TRIGGER WARNING: PARKAS
There was snow in St Paul this week. A few inches, melted to slush in a few days, nothing too huge. Although it was the most snow in October we’ve ever had, October snow is not that unusual. In 1991, there was tons of snow on Halloween. If you want to know more about that snow, ask any Minnesotan who was there. Or don’t ask them, doesn’t matter, they’ll tell you anyway.
Snowfall amounts back then:
The snow we just had wasn’t THE snow of the 2020 winter. That will come in December, probably, when it’s cold enough to cover the grass until March. This recent snow came with temperatures around 33 to 35 fahrenheit. We could take it.
I was thinking about how that situation is analogous to managing mental health in October of 2020. And I was thinking about that because I feel like I’ve just forgotten everything I learned over the last two years regarding how to manage my head. Lately, I’ve either slid or almost slid into all sorts of beating-myself-up patterns.
“Oh, there’s a delay on the project I was going to do? (tortured reasoning, tortured reasoning) I am a complete failure in every way.”
“Gave some maybe not great advice to my child? Surely this is because I’m a terrible father in every way and I have ruined my child’s life.”
These are familiar voices with the dumbest ideas imaginable that I listen to anyway because I always do. Well, I always USED to. Then I climbed out of it. Over the course of the last two years of therapy, I’ve learned how to spot that annoying voice and the distorted reality it barfs forward. I’ve learned how to put that voice in its place. And really - and this was so difficult - I’ve learned to think of myself as a legit person who has inherent value by dint of existence. That is, I didn’t have to win, I didn’t have to prove myself, I didn’t have to win the adoration of others, I was already okay.
When the cold winds of depression and the snow of depression kick in, I can stay warm and dry because I’ve built myself a parka of positive mental health. And it’s SUCH A COMFY PARKA. I feel like you need to have lived in somewhere persistently cold as ass to know how good the comfy parka feels.
I’d like to do a cover of Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” called “Cold as Ass”.
But here’s the thing: mentally? Out there? In the present day mental climate? It’s not October snow. It’s a brutal late January snow. It’s an ice storm, yo. With the COVID, the horrifyingly important election, unemployment in my case, the challenge and sometimes guilt that goes with just seeing friends, it’s negative 30 out there and that’s BEFORE the windchill.
Parka = therapy work, weather = state of the world. So you might think, “Hey! I built a parka to guard against this and it doesn’t work! I’m still cold!” You’re not! It’s a beautiful parka! And under regular conditions it’s great! Down to 10 degrees or so. The problem is that right now IT IS JUST SO FUCKING UNBELIEVABLY COLD MY GOD.
Give yourself some kindness and understanding.
Summer will come. Keep working on those extra warm linings.
Oh, Hipster ZZ Top. You’re doomed.
This idea of the winter coat that isn’t quite winter enough was on my mind yesterday during my weekly chat with Ana Marie Cox on Instagram Live (Wednesdays at 3:30 Central). She took the analogy a a step further, mentioning that when a group of people are in very cold weather, they huddle together for warmth. Our collective body heat makes everything more bearable. Just look at those groups of penguins in the antarctic who gather in massive cuddle rings, all of them in rotation so that everybody gets that extra warm spot in the middle from time to time.
I like that some penguins are just hanging out on the periphery. It’s like they’re taking a smoke break.
Hey penguins! Move to, like, Tampa! I got all kinds of great ideas.
But Ana’s point was that one should make contact with others and share emotional warmth. It’s tricky during COVID, of course, because it’s an analogy and one mustn’t physically gather close with others. You know what else is tricky during COVID? ALL THINGS.
Also: how relieved are the Corona beer people that “coronavirus” isn’t the default term anymore like it was in the beginning?
I hear from people nearly every day who were helped by my book or by my podcast.
And it’s really great. It’s flattering that they tracked down my email address and it feels warm and good that I made something that helped people. A lot of them say that they’re sad the podcast is over and I have a lot to say about that but I mustn’t. Legal stuff and contract stuff. But I wouldn’t say it’s over. It’s just metamor… metamorphi… it’s changing.
I’ll be honest, it’s been a rough few months being off the digital air and not having a job. Not economically tough but I feel like I don’t really exist as a person? And that’s kind of fucked up. Of course of course OF COURSE I’m a person regardless of whether I make something for the public good. That said, for a couple of decades now, I’ve been working on audio shows designed to inform, entertain, comfort, and serve others so it’s just part of my day to day. I love the work but it’s apparent I’ve gravitated toward work that regularly Without that, I feel like I'm fading from existence a bit. Again: that is some messed up thinking. Some distorted saddie habitual thinking. But these are the trying times that overwhelm the healthy habits one may have built. My parka has just been too thin for all this. Cold out there. I saw a Yeti outside.
Maybe you’re in a similar spot in some ways where the first thing that takes a hit when times are rough is your sense of self. If someone needs to catch the cannonball, you line right up for the hit like the guy from the album Van Halen III, with Gary Cherone on lead vocals.
Anyway, letters. A nice person named Val wrote and asked what I do to battle the recurrent thought of “After all is said and done, I really suck.”
I told her, “I find it helpful to really sit in the bad feeling for a while, fully feel it, and then return the brain to healthier logic. So it’s not keeping the bad feeling out, you recognize it, which is an act of kindness to yourself. Then you let it move through and away.”
So now I gotta do that. Which is hard.
Speaking of which, it’s easy advice to give to Val. It’s harder advice to take from myself.
Do you find that the idea of being kind and patient to someone in a depressive dip is really obvious and easy UNLESS that person is you? Like, “Sure, every human deserves compassion and has a right to love and be loved… EXCEPT ONE PERSON.”
No not him! You! For saddies, the logic of being good to others so often is spoiled by not being kind to yourself.
So do that. Change. Stop doing the bad things.
From the McDonaldland fandom Wiki:
Despite a few changes made to his appearance over the years, he has always been endearingly loved by fans all over the world. A pint-sized burglar who first appeared in March 1971 and was one of the first villains on the commercials, he was dressed in a black-and-white hooped shirt and pants, a red cape, a wide-brimmed hat, and black gloves. His primary object of theft was hamburgers (sometimes cheeseburgers), hence his name. The character, like Grimace, started out as a villain, only he was old, had a long nose, gray hair, and was called the Lone Jogger in some 1970s commercials, sporting a shirt that said "Lone Jogger".
The Lone Jogger?!
No matter what happens on Election Day next Tuesday, the world will feel very different on Wednesday. I don’t say that to distress or soothe you.