There is a well known path for getting out of depression.

The idea is simple : break everything you want to do into steps, and do one step at a time. This short-circuits the problem of seeing everything as a giant mountain looming over you that would be impossible to overcome. Instead, that mountain becomes a staircase leading upwards and all you have to do is keep climbing.

And if you get tired, stop on a step and rest. The staircase will still be there. You’re not losing anything.

And when I say this path is well known, I mean it is particularly well known to me. When I went through something called the Core Program at Richmond Hospital Psychiatric Outpatients, the core of Core was the setting of simple, achievable goals every day then achieving them in order to build up your self confidence (and what I would call your will) by giving you a history of achievement to counter the negative voices inside.

And wow, that sounds great. Never worked for me, though. When I was asked every day in therapy for my goal and if I had achieved it, I just lied. Lying was easier, so I lied. The idea of actually doing what I was supposed to do seemed ridiculous to me.

Why? Partly because of the power of my depression. It was worse back then, but even now, it has a powerful magnetism that sucks all the energy, focus, and ambition out of you, and makes even tiny goals seem huge.

I mean, I would have had to first decide on a goal. That’s a whole nightmare right there. Option paralysis is my bete noire so I have no idea how I would be able to pick a goal amongst the millions of possibilities I can easily envision. Sure, it is technically true that if you can’t decide, you can just pick anything at all in order to move forward.

If all roads seem equally good, then it doesn’t matter which one you choose, does it? Worst case scenario is that you find out it is the wrong road and have to backtrack.

But I hate backtracking. Dunno why, I just do. I don’t want to ever go backwards, even when I know I should. Probably is connected with the intense deja vu I get sometimes.

And even if I could pick a goal, who says I will be able to find the motivation to pursue it? From my depression’s foul point of view, setting a goal just creates an opportunity for failure. So why bother?

Sad to say, but my response to that kind of pressure is usually to be paralyzed by indecision or lack of motivation until such time as it is too late to do anything about it and thus, via failure, the pressure is relieved.

It’s the perfect solution, provided you have absolutely no self-respect, pride, or shame.

But the big problem is those tiny steps the whole business is built upon. The idea is to keep breaking things down into smaller and smaller steps until you reach a size that no longer intimidates you, but the problem with that is that when the steps get insultingly small and basic, they become more depressing than helpful.

This is my life, you end up thinking. My big goal today is to brush my teeth. Whoopee.

And yeah, I know that is wrong, and goes against the whole idea of the “building up” road to mental health. But it doesn’t seem to be something over which I have control. That sarcastic voice in my head is always there. And it’s mean.

So I gave up on that model of recovery a long time ago. I am sure it works extremely well for a lot of people. I would not be surprised if it works well for more people than any other method.

But I am not like other people. I am not even like a lot of other depressives. My supercharged brain makes for all kinds of complications that others do not face. I can out-think myself at every turn. My inner prosecutor has access to the same intellect that the rest of the mind runs on, and it’s very good at its job.

And the thing is, I know I can’t just throw this stuff at my therapist. Frankly, there is no way he could handle it. I realized as a teenager that this mind of mine can utterly annihilate people. If I let the depression sit in opposition to the therapy and the therapist, it will win. It cannot be out-argued, out-thought, or out-maneuvered. In order to lose a match, it would have to go up against someone smarter and more powerful than it, and to be frank, I am not sure such a person even exists.

So even in therapy, I am restraining myself. I don’t let it become my depression, speaking through me versus my therapist. There is no way he would ever be able to win that fight. It has to be me and him versus my depression, and the depression has to be tied and gagged and never allowed to let loose.

I honestly believe that if I set it loose, it would alienate, demoralize, and verbally destroy my therapist. And then I wouldn’t have a therapist any more. There would be no way he could deal with me after that. Maybe wounded pride would force him to carry on for a little while, but I swear I am not being hyperbolic when I say that I can do a lot of damage to a person simply by overwhelming them with my intellect, my verbal skills, and my darkness.

And so that side of me stays locked up forever. I can’t imagine ever letting it loose on anybody. Someone else might be able to get away with being angry at the world and willing to take it out on anyone who dares to try to help you. But those people do not have the kind of weaponry I have.

So my tiger stays in his cage until the day I die.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.