Joe Maddon and the cure for depression

When Charles Schultz died without ever having Charlie Brown kick that football it felt.... right.  When you grow up as a Cub fan and a Catholic in a city where winter challenges your will to live every single year you are conditioned to not just accept but to embrace your suffering.  You are taught that "Yes, the universe is trying to destroy you, and the pain and the failure will never relent until you die, but you can offer that suffering to God and this will not only purify you, it will sanctify you."  What Cubs fan could not relate to Charlie Brown, forever trying to kick the football and forever failing?

I had absorbed into my identity the sincere belief that before the Cubs won the world series I would die or major league baseball would just end due to lack of interest or a major global catastrophe like a meteor strike or alien attack.   I am not joking when I say that I am far more mentally prepared for the zombie apocalypse than I am for this reality where the Cubs just won the World Series.  That being said just like Charlie Brown every year the Cubs had even a sniff of making the playoffs I ran full speed pulled back my leg and whiffed.  I was at game 7 in 2003 and watching the Marlin's celebrate on the field at Wrigley tore something in me.  Still with Dusty, with Lou I ran and I kicked and I fell and it felt...right.  

Every day I work with people who are struggling with depression.  People who balance on the knife's edge of whether or not they should kill themselves.  Most of them can look at their lives and point to a great deal of evidence that the universe hates them.  They have been abused, molested, betrayed by their families or their bodies, they have known a sticky corrosive pain that eats away at your soul and your will that we call depression.  Many of them have beaten it back once or twice but they face each day in the knowledge that it may return.

This weekend a former client, who should probably be in a hospital, texted me "They say people like  Robin Williams lost his battle, but maybe he won it."  Her words stab through me like an icicle from my navel through my heart.  I can't lose her.  I can't lose any of them, and there are so many.

My response to her, to them, is a broken record.  Endure and better days will come.  Life will be hard and it will be painful but it will also be wonderful and worth it.  Ignore what your experience has told you is true and look to the examples I show you of people like you who have pushed back the darkness and live now in the light.

But they hold up the Judas's of Robin and Ned Vizzini.  Before you think me harsh for using that label allow me to explain that I see Judas as figure who is tragic not evil.  Even if I had known these men were going to go I would have loved them and held them to the last as Christ did.  Still I feel betrayed by them because they were my allies in combating depression and in providing hope.  Ned's book It's Kind of a Funny Story, and so many of Robin's characters, particularly Sean Maguire from Good Will Hunting were tools I went to regularly and shaped my work and my life.

So there I sat last night next to my wife, when I wasn't shifting position to try to get just the right amount of luck to keep Baez from swinging at warm up pitches from the bull pen.  My sister and I texting back and forth pessimistic jibes designed to keep our hope from growing too large, tensing our collective muscles for the whiff  as Lucy pulls away with a smile.

And then hell froze over.  It HAPPENED.  I was smiling with tears in my eyes, my neighborhood erupted in fireworks, never mind that it was midnight, we were glowing, we were in numbed awe.  Internally the earth buckled and the temple curtain split, reality came crashing down.  I stumbled into the kitchen and made my son's lunch for today and drifted back and forth to the TV not knowing what to do with myself.

A reporter asked Joe Maddon how he kept the focus on this year in spite of 108 years of history of failure.  What I absorbed of his response seemed to me the key to combating depression.  I will paraphrase: I respect the past and tradition but there is no place for superstition and curses.  This is now.

Joe Maddon built a team that did not run from their past but would not be defined by it.  Unlike most baseball people he spit the superstition out of his club house the way he spit it out of his mouth, with disdain.  What I heard in his words was a belief that the universe does not hate you, the universe does not care one way or the other.  If you are failing to kick the football stop deciding that is your fate and get a different fucking holder!

I understand why a person would choose to build a universe that hates them, because as much as it sucks at least it is predictable.  Perhaps the only thing worse than swinging and missing is being surprised that you missed.  If we can convince ourselves that we will always suffer then we will never be ambushed.  But we will also never win.

The Cubs did not fail to win for 108 years because they were cursed, they failed because until recently only two teams from the national league even made the playoffs and most teams had better organizations with more invested ownership.  The weight of the years did become a self fulfilling prophecy that impacted players and managers and that seemed true even last night but the players destiny was always in their own hands.

Depression is real but if we can go forward each day and "Try not to suck" we can transcend the identity we have created.  Cubs fans are happy to let go of the moral superiority that came from being the longest suffering.  A decade from now when the Cubs are just another team will we have lost something?  I hope so.  I hope we will stop finding silver linings and preparing ourselves to endure the torment of life.  I hope the legacy of this Cubs team, and what I will bring to my clients from this experience is EXPECT TO WIN.  Trying not to suck, is to stop protecting yourself from failure by preparing for it, because it still sucks.

Sean Maguire described the Carlton Fisk home run as a pivotal moment in his life that he sacrificed for love.  Baseball is not just entertainment in the background of our lives, who we choose to be fans of, particularly in a city that has two teams, is a declaration of our values and who we choose to be.  White Sox fans have been the down trodden bitter grinders who stick their thumb in the eye of the universe and will tell you that sunshine and joy are for the soft.  Cubs fans have been the pathetic half way optimists, but both groups have been united in a Stark clan knowledge that "Winter is Coming."

If Robin Williams were here I think he would have asked us all to look to Sean's example more than his own.  To buy that "winning lottery ticket" but more importantly to heal from our pain and go back out and embrace life.

Thank you Joe Maddon for delivering an entire nation of fans from the tyranny of a superstitious universe.  This morning everything is different, any future is possible, and this is no going back.  Try not to suck.

Tell my abusers wife?

Q: when I was 10 and my cousin was 13 he molested me.  It only happened once and we didn't see them very often so I never said anything, but it definitely happened.  Recently I found out he is going to have a kid and I'm worried that if I don't say something he could do this to someone else, but if I do say something I could ruin his marriage.  Or my whole family could accuse me of lying and I could end up causing a lot of drama for no reason.

A:  continued silence is not an option.  This is not because you have to protect the world from your cousin, that is honestly beyond your control.  It is because you owe it to yourself to confront this issue and not be shamed and trapped by it when you did northing wrong.  

No matter what you do from this point it is likely to be painful for you and at least somewhat disappointing in the outcome so it is important that you have a therapist or close friend who knows everything supporting you through the process.

In a perfect world you contact him and say, "this happened and it caused me a lot of pain.  I need to know it is never going to happen to anyone else and that you are working through what ever caused you to do this in the first place (there is a significant chance that he too was abused at some point prior to molesting you).  

He would then acknowledge what he did, ask for forgiveness, get into counseling and tell his wife about his life experience.

That could happen, it is not as crazy impossible as it sounds because he may be carrying a lot of pain about this too.  BUT the more likely scenario is that he falls short of that ideal.  Most likely he will simply deny.  

You need to be prepared for that and ask yourself if you are willing to contact his wife if he won't.  I think there are significant cons to using the threat of telling his wife to force him into therapy.  You will never know if he is really attending or what is being shared there so if you have any doubt that he is facing his actions honestly letting his wife know what happened so she can make her own decisions is a path you will likely have to take.  

She is very likely to deny and be angry with you.  People tend to shoot the messenger.  This is a man that she loves and they are about to take on the biggest challenge of their lives together so do not expect her to thank you.   At the same time if you were in her position I think you would want to know.

Hopefully this was one confused act of an early adolescent.  There are probably hundreds of thousands of this kind of abuse perpetrated every year that are never reported so our statistics tend to suggest that perpetrators tend to be continual abusers buy my hunch is those are just the ones we catch.  Regardless, we can't take a chance and you do not need this on your mind anymore.  In order to be free of this you must confront and probably report on.  

When do I come out to my roommate?

Q:  I'm about to start my freshman year in college and I'm trying to decide if I want to tell my roommate I'm gay before I go.  I'm only recently out to a few people around home and that was weird and awkward.  Based on our texts he seems like a pretty chill person and I think he will be fine with it but I'm afraid that if I tell him this one aspect of my personality will end up defining how everyone thinks of me.  I will be his "gay roommate" instead of just his roommate who likes dubstep or who hates birds.  I'm still kind of figuring out who I am and I don't want to be pushed to just go be friends with the queer kids because I happen to be attracted to guys.  I have always, ironically, been kind of sketched out by the openly gay kids I have met and I just don't want him to think that is who I am before he can get to know me for me.  On the other hand if I don't tell him now, when...?  

A:  Do it now.  Coming out is an extremely daunting prospect at any time.  Leaving home for college and creating a new identity is, while in a very different way, also overwhelming.  I wish I could advise you to take your time and do things at your own pace.  In many ways who you are attracted to is no one's business but yours so why should getting a new roommate put a time table on disclosure?  Unfortunately our society is very hetero-sexist.  Even non-prejudiced people, including many queer people like yourself, approach the world as if everyone they meet is straight, that is just their default setting.

If you do not tell your roommate that you are not straight he is going to assume that you are.  Very quickly this is going to put you in a position where you have to come out,  lie to him, or be the most vague person he has ever encountered and he will either think you are hiding something (which you will be) or that you have been kicked in the head by a horse.

Since young men tend to bond over talking about girls and the sex acts they would like to engage in with them, and since terms of affection among men tend to be slurs for homosexuals I would wager a year's salary that you would not go 24 hours without having to react to one of these two situations.

So lets say you pretend to be straight, you have a great deal of experience with that.  People will get to know you as the dubstep loving, bird hating wonderful guy that you are.  But a huge part of you will remain hidden from view.  Even if by Halloween you are ready to come out and even if your roommate is the most understanding and logical guy in the world, he will still feel like you were lying to him.

We also have to recognize that he might not be the most understanding guy in the world.  Many young heterosexual men have a paranoia about gay men, that they are just waiting for them to unzip at a urinal before they can strike and sink their gay fangs into them or some other horrible thing that while they cannot quite visualize they sense it is terrifying.  Very often that fear can lead to violence.  Or even if it is just ostracizing or a change in the relationship from warm to cool, that can be an experience that is toxic to you every day.

I remember talking with a gay man who stayed in the closet all through college.  He talked about the anger of one of his friends when he finally came out.  His friend said that it felt like he had just taken a mask off and said he was an alien.  The two had often gone out to clubs chasing girls together and many of their shared experiences involved double dates.  The friend did not care that he was gay, he cared that he had been lied to for years and now he realized he really didn't know who one of his best friends was.  

By telling your roommate now if he really is uncomfortable with it he has time to find a new roommate.  If he is mildly uncomfortable with it at least he knows what he is getting in to and you will not have to hide who you are.  It is ok to tell him that you are figuring out who you are and you do not want it to be a big deal but you also don't want him to be shocked later.  You can use humor to defuse any potential tension and help him to realize that just like not every girl is his type there is a pretty good chance that even if he were gay (and lets not be so heterosexist to totally assume that he isn't) it doesn't mean you would be interested.

You are right, this is only one aspect of who you are, but your feelings about music, pizza, the state of the middle east, and the people you are attracted to are not things you should have to hide.  They are nothing to be ashamed of.  If you don't treat your sexual orientation that way then he probably won't either and the friends you make at school are going to get more time to know the real you.

Dad's depressed, how much do I visit?

Q:  I am supposed to spend a week at my Mom's and a week at my Dad's but in the summer things get fuzzy and I find it really hard to go over to my Dad's.  He has been out of work for about 9 months and he just sits around moping or complaining to me about my Mom or how I don't spend enough time with him.  I feel terrible for him but I'm only 16 and I'm not sure what I can really do for him.  Am I a terrible person for not spending more time with him and avoiding him?

A:  It is the job of the parent to care for the child, not the job of the child to care for the parent.  No matter how good a daughter or son you are at the end of your days God is not going to reward you with another chance to relive your childhood because you sacrificed it caring for him.  The debt that you owe is to your own future children, to survive high school and and to have as much healthy normal teen aged fun along the way so that you are not resentful when it it time for you to make them your first priority.

That is not to say that you should ignore your Father or the custody arrangement that your parents have set up.  Just remember that your father is dealing with a serious mental health issue and until he gets help for that no matter how much energy you steal from your own life and pour on his it is not going to be enough.

You could try writing him a letter and leaving it at his house laying out how you feel and your hope that he will seek help to improve his functioning and your relationship.  While a move like this is always scary as we fear the defensive reaction that is likely to result, how much worse could that be than the current state of things.

Other things to try are to try to catch him doing something good.  So often we can list all the negative things a person has done but we fail to catch them in their good moments and really reinforce those.  In the times when you do have a good interaction with your Dad be sure to mention what you liked about dinner or that trip for ice cream.

You absolutely have the right to call him out when he makes comments about your mother by simply saying, "Dad I want to have a good relationship with you but when you bring Mom up it makes it hard to be around you.  Let's talk about..."

If you have siblings and they are being similarly impacted sometimes writing a joint letter or even staging an intervention if he is not getting help for his depression can make a greater impact as you show a united front.

At the end of the day whether a parent has a mental health disorder, an addiction, or just an unfortunate personality you give to them what you hope your own child will give to you some day.  While your parents are major figures in your life there are other people (including yourself) who need your energy and you cannot give away all your reserves and still be healthy.

When dealing with people who are truly draining, (sometimes we refer to these people as toxic as just being exposed to them can make us unhealthy) for every hour you spend with them you need to spend 3 hours with people who fill you.  Do that and you will keep things in a healthy balance.

what if they just drink? friendship and sobriety

(like the blog?  follow it on this site or on facebook.  posts are kinda random lately so it is the best way to get the blogs when they are fresh.  Have a question?  e-mail me and I will answer and perhaps post it)

Question:  I just got out of a drug rehab center and they made me make a list of my sober friends.  I realized that I didn't have any.  I do have a few friends who don't use any drugs they just drink, and I know they would try to keep me clean because they helped to push me to do the rehab in the first place.  Is it okay if I hang out with my friends who drink because if I don't hang out with them I will literally be alone every weekend and I don't think I can handle that for my senior year of high school.  To be honest drinking was also one  of the problems that got me into rehab but it is the drugs that scared me and my parents and I think if I can stay away from them I will be ok.  

Answer:  30% of people who go through a rehab program maintain sobriety.  That is an amazingly positive number because staying clean is incredibly hard.  The top threat to a person like you, who has gone through a program and who really wants to stay clean is the slippery slope of rationalization.  

Every young person I have ever worked with in the arena of addictions wants to believe that eventually they will be able to truly master the issue and they will be a normal person again who can drink/smoke/gamble/etc.. in moderation without the issue taking over their life.  I have never met anyone who was able to pull it off.  I'm not saying it is impossible, I am saying you shouldn't plan on being the  exception to the rule.

Realistically I don't think you are going to avoid all of your friends who drink and use drugs, but if you are serious about maintaining your sobriety you must avoid them while they are using.  If they are your real friends they will participate in sober activities that they can do with you.

Your primary enemy is boredom.  You need to fill your time, particularly your weekend nights, with activities you cannot do while using, ex.) working, babysitting, church groups, AA, family time, going to see movies...

What you cannot do is be the designated driver for your friends!  You need one year sober before you can sign on for that job and even then you are playing with fire.

Many people will surround themselves with friends who are also in recovery.  This is also a very dangerous strategy unless those friends all have over a year clean.  A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and often when a bunch of teens in recovery bond, when one slips into relapse the others follow.

Dating someone who is in recovery is also very challenging.  We all want to be surrounded by people who can really understand us, and who could understand better than someone who is going through the same things.  The problem is when the other baggage of life which led to their substance abuse issue threatens to overwhelm them are you going to be strong enough to prop them up without falling yourself?

At the end of the day you are going to test what I say and you are going to continue to spend time with your friends if you are a normal teen.  My strongest advice is get a sponsor and talk to your sponsor every day.  If you lose your sponsor (they are abducted by aliens, or they move to Guam, whatever) get a new one with in 10 days or you will relapse.

Working the program is important, working with a therapist is important, going to AA and avoiding people who will not support your sobriety are important things, but nothing is more important than having a sponsor who you can really trust and you can call 24/7/365.

I wish you luck and just remember.  30% of people make it!  When you think about how much change sobriety requires it always shocks me that anyone makes it.  You can be one of the 30% and I hope you are.

Internet love? Be Wary

(Sorry friends it has been a very long time since I posted.  My son is too wonderful to pull myself away from when he is awake and when he is asleep I get lazy.  I will do better.)

Question:  I am on the tail end of relationship that isn’t going anywhere and so I began exploring online dating sites.  I met a man on a Christian site and we have been trading emails for a couple of months.  He lives one state away from me, which is annoying but not impossible.  Recently we have been talking about plans to meet.  I am little concerned though because he has already told me that he is in love with me and has sent me flowers.  I am flattered by his emails but am I wrong to think this is too much too fast? 

Answer:  You are wise to be wary.  Anyone who professes their love for someone they have never met in person should arouse suspicion.  In the best case scenario he is a hopeless romantic and is in love with the idea of being in love.  In the worst case scenario this is some sort of scam artist who might try to take advantage of you. 

This is not to say that internet dating is not a wonderful thing.  For centuries people were limited in who they could date by their geography.  The internet has opened up the opportunity for people to find partners who really share their interests and might be a great fit than anyone who they could have naturally encountered throughout the course of their day.

I think that any person who does not regularly find themselves in an environment where they are encountering dozens of attractive available people (so virtually everyone who is beyond college age), should consider creating a profile on an internet site if they are not finding what they are looking for in dating. 

That being said, never trust that anyone is who they claim to be online.  It is not until you have seen a person interacting with their friends, family, co-workers, waiters at restaurants, etc… that you have any idea who that person is. 

Hopefully you would do a bit of research before you selected a new doctor or a contractor to do a repair on your home.  Bring the same level of diligence before you invite someone into your life.  If this person lives far away try and check out their profile online and try to find a way to interact with some of their other friends, even if it is only in a virtual way.

If you are enjoying this connection and he is coming on a little too strong but you don’t want to push him away be direct.  You might try saying, “It feels great to read those words but I find it to be a bit overwhelming.  If you are interested in this going forward, and I hope you are, I need you to tone it down a little until we know each other a little better.” 

If he can’t tone it down then this is a person who you need to avoid.  He lacks social skills and empathy and that will not get better over time.  If he can bring himself to a level you are comfortable with I would still recommend connecting with someone else he knows before you meet in person. 

Keep safety in mind for a first meeting.  Let others know where you are going and how to reach you.  If possible meet in a setting where some of your friends can be there as well, like a concert.  Any person who refuses to meet with you in a public place and who refuses to let you communicate with their friends should send up some big red flags.

In this millennium there is no excuse for not going out and finding the person who can make you happy.  There is a fit out there for everyone and it has never been easier to search.  Just search safely using common sense and feedback from people you trust. 

where are the black male therapists?

(readers, I'm sorry I have not posted recently.  5 month old Ryan is sleeping right now so we will see if I can finish a blog before he wakes).  

Question:  My boyfriend and I have been growing apart and when we examined why he told me he feels the race thing is overwhelming him.  I'm white and he is black and while we love each other and our kids get along great, he is tired of the people staring at us when we are in public and the constant reminders of subtle racism exhaust him.  He is willing to go into couples counseling with me to try to overcome this issue but we cannot seem to find a black male therapist.  We are willing to try with someone else if we have to but I know if he doesn't feel like the therapist can really understand where he is coming from it is not going to work.  Any ideas?  

Answer:  Finding a therapist your boyfriend feels comfortable with is absolutely crucial, and while it might take a great deal of effort to find that person do not stop searching until you do. 

The fact is there are thousands of therapists who are skilled in couples counseling and who are culturally competent enough to help bring you and your boyfriend some clarity about the future of your relationship.

Just because a therapist does not share the experience of the client does not mean they cannot help.  I regularly work with clients who have been sexually assaulted, grew up in a divorced house hold, immigrated from another country, or who have had a day with really bad menstrual cramps.  I have never had to deal with any of these problems in my own life, and yet I seem to be able to help.

That being said, I never try to force it.  If a female student comes into my office and states they would rather work with a female I refer them right away.  It doesn't hurt my feelings, I just want them to start off with someone who will make them feel comfortable.

The experience of being judged and discriminated against based on the color of your skin is destructive in a way that can scarcely be comprehended by those who have not experienced it.  In addition, the experience of an African American male in our society is very different than that of an African American woman, so I can see why he would feel that any one not in that group would have difficulty understanding his level of discomfort in the relationship.  Since the race issue is central to the presenting problem, if you do not find someone who your boyfriend feels really gets it, therapy will be a waste of time.

The field of therapy is dominated by white females.  In my grad school cohort of over 100 social workers I was one of two hetero-sexual white males.  There were several African American men in my program but none of them were going into clinical social work.  The few African American male therapists I have met in my career have been in very high demand, but they are out there.

I would suggest utilizing websites like helppro.com, and if you are in an area with some universities contacting some of the clinical faculty and asking them for referrals.  The longer a person has been in the profession the more likely it is that they will have a contact and any good therapist is happy to help you find a good fit even if it isn't going to help them profit in anyway.

Another place to look is the spiritual community.  Many churches offer some pastoral counseling and if there is a church in your community that you believe would be supportive of your relationship and they have African American male ministers you may inquire to see if they provide counseling.  The added bonus is churches will often provide counseling as a free service.  

Once you have gathered some recommendations of effective therapists see if your boyfriend can do a phone interview with them to find out if he feels like it will be a good fit.  After a couple phone calls he may discover that finding a person who has a sense of humor that matches his is more important than finding someone who matches his race and gender.