Chapter 5
“Don’t Start Acting All Special Here Because You’re Not”
My brother is the kind of person who if you tell him you’ve been diagnosed by a professional with chronic depression and generalized anxiety disorder will roll his eyes and say, “Everyone has that, bro,” as if to say, “Don’t start acting all special here because you’re not.”
I’m not saying that such an exchange occurred between my brother and me because McMahon’s Search for Meaning is not, as many might be inclined to believe, strictly autobiographical. My book in fact is a sort of novel, a work of fiction. Just like the TV show Seinfeld was a work of fiction starring Jerry Seinfeld playing a character of the same name, same job, similar quirks, inclinations, and neuroses. As a fictional account of Jerry Seinfeld and his friends, the show wasn’t confined to literal truth and was, as a result, free to spread its wings and fly.
That’s what I’m trying to do with McMahon’s Search for Meaning. Get some wingspan and soar in a way that might help me transcend any depression and generalized anxiety that afflicts the fictional version of myself.
Speaking of depression and anxiety, I appear to have been born with it, a condition that burdened my parents. My father especially was chafed by my undying gloominess, which he didn’t want to see in me. So frustrated by my moping about, my father, a military man, would often attempt to will me into a higher version of masculinity, shouting at me “to grow some balls” and “to stop moving like an old lady.” These admonishments in turn made me feel even more inadequate, a condition that I tried to compensate for by becoming a Junior Olympic Weightlifter (number one in the 148-pound class at age 13), then a bodybuilder (runner up in the 1981 Mr. Teenage San Francisco at age 19) and now a kettlebell aficionado. In addition to abating feelings of self-loathing, exercise appears to medicate me and lessen my anxieties, but the fix is only temporary and I feel constantly compelled to find things to take the bite out of my generalized anxiety disorder and depression, so that these undertakings feel like a full-time job. Or as I tell my therapist, “It’s a pain in the ass being me.”
My hero Viktor Frankl would scoff at my self-analysis. He would argue that I am not a victim of depression and anxiety, that I have the power to free myself of my mental afflictions, that I possess free will. As Frankl observes, “Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”
To be a true Frankl follower, then, means to accept free will, which means accepting responsibility for our actions. I wish I could say I drink the free-will Kool-Aid, but sadly my feelings, at best, are ambivalent on the matter, evidencing that I am indeed unworthy of teaching Frankl’s masterpiece.
No offense to Frankl, but I think that--according to your interpretation of him, at least--his understanding is lacking in nuance, or at least that there are more factors at work than simply heroically freeing oneself from the inertia of one's "lower" nature. I prefer Jung's advice: "the way out is through." Through our neuroses, our personal self - not as an ongoing self-indulgence, but as a deep and full acceptance and embodiment of who we are.
On one hand, I don't want to lessen the reality of depression. But I feel that a lot of what is called depression is temperamental, and that we tend to pathologize the melancholic and sensitive mentalities, especially in men. Of course this is changing with younger generations, at least in the counter-culture. If you were 20 years younger you'd be considered "emo."
Speaking as a therapist-in-training and a writer, I think your instincts to "self-therapize" through your writing are spot on. I find that I am able to enact change, even transcendence, in myself through a writing process. This is where art--in whatever medium--is a form of modern shamanism; a bridging of worlds and a (potential for) spiritual healing and renewal.
On a different note, I just watched an early episode from season 8 of Seinfeld - when it started to go down hill, in my opinion, probably because Larry David wasn't involved anymore. Anyhow, Jerry was wearing a Breitling Navitimer.
Posted by: jonnybardo | 02/12/2014 at 08:30 PM