Faith Salie looks at approval, Gordon Gano looks at that ugly lake
Also, depression - you won't believe this - can be a real jerk
We gotta have Faith, Faith, Faith
Turns out that you can win your high school beauty pageant, go to Harvard, make out with Matt Damon, and win a Rhodes Scholarship, and STILL have your life fall apart. That’s one of the many lessons gathered from this week’s Depresh Mode episode with Faith Salie, from CBS News Sunday Morning, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and the 1989 Miss Aphrodite pageant in suburban Atlanta.
Faith had everything going for her and very little going against her aside as she plunged into Hollywood. But then her mom died. And Hollywood wasn’t bringing her an endless series of roles. And she entered into a marriage that felt so wrong that she didn’t even want to look into the camera for her engagement photo, lest everyone see the dread in her eyes.
In time, she managed the depression and anorexia in her life, she remarried much more successfully, had kids like she’d always dreamt of, and found performance opportunities under her own name.
I talk with Faith about her memoir and one-woman play, Approval Junkie, and her belief that seeking approval from people isn’t automatically bad but it’s important to know why you’re seeking approval and from whom.
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Things to say “read it” about Reddit
I was not an early adopter of Reddit and even now I’m no more than a careful lurker. I don’t post stuff, I don’t comment. Because I just don’t have the emotional capacity to engage with yet another online “community”.
But I see a lot of civility and intelligence in some corners of Reddit and a lot of heart as well. I see many people wanting to make the world a nicer, smarter, better place.
Here are 12 categories (“subreddits”) that people interested in mental health might find useful.
r/Meditation shared experiences, stories, and instructions on how you can practice meditating, learn to quieten your mind, and feel more emotionally stable. Offering free guides for beginners on how to get started with meditation, information on different types of meditation, and recommended reading for beginners to pros, this community is a great place to help you improve your meditation practice whether you are new or experienced.
r/Mindfulness offers memes, quotes, tips, and personal experiences about incorporating mindfulness into your everyday life. Helping teach you how to live in the moment, stay positive, and focus on what is happening around you, this community is filled with inspirational posts.
Depression can be a wall against positive feedback
It’s like it digs into you and then puts up a barrier to keep you from removing it. Clever little jerk. From Psychology Today:
Researchers have suggested that depressed individuals struggle with “belief updating” in the face of positive feedback. In other words, someone who is depressed might expect a job interview to go badly because they don’t believe they’re competent. And if they’re offered the job, they might tell themselves, “I guess I really fooled the interviewer.” In other words, they fail to use the positive outcome to update their beliefs about their own competence. New research published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science examined whether those with symptoms of depression might view positive feedback about their own performance as less valid, preventing them from using this information to positively update beliefs about their abilities.
Yes, yes, John. Everyone should look to Pink Floyd for the most effective mental health management. Obviously.
Where to get latest numbers
I check in pretty regularly with the CDC Pulse survey on mental health, which is comprehensive in scope.
The short update: Yeesh. Numbers are bleak and getting more bleakerer.
Screenshot from today:
I went to see the Violent Femmes on Saturday night
They sounded great.
Gordon’s voice has completely held up.
They are all really masterful musicians.
I danced a lot.
We had to stand up the whole time and that was okay.
Many, many people there were over 50 years old.
I got a Violent Femmes t-shirt and I wore it to a photo shoot the next day. They were taking pictures of my band for an article in an AARP magazine.
No regrets!
Here’s what they played at the end of the encore:
LUCKY LUCKY....top 5 Violent Femmes songs (I can never decide on one!!)