The Mental Dictator

Consider the following by Thanatologist, Dr. Sneidman

Every single instance of suicide is an action by the dictator or emperor in your mind. But in every case of suicide, the person is getting bad advice from a part of that mind, the inner chamber of councilors, who are temporarily in a panicked state and in no position to serve in the person’s best long-range interests.

Then it is time to reach outside your own imperial head and seek more qualified and measured advice from other voices, who out of their loyalty to your larger social self, will throw in on the side of life, and - to use a Japanese image - will urge the chrysanthemum, not the sword.

- Edwin Shneidman

I cannot stress enough how important it is for me to externalize my depression. It is incredibly difficult to fight yourself AND depression. Imagine sparring yourself while depression wraps around your body and taunts you like Venom.

The whole time you can’t hit yourself because you know yourself too well, and the depression just laughs and laughs.

It’s exhausting, infuriating, and, despite the massive amount of energy you put into fighting, ultimately ineffective.

As Shneidman alludes to, I consider my depression a unique entity within my mind. Something that may be a part of me, but is definitely separate from what I consider to be ME.

This mindset lets me attack thoughts and feelings that arise from my mental dictator. What depressives have in common is our relative inability to recognize when our dictator is taking greater control over territory within our mind.

Fortunately, all great generals have advisors. AND that is where I missed the mark for so many years.

When I was younger I did not consider that others might notice the hostile takeover of my mental dictator before I did. So I modified the advice of Sun Tzu:

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.

My enemy is within me. It knows what I know. It feels what I feel. It has one hell of an advantage over me, but it only has that advantage over me. Because of this, it is incredibly weak to my family, friends, therapists, and coworkers.

I cannot recognize that I am about to be depressed due to my depression. It’s a weird blind spot. I only realize it when I am much deeper in the hole than I care to be. So I outsourced identifying the problem to the people that care about me.

Here’s what I do when the dictator begins a new attack:

1. I say less and less (very subtle, often displays as never answering my phone).

2. I stop shaving.

3. I start showing up to things later and later.

4. When asked, “how are you?” I reply: “I’m okay”, or “I’m alright”.

5. I decline plans at the last minute.

There are other behaviors, sure. But these are the ones that are more easily identified by other people.

So, if you see me exhibit one or more of these behaviors - do me a favor, and ask me if I’m really doing okay.

Mind Hack: More Vitamin D

I am naturally Vitamin D deficient. Which means I have to find ways to increase the amount of Vitamin D my body can produce. Some of that is with supplements, waking up to a UVB blue light, and driving without my sunglasses. Watch the video to learn more.

Vitamin D Deficiency in Adults: When to Test and How to Treat

Vitamin D: The “sunshine” vitamin

Vitamin D and Depression: Where is all the Sunshine?

Treatment of vitamin D deficiency with UV light in patients with malabsorption syndromes: a case series

Philips goLITE BLU Therapy Device - At $275, it’s pricey, but it makes waking up so much easier for me. Just to note, I’m not a paid spokesman for Philips. I’ve used several light devices and this one has worked the best for me.

Neurostimulation

ECT was first used in 1938 when an Italian psychiatrist, Ugo Cerletti, observed pigs in a Rome slaughterhouse being anesthetized with electroshock before being butchered.  His first human patient begged Cerletti, “Non una seconda! Mortifierel” (“Not another one! It will kill me!”).

- Kenneth Castleman, PhD

When people think about electroconvulsive therapy, an image of someone strapped to a table with electrodes on their temples comes to mind. Just like the image on the left of Jack Nicholson’s character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But really, the image on the right more accurately shows what neurostimulation is today.

Nicholson

Corsetti

Wait, what’s the difference between neurostimulation, electroconvulsive therapy, and electroshock therapy? Mainly, the words used.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock therapy, and often referred to as shock treatment, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in patients to provide relief from mental disorders.[1] The ECT procedure was first conducted in 1938[2] and is the only currently used form of shock therapy in psychiatry. ECT is often used with informed consent[3] as a last line of intervention for major depressive disorder, mania, and catatonia.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy

I kind of like the term electroshock therapy. Makes me feel like more of a badass strapping my electrodes on in the morning. But, it sounds scary so electroconvulsive therapy became the term du jour.

Now we’re onto neurostimulation, which, to be fair, covers more than running an electric current through a patient’s brain.

Neurostimulation is the purposeful modulation of the nervous system's activity using invasive (e.g. microelectrodes) or non-invasive means (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation or transcranial electric stimulation, tES, such as tDCS or transcranial alternating current stimulation, tACS). Neurostimulation usually refers to the electromagnetic approaches to neuromodulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurostimulation

Make no mistake, I am shocking my brain with electricity. Not with 180-460 volts, but with 0.5-2.0 milliamps. That’s 0.00000434782% the maximal voltage for ECT. Prevention, as it turns out, is often less severe than the cure.

And ECT isn’t necessarily a cure! We still don’t know exactly why creating a strong electric field inside a person’s skull helps with certain mental illnesses. We know it sometimes works for some people where medications and other therapies have fallen short. Why exactly, we’re still trying to figure out.

I’m always looking for new tools to add to my toolkit. Personal neurostimulation is great for me when I’m traveling, new environments are scary, or when I feel my meds aren’t quite cutting it for my anxiety symptoms.

Like any tool, it’s not a panacea, but when used in conjunction with my other tools, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Build a Support Network

A strong support network is essential to a sustainable recovery. Having someone to call on in a moment of need can be a huge boost for you. That means some frank discussions with friends and family about what you need from them when you are hurting. These days my support network is strong, large, and sophisticated. I have multiple people I can call if I am in trouble, but that did not happen overnight. It took me a lot of time to develop, and there were many painful admissions along the way. If you are persistent in creating your network you lay the foundation for a successful recovery.

I started developing a support network before I knew what to call it. My friend Ben was the first person I recognized as a part of my support network, but I had been building my network since I was fifteen without even realizing it.

Shortly after my fifteenth birthday I started training Muay Thai Kickboxing and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at Tiger Academy of Martial Arts in Roswell, Georgia. This place became a refuge from my tortuous mind. I did not know it at the time, but this martial arts academy would keep me from killing myself when I was in my darkest moments as a young teenager.

At first going to the academy was just a good, physical hobby for a young boy to go let off some steam and get good exercise and life instruction in the process. At the academy I became good friends with one of the younger instructors named Bret. Bret saw that I was serious about training hard and improving my skills at kickboxing and jiu-jitsu so he took me under his wing. I signed up for private lessons with him and he worked my butt off. I still feel sore when I think back at the workouts he put me through. Endless kicking drills and squats and pushups awaited me at every lesson. He never let off because he knew that I could take the hard work. Through those difficult training sessions we forged a stronger bond and he became my adopted older brother.

Bret told me all of the mistakes he made in his life from experimenting with drugs and alcohol to not applying himself well in school. He told me these things so I would not repeat his mistakes. Through his actions at the academy he showed me the importance of working and training hard. He put one hundred percent of himself into his workouts and into his job as an instructor at the academy. In short, Bret was the most influential man in my life after my father.

With all of this training I started to get pretty good at both kickboxing and jiu-jitsu. Eventually my physical hobby turned into a full-fledged passion. When my parents gave me the keys to my Jeep all I would drive to was school and the academy. Every day except Sundays for two years I drove to school and waited there, a ghost amongst my classmates waiting for the final bell to ring before I could drive back to the academy where I was among people that liked me. At eighteen my depression worsened and I began planning my catastrophic car accident, but the reason it took me so many months to finally commit to it was Tiger Academy.

In that academy I felt wanted. I felt a part of something special. I felt good.

I wanted to hold onto those feelings for my entire day, but my depression would rear it’s ugly head as soon as I started the drive home after the last workout. For the better part of that year I would be incredibly depressed while at home and at school, but I was downright lively at Tiger. I could talk to anyone there, and I would introduce myself to anyone who walked through the door. I barely spoke at school, but at Tiger I was in my element. Surrounded by good people who all shared my passion for training hard. Looking back, those moments at Tiger carried me through the worst of my depressed episodes. If I had a hard day at school I would go to the academy and train until my body couldn’t move.

I trained like an animal. I poured myself into every workout as if my life depended on it. Which, in a way, it did. If I didn’t have Tiger and my adopted brother Bret, I am certain I would have tried to kill myself. I would have wrecked my car, or tried to overdose, or attempted to hang myself. Tiger was my medication before I ever knew I needed medication. Every day there forestalled my plans of dying and kept my depression at bay. Besides the endorphins that coursed through my veins after a workout, Tiger was a support network that protected me from my dark thoughts. I use Tiger Academy as an example of a support structure because it helped me, but at the time I had no idea I was using it to keep myself sane.

You need a support network if you are going to have a sustainable recovery, but it is up to you to create and maintain it. I used Tiger Academy as an example, but it has been years since I last trained there. Nowadays I have a support network of my own making, and you can make one too.