August 2019
This morning I have spent way too much time searching the internet for a statistic in a book. The statistic is that “Depression affects as much as 80% of the population [of Inuit peoples of Greenland]” the book is Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon.
As you might have thought, I started this investigation in the notes section of the book, but for this statistic, nothing. There were references to papers on suicide – and just googling Greenland suicide rates brings up a multitude of scary reports declaring Greenland’s suicide rate to be particularly worryingly high. Depression is referenced in such papers as a factor in suicide. However, I have nothing on the actual rates of clinical (also known as major) depression in the Inuit peoples of Greenland or any context on the original statistic.
Then again, I am sceptical about rates for such things anyway
After all, there is no official record of me ever being depressed and the only official record of me being sexually abused is the little red flag that I asked to be placed on my health record.
During the winter months, the Inuit people stay inside, in their usually small houses keeping close to keep warm. The book explains that “In these circumstances of enforced intimacy, there is no place for complaining or talking about problems or for anger and accusations. The Inuit simply have a taboo against complaining. They are silent and brooding or they are storytellers given to laughter, or they talk about conditions outside and the hunt, but they almost never speak of themselves. Depression, with concomitant hysteria and paranoia, is the price paid for the intense communality of Inuit lives.”
The other day, I stood in the living room and jumped up and down
A grand simultaneous two-footed stomp – and made an angry noise. My housemate glanced up from his phone and gave me a questioning look asking, ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’. I apologised and said, in Spanish, that I had to release some of my frustration at our current situation so that it wouldn’t pop up in my dreams. He nodded and went back to his phone.
The next morning our conversation went something like this
Him: How many people did you kill last night?
Me: Zero. I told you. With the ‘ragghh’ no bad dreams.
‘How many people did you kill last night’ is a reference to a morning some months back when I looked worse for wear and couldn’t speak Spanish very well and eventually explained that I was shaking off an unpleasant dream in which I’d become rather murderous. ‘How many people did you kill last night’ means ‘how did you sleep?’. It’s an invitation to express how I am.
If we don’t have safe, civilised ways to acknowledge our emotions, they will either show themselves in unsafe, less-civilised manners or submerge themselves silently within and we will become numb. Acting in an unsafe, less-civilised manner is a shortcut to relationship destruction and becoming numb is the highway to depression.
Last week I stood on the beach and threw rocks at the sea.
All of us have just lost an incredible amount of our freedom
Many of us have lost much of what gives us meaning in any given week. There is a tremendous amount to feel angry about, frustrated with and much to grieve. Then there’s the anxiety that’s churning through our bloodstream. I have ulcers in my mouth, my skin looks horrific and those muscles around my neck and shoulders are stupidly tense. Routines have shattered and relationships (both with those people whom we can’t see and those whom we are now seeing much too much of) are going to be tested. Rationally I understand the need for social distancing. Yet it’s against my instincts. My body believes that acceptance is conveyed with touch and that if no one is picking the fleas out of my fur then something is terribly wrong.
The fact that everyone is currently facing the same horrible challenge doesn’t negate any individual’s emotions. It is not self-pitying to grieve the loss that we are going through. It’s entirely reasonable to be ridiculously anxious when faced with tremendous uncertainty.
There was a dead sea lion on the beach. The vultures had gored out its eyes.
Someone else being worse off than you is not an excuse not to grieve your own pain
My sister and I had a long conversation a few weeks back about the difference between complaining and expressing negative emotions. Smashing a plate on the patio is expressing emotion. Verbally, when you’re expressing an emotion you probably are referring to the name of an emotion. I feel sad. I feel frustrated. I feel hurt. If you can say the sentence using the word feel, you’re probably closer to expressing emotion. Except ‘I feel that’, is possibly ‘feel’ masquerading as ‘in my opinion’.
The wonderful lady who led the yoga retreat I went on with my mother recently wrote:
Not everyone is articulate about their emotions
‘We’re doing fine’ or ‘surviving’ might possibly actually mean ‘I have uncomfortable feelings but I haven’t got a clue how to speak them’ or perhaps ‘I feel ashamed of admitting what it is I am feeling’. Or it might mean ‘my feelings are none of your business’.
My dear friend Jessika recently wrote a whole lot about her struggle to express how she feels sometimes.
Complaining tends to focus more on a series of events
And has much more to do with ‘you, he, she, it, they, the virus, the government, the economic reality’. Sometimes, when it can spark positive change, it is vital. Sometimes it does nothing but wears down the people around you. Think it’s fair to say that we are all a little thin-skinned right now.
I feel frustrated that I cannot work. I am worried about what is going to happen. I hate having my freedom restricted. I feel sad that I may not see my friends here for a long time. I am angry at my own helplessness and how this crisis is going to have such a harsh economic effect on those who were already struggling.
Finding a balance between speaking and staying silent is going to be challenging
Inevitably, we’re all going to sway too far into unhealthy complaining, excessive inward absorption of our emotions and spew few too many unkind comments or stay too silent. This is the reality of being forced into this new, uncomfortable, unnatural way of living. However, regardless of the accuracy of the statistics, it’s clear to see that if we don’t manage our situation, there will be a noticeable mental health cost further down the line.
Yet, although we are undoubtedly scared, maybe this is a moment where we can learn the names of some of those tricky words: sadness, grief, loss, anger, hatred, fear. Maybe this moment where we are forced to readjust can be a moment where we learn to see our emotional states a little clearer. Maybe we can look after one another and learn to ask and answer those tricky questions like ´how many people did you kill last night?’.
Let’s throw rocks in the sea.
For some not-so-light reading:
- Mental Health and Suicide in Canada and Greenland
- https://nordicwelfare.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gronland_webb.pdf
- The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
- And his 1998 New Yorker article
