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Kevin Love: Everyone is Going Through Something

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Kevin Love: Everyone is Going Through Something

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It came out of nowhere. I'd never had one before. I didn't even know if they were real. But it was real - as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle. Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my mental health has changed.

I've never been comfortable sharing much about myself. I turned 29 in September and for pretty much 29 years of my life I have been protective about anything and everything in my inner life. I was comfortable talking about basketball - but that came natural. It was much harder to share personal stuff, and looking back now I know I could have really benefited from having someone to talk to over the years. But I didn't share - not to my family, not to my best friends, not in public. Today, I've realized I need to change that. I want to share some of my thoughts about my panic attack and what's happened since. If you're suffering silently like I was, then you know how it can feel like nobody really gets it. Partly, I want to do it for me, but mostly, I want to do it because people don't talk about mental health enough. And men and boys are probably the farthest behind.

I know it from experience. Growing up, you figure out really quickly how a boy is supposed to act. You learn what it takes to "be a man." It's like a playbook: Be strong. Don't talk about your feelings. Get through it on your own. So for 29 years of my life, I followed that playbook. And look, I'm probably not telling you anything new here. These values about men and toughness are so that they're everywhere ... and invisible at the same time, surrounding us like air or water. They're a lot like depression or anxiety in that way.

So for 29 years, I thought about mental health as someone else's problem. Sure, I knew on some level that some people benefited from asking for help or opening up. I just never thought it was for me. To me, it was form of weakness that could derail my success in sports or make me seem weird or different.

Then came the panic attack.

It happened during a game.

It was November 5th, two months and three days after I turned 29. We were at home against the Hawks - 10th game of the season. A perfect storm of things was about to collide. I was stressed about issues I'd been having with my family. I wasn't sleeping well. On the court, I think the expectations for the season, combined with our 4-5 start, were weighing on me.

I knew something was wrong almost right after tip-off.

I was winded within the first few possessions. That was strange. And my game was just off. I played 15 minutes of the first half and made one basket and two free throws.

After halftime, it all hit the fan. Coach Lue called a timeout in the third quarter. When I got to the bench, I felt my heart racing faster than usual. Then I was having trouble catching my breath. It's hard to describe, but everything was spinning, like my brain was trying to climb out of my head. The air felt thick and heavy. My mouth was like chalk. I remember our assistant coach yelling something about a defensive set. I nodded, but I didn't hear much of what he said. By that point, I was freaking out. When I got up to walk out of the huddle, I knew I couldn't reenter the game - like, literally couldn't do it physically.

Coach Lue came up to me. I think he could sense something was wrong. I blurted something like, "I'll be right back," and I ran back to the locker room. I was running from room to room, like I was looking for something I couldn't find. Really I was just hoping my heart would stop racing. It was like my body was trying to say to me, You're about to die. I ended up on the floor in the training room, lying on my back, trying to get enough air to breathe.

The next part was a blur. Someone from the Cavs accompanied me to the Cleveland Clinic. They ran a bunch of tests. Everything seemed to check out, which was a relief. But I remember leaving the hospital thinking, Wait ... then what the hell just happened?

I was back for our next game against the Bucks two days later. We won, and I had 32. I remember how relieved I was to be back on the court and feeling more like myself. But I distinctly remember being more relieved than anything that nobody had found out why I had left the game against Atlanta. A few people in the organization knew, sure, but most people didn't and no one had written about it.

A few more days passed. Things were going great on the court, but something was weighing on me.
Why was I so concerned with people finding out?
It was a wake-up call, that moment. I'd thought the hardest part was over after I had the panic attack. It was the opposite. Now I was left wondering why it happened - and why I didn't want to talk about it.

Call it a stigma or call it fear or insecurity - you can call it a number of things - but what I was worried about wasn't just my own inner struggles but how difficult it was to them. I didn't want people to perceive me as somehow less reliable as a teammate, and it all went back to the playbook I'd learned growing up.

This was new territory for me, and it was pretty confusing. But I was certain about one thing: I couldn't bury what had happened and try to move forward. As much as part of me wanted to, I couldn't allow myself to dismiss the panic attack and everything underneath it. I didn't want to have to deal with everything sometime in the future, when it might be worse. I knew that much.

So I did one seemingly little thing that turned out to be a big thing. The Cavs helped me find a therapist, and I set up an appointment. I gotta stop right here and just say: I'm the last person who'd have thought I'd be seeing a therapist. I remember when I was two or three years into the league, a friend asked me why NBA players didn't see therapists. I scoffed at the idea. No way any of us is gonna talk to someone. I was 20 or 21 years old, and I'd grown up around basketball. And on basketball teams? Nobody talked about what they were struggling with on the inside. I remember thinking, What are my problems? I'm healthy. I play basketball for a living. What do I have to worry about? I'd never heard of any pro athlete talking about mental health, and I didn't want to be the only one. I didn't want to look weak. Honestly, I just didn't think I needed it. It's like the playbook said - figure it out on your own, like everyone else around me always had.

But it's kind of strange when you think about it. In the NBA, you have trained professionals to fine-tune your life in so many areas. Coaches, trainers and nutritionists have had a presence in my life for years. But none of those people could help me in the way I needed when I was lying on the floor struggling to breathe.

Still, I went to my first appointment with the therapist with some skepticism. I had one foot out the door. But he surprised me. For one thing, basketball wasn't the main focus. He had a sense that the NBA wasn't the main reason I was there that day, which turned out to be refreshing. Instead, we talked about a range of non-basketball things, and I realized how many issues come from places that you may not realize until you really look into them. I think it's easy to assume we know ourselves, but once you peel back the layers it's amazing how much there is to still discover.

Since then, we've met up whenever I was back in town, probably a few times each month. One of the biggest breakthroughs happened one day in December when we got to talking about my Grandma Carol. She was the pillar of our family. Growing up, she lived with us, and in a lot of ways she was like another parent to me and my brother and sister. She was the woman who had a to each of her grandkids in her room - pictures, awards, letters pinned up on the wall. And she was someone with simple values that I admired. It was funny, I once gave her a random pair of new Nikes, and she was so blown away that she called me to say thank you a handful of times over the year that followed.

When I made the NBA, she was getting older, and I didn't see her as often as I used to. During my sixth year with the T-Wolves, Grandma Carol made plans to visit me in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Then right before the trip, she was hospitalized for an issue with her arteries. She had to cancel her trip. Then her condition got worse quickly, and she fell into a coma. A few days later, she was gone.

I was devastated for a long time. But I hadn't really ever talked about it. Telling a stranger about my grandma made me see how much pain it was still causing me. Digging into it, I realized that what hurt most was not being able to say a proper goodbye. I'd never had a chance to really grieve, and I felt terrible that I hadn't been in better touch with her in her last years. But I had buried those emotions since her passing and said to myself, I have to focus on basketball. I'll deal with it later. Be a man.

The reason I'm telling you about my grandma isn't really even about her. I still miss her a ton and I'm probably still grieving in a way, but I wanted to share that story because of how eye-opening it was to talk about it . In the short time I've been meeting with the therapist, I've seen the power of saying things out loud in a setting like that. And it's not some magical process. It's terrifying and awkward and hard, at least in my experience so far. I know you don't just get rid of problems by talking about them, but I've learned that over time maybe you can better understand them and make them more manageable. Look, I'm not saying, Everyone go see a therapist . The biggest lesson for me since November wasn't about a therapist - it was about confronting the fact that I needed help.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this comes from reading DeMar's comments last week about depression. I've played against DeMar for years, but I never could've guessed that he was struggling with anything. It really makes you think about how we are all walking around with experiences and struggles - all kinds of things - and we sometimes think we're the only ones going through them. The reality is that we probably have a lot in common with what our friends and colleagues and neighbors are dealing with. So I'm not saying everyone should share all their deepest secrets - not everything should be public and it's every person's choice. But creating a better environment for talking about mental health ... that's where we need to get to.

Because just by sharing what he shared, DeMar probably helped some people - and maybe a lot more people than we know - feel like they aren't crazy or weird to be struggling with depression. His comments helped take some power away from that stigma, and I think that's where the hope is.

I want to make it clear that I don't have things figured out about all of this. I'm just starting to do the hard work of getting to know myself. For 29 years, I avoided that. Now, I'm trying to be truthful with myself. I'm trying to be good to the people in my life. I'm trying to face the uncomfortable stuff in life while also enjoying, and being grateful for, the good stuff. I'm trying to embrace it all, the good, bad and ugly.

I want to end with something I'm trying to remind myself about these days: Everyone is going through something that we can't see.

I want to write that again: Everyone is going through something that we can't see.

The thing is, because we can't see it, we don't know who's going through what and we don't know when and we don't always know why. Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another. It's part of life. Like DeMar said, "You never know what that person is going through "

Mental health isn't just an athlete thing. What you do for a living doesn't have to define who you are. This is an everyone thing. No matter what our circumstances, we're all carrying around things that hurt - and they can hurt us if we keep them buried inside. Not talking about our inner lives robs us of really getting to know ourselves and robs us of the chance to reach out to others in need. So if you're reading this and you're having a hard time, no matter how big or small it seems to you, I want to remind you that you're not weird or different for sharing what you're going through.

Just the opposite. It could be the most important thing you do. It was for me.

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Everyone Is Going Through Something | By Kevin Love

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It came out of nowhere. I'd never had one before. I didn't even know if they were real. But it was real - as real as a broken hand or a sprained ankle. Since that day, almost everything about the way I think about my mental health has changed.

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Teen Depression, Suicide, Smartphone Use Way Up

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Teen Depression, Suicide, Smartphone Use Way Up

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Washington Post

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Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens.

In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless - classic symptoms of depression - surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13-to-18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

In a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression, suicide attempts and suicide appeared among teens from every background: more privileged and less privileged, across all races and ethnicities, and in every region of the country. All told, our analysis found that the generation of teens I call " iGen " - those born after 1995 - is much more likely to experience mental-health issues than their millennial predecessors.

What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens' lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.

All signs point to the screen

Because the years between 2010 and 2015 were a period of steady economic growth and falling unemployment, it's unlikely that economic malaise was a factor. Income inequality was (and still is) an issue, but it didn't suddenly appear in the early 2010s: This gap between the rich and poor had been widening for decades. We found that the time teens spent on homework barely budged between 2010 and 2015, effectively ruling out academic pressure as a cause.

However, according to the Pew Research Center, smartphone ownership crossed the 50 percent threshold in late 2012 - right when teen depression and suicide began to increase. By 2015, 73 percent of teens had access to a smartphone.

Not only did smartphone use and depression increase in tandem, but time spent online also was linked to mental-health issues across two different data sets. We found that teens who spent five or more hours a day online were 71 percent more likely than those who spent only one hour a day to have at least one suicide risk factor (depression, thinking about suicide, making a suicide plan or attempting suicide). Overall, suicide risk factors rose significantly after two or more hours a day of time online.

Of course, it's possible that instead of time online causing depression, depression causes more time online. But three other studies show that is unlikely (at least when viewed through social media use).

Two studies followed people over time, with both studies finding that spending more time on social media led to unhappiness, while unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third study randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook for a week vs. continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week.

The argument that depression might cause people to spend more time online also doesn't explain why depression increased so suddenly after 2012. Under that scenario, more teens became depressed for an unknown reason and then started buying smartphones, which doesn't seem too logical.

What's lost when we're plugged in

Even if online time doesn't directly harm mental health, it could still adversely affect it in indirect ways, especially if time online crowds out time for other activities.

For example, while conducting research for my book on iGen, I found that teens now spend much less time interacting with their friends in person. Interacting with people face to face is one of the deepest wellsprings of human happiness; without it, our moods start to suffer and depression often follows. Feeling socially isolated is also one of the major risk factors for suicide. We found that teens who spent more time than average online and less time than average with friends in person were the most likely to be depressed. Since 2012, that's what has occurred en masse: Teens have spent less time on activities known to benefit mental health (in-person social interaction) and more time on activities that may harm it (time online).

Teens are also sleeping less, and teens who spend more time on their phones are more likely than others to not be getting enough sleep. Not sleeping enough is a major risk factor for depression, so if smartphones are causing less sleep, that alone could explain why depression and suicide increased so suddenly.

Depression and suicide have many causes: Genetic predisposition, family environments, bullying and trauma can all play a role. Some teens would experience mental-health problems no matter what era they lived in.

But some vulnerable teens who would otherwise not have had mental-health issues may have slipped into depression because of too much screen time, not enough face-to-face social interaction, inadequate sleep or a combination of all three.

It might be argued that it's too soon to recommend less screen time, given that the research isn't completely definitive. However, the downside to limiting screen time - say, to two hours a day or less - is minimal. In contrast, the downside to doing nothing - given the possible consequences of depression and suicide - seems, to me, quite high.

It's not too early to think about limiting screen time; let's hope it's not too late.

Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. This article was originally published on theconversation.com.

Read more

Blue light from electronics disturbs sleep, especially for teenagers

More than a third of teenage girls experience depression

Growing up in the screen age

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Perspective | Teenage depression and suicide are way up - and so is smartphone use

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Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens. In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless - classic symptoms of depression - surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent.

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Time Magazine

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Teen Depression and Anxiety: Why the Kids Are Not Alright

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Experts say teen depression is on the rise. Find out the causes of teen depression and anxiety and how parents are handling it.

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Journal Writing for Depression and Anxiety

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Journal Writing for Depression and Anxiety

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Blog post

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Hello, My name is Faith and I've been managing depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. I started this blog to share my tips and tricks and help other bad ass babes kick ass on their mental health journey. I have an online support group you can join for free here. If you need help finding a mental health care provider call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit BetterHelp to talk to a certified therapist online at an affordable price.

Hi Friends,

Writing has always been one of the main tools I use to cope with my anxiety and depression. When there's just too much garbage in my head or I just feel like shit I can usually sort it out by It can help you clear your thoughts and process your feelings. Take a crack at it and see if it makes you feel better. Here are some journal prompts for depression and anxiety to get you started. If you're looking for other mental health resources be sure to checkout my other posts about depression and anxiety.

PS
Grab the free mental health journal below

1. Write about a difficult time in your life that you overcame

2. Describe how you want your life to look in 5, 10 and 20 years

3. What are the three things that scare you the most and why?

4. Name five moments when you were ecstatically happy

5. What are three things you can do to help your mental health?

6. When times get tough I want to remember that _______

7. My greatest qualities are ________

8. 10 things I feel thankful for are __________

9. Right now my greatest challenge is ________

10. This week I am looking forward to these three things _________

11. On a scale of 1-10 my mental health is at a _____ because

12. If I could meet anyone in the world I would like to meet _____ because

13. Describe a situation where everything worked out for you

14. Who has been your biggest supporter? Write that person a thank you letter

15. Today my victories were:

16. What was your biggest learning moment this week?

17. Write a thank you letter to your body

18. If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?

19. Describe your biggest accomplishment and why it means so much to you

20. No matter how terrible my day is these ten things can always make me feel better:

21. The biggest lessons I've learned from anxiety are:

22. If I didn't have depression I would have never learned________________

23. If I didn't have any fear I would ________________

24. What was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it?

25. What do you wish most people knew about you and why?

26. What was your most embarrassing moment and why?

27. A fear I would like to overcome is ________. I can do these things to start overcoming it:

28. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be and why?

29. Describe your happiest and saddest childhood memories

30. If I could have any career I would be a __________ because:

31. What was the last thing that made you feel deeply frustrated?

32. How do you want to be remembered?

33. Describe a time when you had to make a really hard choice

34. What would your life be like if you didn't have (depression, anxiety, etc)?

35. What is a trait that you admire most in others? In what ways do you see that trait in yourself

36. Name ten things you can start doing to take care of yourself?

37. What are your ten worst habits and how do they impact your life?

38. Describe a time when you sabotaged a good situation for yourself. Explore why you did that

39. What would unconditional love look like for you? What would it feel like?

40. If you had to pick one day to relive over and over for the rest of your life what would it be and why?

41. Describe your perfect relationship

42. How would you describe yourself to a stranger?

43. What are your ten best talents?

44. What was the best compliment you ever received?

45. What is the most unique thing about you? Do you like to hide it or let it show?

46. If you knew this was your last day on earth what would you do?

47. Name ten songs that make you feel pumped

48. If you could achieve anything in your lifetime what would it be?

49. What friendship that you've had was the most meaningful?

I hope you found these journal prompts for depression and anxiety useful. I usually keep this list by my bed and I'll write a couple in my journal each night. I find it helpful to use the prompts instead of just trying to journal off the top of my head each night. I hope you found this helpful 🙂 You can also checkout my post on how to feel confident when you have anxiety and things to do when you can't afford therapy.

I am not a licensed therapist. If you are suffering from a major disorder and need treatment please seek the help of a professional. If you need help finding a mental health care provider call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit BetterHelp to talk to a certified therapist online at an affordable price. You can download a free printable list of hotlines here and join the free mental health support group on Facebook here. This post contains affiliate links, you can read my full disclosure policy here.

P.S.
I would love it if you join my internet family! Checkout Facebook/ Twitter for informational articles and Instagram for inspirational quotes to keep you going. Follow me on SnapChat to see me get through the day to day grind (also videos of my cute pup!).

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Journal Writing Prompts for Depression and Anxiety

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Hello, My name is Faith and I've been managing depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. I started this blog to share my tips and tricks and help other bad ass babes kick ass on their mental health journey. I have an online support group you can join for free here.

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Big Think

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You already know where you stand on Holden Caulfield. Either you found him a kindred spirit in your youth and continue to sympathize with him-less blindly, more wistfully-as you age; or else you found him a whiner then and you find him a whiner now.

According to the New York Times, the second faction is gaining ground. In an oddly statistics-free trend piece, the paper reported in 2009 that The Catcher in the Rye has lost favor among teens: "what once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many as 'weird,' 'whiny' and 'immature.'" (No word on whether any wiseass added "phony.")

Of course, some high schoolers will trash Hamlet if given the chance, but on this book you won't find much consensus from the literati, either. Harold Bloom has branded Catcher a "period piece" but concedes Holden's archetypal status. Norman Mailer called Salinger "the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school." Where Joan Didion is skeptical about Holden's pandering "relatability," William Faulkner left us this grand tribute:
[Holden's] tragedy was that when he attempted to enter the human race, there was no human race there. There was nothing for him to do save buzz, frantic and inviolate, inside the glass wall of his tumbler, until he either gave up or was himself, by himself, by his own frantic buzzing, destroyed.
Anecdotally, I've noticed a similar divide among bookish friends. The reason may be that Holden holds up a mirror to factors besides "taste": class, cultural background, individual personality. Where some skilled readers see a flawed but sensitive young man, others have a hard time seeing anything but an entitled little twerp.

Still, an infuriating character is not necessarily a failed characterization. If Holden is the latter, we should be able to identify specific failures.

The case against him seems to turn on three main objections. The first is that his narrative voice is, in the Times's phrase, "grating and dated." The second is that his plight lacks genuine tragic stature. (As one student, quoted secondhand in the Times, put it: "I can't really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.") The third is that he's too saintly (or holier-than-thou) to win our sympathies-that his conscientious alienation from the human race comes to look like its own form of prep-school snobbery.

Let me address each of these in turn. Like most of Salinger's fiction, Catcher is a pure voice piece, and Holden's teenage argot is so pronounced as to constitute almost a dialect. On rereading I find that Salinger does sometimes lean too hard on this effect. The constant "goddam"s, "whaddya"s, "lousy"s, and so on-not to mention the hedgings and repetitions ("in some ways," "I mean," "it really was")-add up to an assault of tics that threatens to exhaust the reader's patience. Then again, Twain sometimes goes overboard with dialect too. And I've never heard anyone claim that Salinger got his teenspeak wrong -that it wasn't basically accurate for its time and place. So while we may convict Holden on this first charge, we shouldn't hang him for it.

The second charge is potentially more damning. Prep school angst alone isn't enough to ground a novel. Adolescent drinking, sexual fumbling, and academic failure would seem to be grist for a comic picaresque, but while Catcher can be very funny, its tragic intent is clear. So what, if anything, elevates Holden's martyrdom to Faulknerian heights? The best answer I've read came from playwright Polly Stenham in a tribute to the recently deceased Salinger:

[Catcher] reads as a coming of age thing when you are young; when you get a bit older, it's about sexuality and being lost and later you see that it's about an epic breakdown following a death. But he's so light with that material-he dips it in a tiny bit and you have to really concentrate to see it.

The death she means is that of Holden's younger brother Allie, and she's right that it's the crucial background against which the whole story takes shape. Beneath the surface of its urban preppie setting, Catcher is not a portrait of rich-kid ennui but a portrait of grief, and should be judged accordingly. I personally find it a convincing portrait, full of eerie particulars-for example, Holden's absurd fear of "disappearing" whenever he crosses a street. This is many things at once: a superstitious fear of death, a displaced suicidal impulse, the Raskolnikov-like sense of having cut himself off from everyone, and a dread that the integrity of his grief (against which everything else becomes "phony") will disappear in the transition to adulthood.

Holden's inability to save Allie from death fuels his desire to rescue innocence from anything that threatens it, including the corruptions of adult sexuality and money. It becomes, in fact, a puritanical impulse with which he wrestles: he lets fly with just about every swear word in the language except those having to do with sex. Famously, he erases the graffito "Fuck you" from walls where kids can see it-where, most likely, kids wrote it. This gesture should be paired with an earlier episode, in which he packs a snowball at his windowsill but can't bear to throw it, lest he disturb the pristine whiteness below.

His tendency toward puritanism brings us to the last objection. Despite his reputation as a foul-mouthed rebel, the truth is that Holden often risks sounding sanctimonious. Unrepentant sinners sometimes work as literary characters, but saints never do. To be too good for the world is to be, by definition, too good for us.

I can't deny that this is a pitfall to which Salinger is particularly vulnerable. Holden is a spiritual cousin to the Glass family, of whom John Updike once wrote, "Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them." Seymour Glass especially (except in the short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish") is a genuine failure of characterization: impossibly good, impossibly wise. People who hate Holden may be reacting to a similar sense that we're expected to love him beyond measure.

I would argue, though, that Holden remains flawed enough to keep him interesting. He is frequently, by his own admission, childish. (" Sleep tight, ya morons! " he yells as he leaves his dorm for good.) He can also be cowardly (as during his run-in with Maurice the pimp), needy (he's literature's most notorious drunk dialer), and misanthropic ("I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it"). In other words, he's believably sixteen. And however hard Salinger tried to fulfill it as a man, as an author he shows Holden's daydream of monkish seclusion-of living alone and posing as a deaf-mute-to be misguided. Exiled in a mental health facility at the end of the novel, Holden finds himself "missing everybody."

Within the confines of the book, in other words, Salinger is more or less in control of his ironies. Holden is not a saint, but he is certainly a writer. (He blows off every class except English, fantasizes about talking with Thomas Hardy, and so on.) That's why, tiring though his voice can be, I can never dismiss the kid. Writers of any kind secretly know that they, too, are childish, irritating, self-involved-but always desperate to stay on the side of the angels. If well-adjusted people close the covers on Holden in exasperation, I can't blame them; but I know I judge him at my peril.
[Illustration of Holden courtesy Flickr Creative Commons, user 50 Watts.]

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You already know where you stand on Holden Caulfield. Either you found him a kindred spirit in your youth and continue to sympathize with him-less blindly, more wistfully-as you age; or else you found him a whiner then and you find him a whiner now. According to the New York Times, the second factio...

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Goodreads

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The Catcher in the Rye - Holden's Psychiatric Illness (showing 1-16 of 16)

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16 discussion posts. Deleted User said: The catcher in the rye was an analogy for Holden, who saw in kids attributes such as spontaneity and kindness t...

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Audiobook - not professional, but ok to share with students

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Audiobook - not professional, but ok to share with students

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Catcher in the Rye tie in to famous shootings

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Catcher in the Rye tie in to famous shootings

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Tie into Mental Health?

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Will Smith in the movie "Six Degrees of Separation" talking about the J.D. Salinger novel "The Catcher in the Rye"

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Crash Course Literature

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Language, Voice, and Holden Caulfield - The Catcher in the Rye Part 1: CC English Literature #6

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Crash Course Literature

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Holden, JD, and the Red Cap - The Catcher in the Rye Part 2: Crash Course English Literature #7

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TED Talk

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Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share | TED Talk

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“The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.” In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to…

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Article

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A Message from David Kessler

I was privileged to co-author two books with the legendary, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as well as adapt her well-respected stages of dying for those in grief. As expected, the stages would present themselves differently in grief. In our book, On Grief and Grieving we present the adapted stages in the much needed area of grief. The stages have evolved since their introduction and have been very misunderstood over the past four decades. They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss.

The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order. Our hope is that with these stages comes the knowledge of grief 's terrain, making us better equipped to cope with life and loss. At times, people in grief will often report more stages. Just remember your grief is an unique as you are.

NEW BOOK

Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler-an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving-journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning.

In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler's insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son.

How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief-meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Read More

Denial is the first of the five stages of grief™️. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.

Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, "Where is God in this? Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn't attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn't around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure - - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.

BARGAINING Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. "Please God, " you bargain, "I will never be angry at my wife again if you'll just let her live." After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. "What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?" We become lost in a maze of "If only..." or "What if..." statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening...if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining's companion. The "if onlys" cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we "think" we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.

DEPRESSION After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It's important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you're in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn't get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.

ACCEPTANCE Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being "all right" or "OK" with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don't ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.

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Five Stages of Grief by Elisabeth Kubler Ross & David Kessler

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I was privileged to co-author two books with the legendary, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as well as adapt her well-respected stages of dying for those in grief. As expected, the stages would present themselves differently in grief. In our book, On Grief and Grieving we present the adapted stages in the much needed area of grief.

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Difference Between Depression and the Blues

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Difference Between Depression and the Blues

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Web MD

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Sooner or later, everyone gets the blues. Feeling sadness, loneliness, or grief when you go through a difficult life experience is part of being human. And most of the time, you can continue to function. You know that in time you will bounce back, and you do.

But what if you don't bounce back? What if your feelings of sadness linger, are excessive, or interfere with your work, sleep, or recreation? What if you're feeling fatigue or worthlessness, or experiencing weight changes along with your sadness? You may be experiencing major depression.

Also known as clinical depression, major depressive disorder, or unipolar depression, major depression is a medical condition that goes beyond life's ordinary ups and downs. Almost 18.8 million American adults experience depression each year, and women are nearly twice as likely as men to develop major depression. People with depression cannot simply "pull themselves together" and get better. Treatment with counseling, medication, or both is key to recovery.

Major Depression: What Are the Symptoms?

Depression shows itself in different ways. Common depression symptoms are:

Depressed mood, sadness, or an "empty" feeling, or appearing sad or tearful to others

Loss of interest or pleasure in activities you once enjoyed

Significant weight loss when not dieting, or significant weight gain (for example, more than 5% of body weight in a month)

Inability to sleep or excessive sleeping

Restlessness or irritation (irritable mood may be a symptom in children or adolescents too), or feelings of "dragging"

Fatigue or loss of energy

Feelings of worthlessness, or excessive or inappropriate guilt

Difficulty thinking or concentrating, or indecisiveness

Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or specific plan for committing suicide

Depression Treatment: When Should You Get Help?

If you have five or more of these symptoms for most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks, and the symptoms are severe enough to interfere with your daily activities, you may have major depression. Your primary care doctor is a good place to start. Your doctor can screen you for depression, and help you manage and treat your symptoms so that you can feel better.

Sources

SOURCES:

University of New Mexico Counseling Assistance and Referral Services: "Coping with the Blues"

University of Michigan: "Depressive Disorders"

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital: "Major Depression"

University of Michigan Depression Center: "Major Depressive Disorder"

The Journal of the American Medical Association. "Recommendations for Screening Depression in Adults," Vol. 315, No. 4, January 26, 2016.

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The Difference Between Depression and the Blues

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Sooner or later, everyone gets the blues. Feeling sadness, loneliness, or grief when you go through a difficult life experience is part of being human. And most of the time, you can continue to function. You know that in time you will bounce back, and you do.

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Huffington Post

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In honor of April Fools' Day, I thought it appropriate to pay homage to that jokester, much beloved of all adolescents and many adults, Holden Caulfield, protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. In Caulfield, J.D. Salinger, who just passed away a few months ago, created a famously world-weary youth, who fibs about his age and name, horses around with his roommate and numerous others, and, like Bob Dylan in his early years, generally puts everyone on.

But I am less interested in his pranksterism than I am in his mental state. At the suggestion of my wife, Barbara, I have recently re-read the book in light of my own past psychosis. While it is obvious that Caulfield is depressed (he says so throughout the book, and he exhibits symptoms of depression, such as an inability to concentrate and anhedonia, a lack of interest in just about anything), it may be less obvious that he appears to be both manic and psychotic.

He may not engage in random acts of sex as some manic people do, but he drinks almost as frequently as a Hemingway character, and he spends money, smokes and swears wantonly in the novel. Indeed, it may be impossible to find a single page where he is not drinking (or attempting to drink) alcohol, smoking, spending money or swearing, behavior characteristic of someone in the thralls of mania.

Even more intriguing to me are his psychotic symptoms. When he picks up a magazine in Grand Central Station, he reads an article in which he seems to resemble the man in the piece who has "lousy hormones"; then, he reads an article about sores in your mouth possibly leading to cancer. He gets quite depressed, reacting almost as I did years ago during my second psychotic break, when I thought the newspapers were sending me subliminal messages just to torment me.

As one gets deeper into the book, the psychosis picks up and takes on a vertiginous, frenetic quality as if Caulfield risks falling into a vortex. He starts fearing that he won't be able to get across street intersections, and to help him he talks to his deceased brother, Allie, whom he adored.

Some have cited the parallels between Caulfield and Hamlet, both of whom are grieving a loved one. The parallel is in fact made by Caulfield himself when he discusses seeing the Laurence Olivier version of Hamlet; Caulfield is upset that Olivier played the Prince of Denmark as a warrior, rather than as a "sad, screwed-up type guy." Caulfield also invokes Hamlet in referring sarcastically to Ackley, one of his prep school floor mates, as "a gentleman and a scholar," a phrase used by Hamlet to describe Horatio.

Furthermore, Caulfield's world-weariness echoes that of Hamlet, the most world-weary of young men (though he is 30 years old, not a teen like Caulfield). Hamlet of course refers to the world as "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable." Then there is the contempt that Hamlet heaps on Osric, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and Polonius, which is not unlike the contempt Caulfield displays toward all the phonies like his girlfriend, "old Sally."

It is ironic to me that killers like Mark David Chapman or wannabe killers like John Hinckley have allegedly hailed Catcher, stating that they were reading Salinger's book before they shot John Lennon and President Reagan respectively. Some claim that Chapman and Hinckley suffer from mental illness. But they strike me as being psychopaths, not psychotics.

A true psychotic, like Caulfield, is much more likely to be a pacifist, than a murderer. Caulfield says on several occasions that if there is another war he hopes that they just line him up and shoot him, rather than force him to commit violent acts. And while Caulfield gets into two fights in the book, he does not start them.

Holden Caulfield will always be known for decrying phoniness, but perhaps he should also be remembered for his myriad acts of kindness throughout the book, filling the donation box of two nuns, balancing a see-saw so a kid won't fall off, generously tipping a woman at the coat-check, giving his turtleneck sweater to a boy who later commits suicide, and buying his kid sister, Phoebe, a record, though it slips from his hand and breaks.

Phoebe still appreciates the gesture.

It is Phoebe, who has the salient insight into Caulfield, when she says, "You don't like any thing that's happening."

Other than his love for Phoebe and his deceased brother, Caulfield does have trouble thinking of one thing that he likes, until he pictures himself catching little kids in the rye, preventing them from falling off a cliff. Caulfield may be a screw-up, more than a savior, but he has a generous heart and should be a paragon for those who believe in good deeds, not acts of violence.

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Holden Caulfield: Depressed, Psychotic and All

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In honor of April Fools' Day, I thought it appropriate to pay homage to that jokester, much beloved of all adolescents and many adults, Holden Caulfield, protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. In Caulfield, J.D.