Watched another show in the series. This one was about unemployment and hopelessness and how they affected health.
They illustrated with a town where the main business was a factory. People worked there, earning a good living, and then all of a sudden the company moved manufacturing to another country where they pay $1.50 an hour instead of $15 and benefits mean giving employees a free bus ride to work.
The loss of the factory was devastating to the town. Suddenly almost everyone was unemployed. People who had thought they would have a job forever suddenly had no good options. They could stay where they had built a home and put down roots and maybe find a job that paid minimum wage and had no benefits or they could start from scratch somewhere else (which is especially hard for those who are older and more established). The people in the town feel powerless. They realize that they are not in control of their lives. Some outside force can sweep away all they have built.
The people in the town had to accept their new circumstances. In a way that acceptance gave them peace, but it did not take away the feeling of powerlessness or hopelessness, which are major components of depression. When i think of depression I tend to think of depression without cause, but depression with cause has the same effect.
They went on to explore how other countries handle mass lay-offs, and how there is a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, particularly in this country. The gap in this country is greater than any in any other developed country in the world.
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You know how you can know something and yet not KNOW it? (And how you can KNOW something and still, every once in a while run across something that makes you KNOW it again?)
The show was interesting and informative… But it also made me think of myself because many of the feelings they were talking about are the same feelings i have had, to one extent or another, for most, perhaps all, of my life. I resist thinking of my feelings as depression, but no matter what the root cause or what name you put in it, when you feel powerless, the effect is the same! I suppose that was the “ah-ha” for me… that the effects are the same… particularly when one woman was talking about her weight gain, and then self-medicating with food and alcohol was discussed.
Of course the effects are the same! No matter what you call cause, depression or feeling powerless, you feel the same way, and you do the same things to feel better. I had not really thought of it that way.
Just interesting
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(I have rewritten this 3 or 4 times, trying to say what i want to say without getting off on some tangent. Even now i am not so much satisfied with it as i am tired of messing with it. I am going to post. So, if you are reading along and suddenly something does not make sense or there is a lack of flow….. it is because of all the rewrites. I am so tired of it now that i am tempted not to post at all…. but then there would be all that time spent for nothing!)
I totally get the re-write. I’m glad you stuck with it.
You know all those commercials for Cymbalta that say “Depression hurts” in a sympathetic, understanding female voice? I never know whether I’m offended or amused by those commercials. Cause it’s so stupid .. condescending … cloying .. whatever.
Oh well. I think that was a tangent. I’ll leave it in there.
A favorite quote (on this topic) is “Depression is anger without enthusiasm”. Which is way up there with hopelessness and powerlessness and such as triggers for depression. When something big and horrid happens to you, where does that anger go? Can it go anywhere? Can you do anything with it?
Depression can be a sort of analgesic – when you have all this competing anger and despair, and the awareness that there’s no outlet .. you can really drive yourself crazy. Or your body can tamp it all down, and let you survive for a while without feeling the full powerlessness and hopelessness of it all.
And, then, if you live in the modern world where the saber tooth tiger attack isn’t going to help jolt you out of the depression, it can backfire as a survival mechanism and become the source of the hopelessness it was helping you not process in the first place.
Ah, the woes of the top predator in the food chain. Depression and obesity.
Have you been reading the Christine Kane blog? http://christinekane.com/blog It’s been interesting to me … the way to make the different choice, to face hopelessness and powerlessness and to process the anger for what it is, instead of letting it turn into a different problem. Sort of …. not like that’s what the blog is about. But it seems to address that moment of choice.
On the subject of dealing with hard times, you’d have to go back in the archives a fair distance but http://www.dooce.com has some interesting times. She’s a blogger that’s been at it for a long, long time. People that read it has followed her through getting married, having kids, and fighting real depression from a few sources. She’s regularly admitted to being nearly certifiably insane… but isn’t, thanks to wonderful medicine.
Anyway. away from tangents.
On the subject of jobs, it seems to be a bigger and bigger trend for people to not stick with a company over the long term. I’ve read advice on sales jobs that was essentially: work at one place for 2-3 years, then move to the next company. Idea being that if you want to keep advancing you need to find new markets to sell to and you need to move companies to keep moving up the pay ladder.
I wish I could throw this up on a graph, but..
Job stability vs company size.
higher job stability = lower company size
lower job stability = bigger company size
at the same time…
higher company stability = higher company size
lower company stability = lower company size
So you either end up some place that the company is going to fire you or you end up working someplace that might not exists next month. I’m in the latter, though it would take some serious mistakes or legislative changes for us to go away.