particular ways for each individual. 

The importance of this way of framing depression is that it points to depression as actually having a structure (depression itself pretends not to have a structure, just grey skies forever), which means that it can be worked with if you know how the thing is structured: i.e., you can identify the mechanism (oh, there's that impersonal machinery clicking into place!), and then experiment and practice with ways to turn it off and prevent it from turning back on.  

Ultimately, where this way of thinking about depression leads is to the the dismantling (not just controlling) of the connection between the switch and the machinery, meaning less moments when the switch causes any response at all.   The machinery, apparently, cannot be uprooted--it would seem to be our evolutionary heritage--but the wires connecting the machine to the on switch can, indeed, be snipped.