When depressed, simply do
Grandma's response to complaints was always the same: "When life gets tough, honey, make lemonade."
I tried hard to heed her sage advice, but learning to ignore life's lemons never works well for worriers like me. The breakthrough came with age, when I realized the key to that old saying wasn't the resulting lemonade; it's in the "make."
Two reasons: Control and compassion in action, or at least extroversion in action. The hardest part of persistent problems is feeling helpless - that things are happening to you, rather than by you. Acting/doing/making provides a feeling of control, helps us feel we are doing something, anything, rather than merely enduring.
The other half is focusing outward, even if the act only benefits oneself, although the personal boost is more powerful and lasts longer if it benefits others. Even if it's nothing significant, acting in some way shifts mental focus away from self-pity and transfers it to another object or person. Ideally, both.
So say the residents of tragedy-stricken Newtown, Conn., who are healing by putting compassion into practice, by making lemonade. First this occurred by necessity on that awful day of the mass shooting; parents, staff, emergency workers, and strangers scrambling and struggling to help in a crisis. As the months roll by this depressed community has found that shifting focus from self to others also has a tremendous healing effect.
In a poignant, in-depth article on this aspect of Newtown's aftermath in the Mar. 11 Christian Science Monitor, one woman said, "We're accidental activists... I just couldn't sit and do nothing."
By "activist" she means big and small. She picketed at the steps of Congress. She also made cookies; instead of being mad this winter when overworked snowplows didn't get to her street for two days, she simply pitched in by taking city workers a snack.
Just about everyone in Newtown has banded together. Neighborhoods and church folks check in on each other; support groups have evolved into reliable friendships; spontaneous street picnics erupt and strangers hug. It shouldn't take a tragedy, but the lemonade in Newtown has helped the whole town cope.
Research reinforces this phenomenon. Those in any form of post-traumatic stress are more likely to experience "post-traumatic growth" by becoming more altruistic, according to University of Memphis psychologist Robert Neimeyer.
Beyond compassion, beyond exercising control, simply engaging with the world in a physical manner does wonders for a bad mood or depressed soul. Even a simple walk in nature, while intentionally focusing on the grass, the sidewalk, the sky, the bird flying by, brings us outside ourselves and helps connect us with the external world. When that happens humans tend to feel less alone.
Dwelling outward rather than inward is the best medicine, even when only taken in small doses.
"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know that just to be alive is a grand thing." - Agatha Christie
Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at [email protected].