Depression isn’t visible or communicable like a typical illness, so it’s easier to deny that it’s a problem rather than to accept the harsh unpredictable reality. Denial reassures the observer that “it will never happen to me,” but depression is still affects millions of people regardless, and throwing accusations of selfishness or laziness at them purely to make yourself feel better can’t help. As a behavior, that’s a much better example of selfishness.
Sadly, the truth is that many persist in thinking it’s easy to ignore or override a powerful debilitating mood disorder that regularly affects sufferers to the very core of their being. It’s an excellent demonstration of how the brain values consistency, that once a person has decided on a certain viewpoint, it’s hard to alter it. The people demanding that those with depression alter their thinking while refusing to do the same in the face of the evidence are showing just how hard it is. It’s a terrible shame that those who are suffering the most get made to feel worse because of it.
It’s bad enough when you have your own brain conspiring against you so severely. To have other people’s doing it too, that’s just obscene.
Emergency shutdown
(Nervous breakdowns, and how they come about)
If you go out in the cold weather without a coat, you’ll catch a cold. Junk food will mess up your heart. Smoking ruins your lungs. A poorly set-up workstation causes carpal tunnel and backache. Always lift with your knees. Don’t crack your knuckles or you’ll get arthritis. And so on.
You’ve probably heard these things before, and countless similar nuggets of wisdom about how to stay healthy. While the accuracy of these claims varies considerably, the notion that our actions affect our health is valid. Our bodies, marvel-ous as they are, have physical and biological limitations, and pushing these limits has consequences. So we watch what we eat, where we go, how we behave. If our bodies can be badly affected by what we do, what’s preventing the same from happening to our complex, delicate brains? The answer is, of course, nothing.
In the modern world, the biggest threat to the well-being of our brains is good old stress.
Everyone experiences stress on a regular basis, but if it’s too intense or too frequent, then we get problems. Chapter 1 explained how stress has very real and tangible effects on our health. Stress activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis in the brain which activates fight-or-flight responses, which release adrenalin and cortisol, the “stress” hormone. These have numerous effects on brain and body, so the effects of constant stress become very apparent in people. They’re tense, not thinking straight, volatile, physically wasted or exhausted, and more. Such people are often said to be “heading for a nervous breakdown.”
“Nervous breakdown” isn’t an official medical or psychiatric term. It doesn’t involve the literal breakdown of nerves. Some use “mental breakdown,” which is technically more accurate, but still a colloquialism. Regardless, most people will understand what it is. A nervous breakdown is what happens when someone can no longer cope with a high-stress situation, and just . . . “snaps.” They “shut down,” “withdraw,” “fall apart,” “can’t cope.” It means a person is mentally no longer able to function as normal.
The experience of a nervous breakdown varies considerably between individuals. Some experience bleak depression, others crippling anxiety and panic attacks, some even hallucinations and psychosis. So it might be surprising that some see nervous breakdowns as a defence mechanism of the brain. As unpleasant as they are, they’re potentially helpful. Physiotherapy can be exhausting, hard and unpleasant, but it’s certainly much better than not doing it. Nervous breakdowns may be the same, and this makes more sense when you consider that nervous breakdowns are invariably caused by stress.
We know how the brain experiences stress, but how does something cause stress in the first place? In psychology, things that cause stress are known (logically) as stressors. A stressor reduces personal control. Feeling in control makes most people feel secure and safe. It doesn’t matter how much actual control we have. Every human is technically a meaningless sack of carbon clinging to a rock hurtling through the uncaring void around trillions of tons of nuclear fire, but that’s too big for a single human to be aware of. But if we can demand and get soy milk in our latte, that’s tangible control.
Stressors reduce options for action; something is more stressful if there’s nothing you can do about it. Getting rained on is irksome if you have an umbrella. Getting caught in the rain without an umbrella while locked out of your house? That’s stressful. With a headache or a cold there are medications available to minimize the symptoms, but chronic illnesses cause a lot of stress because there’s often nothing to be done about them. They’re a constant source of unavoidable unpleasantness, providing a very stressful situation.
A stressor also causes fatigue. Whether frantically running to catch a train after oversleeping or working on an important last-minute assignment, dealing with a stressor (and its physical consequences) requires energy and effort, depleting your reserves, causing further stress.
Unpredictability is also stressful. For example, epilepsy can cause incapacitating seizures at any moment, so they’re impossible to plan for effectively, which is a stressful situation. It doesn’t have to be a medical condition; living with a partner prone to mood swings or irrational behavior, meaning you risk a rage-induced fight with someone you love if you accidentally put the coffee jar in the wrong cupboard, can be incredibly stressful. These situations provide unpredictability and uncertainty, so we end up constantly on edge, expecting the worst at any moment. Result: stress.
Not all stress is debilitating. Most stress is manageable as we have compensatory mechanisms to balance the stress reactions. Cortisol stops being released; the parasympathetic nervous system activates to relax us again; we replenish our energy reserves; then carry on with our lives. However, in our complicated, interconnected modern world, there are many ways in which stress can quickly become overwhelming.