Depression Monsters Abound; TV can teach us how to fight them

 

"The Monster Behind Me" by Bella Moon

“Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself – soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.” Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*

 

I’m having a rough day emotionally. A variety of issues comes together and I find myself crying, feeling isolated, feeling frustrated by time lost, like some monster (Dementor) is slowly stealing my life from me and I’m powerless to stop it. After my shower, I put on one of my favorite T-shirts; a cartoon drawing of the TARDIS and 10^th Doctor from Doctor Who, with glow-in-the-dark Weeping Angels around it. It’s comfortable, which is why I thought I chose it, but only moments after putting it on, I realized it’s more. My favorite stories have always been a comfort to me, just as they’ve challenged me, taught me, and encouraged me to grow. It seems extra appropriate that I’d be wearing my Weeping Angels shirt as I’m writing about depression.

 

In case you don’t watch Doctor Who, the Weeping Angels are life-sized angel statues at first glance, often with their hands over their eyes. When no one is looking at them, however, they come to life and move toward people with the goal of sending their victim into the past and feeding off the time energy of the life they would have led. They basically kill by sucking away the future people were supposed to have. It’s a layered metaphor for depression, really. They are quantum locked. They can't be seen in their true state, even by others of their kind (as seen in 'Blink' when four of them froze in a square after the TARDIS disappeared.) They can do most anything, go anywhere, but they can't interact with others, ever. Depression/anxiety can often feel much like that. Like, even when you're in the same room with people, sharing an activity, you still don't feel connected. It's lonely as hell. Being attacked by them is another layer to the metaphor. An Angel touches you and you get lost in the past. You're stuck there, no way to continue your life or connect with your loved ones anymore. You just have to trudge through, trying to get back to where you were when this damned Angel got in your way. In Doctor Who, their victims die in the past.

 

The only way to keep them from moving is to keep looking at them, without even blinking. But if you expend all your energy on staring at the statue, you can’t live your life. Plus, if you stare too long, you get an angel inside your head. In "Flesh and Stone," (Season 5) Amy has the image of a Weeping Angel in her eye (mind's eye). Since it’s in her mind, it’s acting a bit differently, scaring her for fun before it kills her. To stop it, the Doctor tells Amy to close her eyes (we'll ignore the fact that closing the eyes doesn't 'shut down the vision center of the brain' like he suggests).

 

Amy: No, no, I don't want to.

Doctor: Good, 'cause that's not you, that's the Angel inside you, it's afraid!

 

Amy listens to him and it succeeds in protecting her from the Angel, at least temporarily. Therapy, using our mental health tools (especially dealing with intense treatment that requires tapping into scary and traumatic memories or emotions), any of these can feel like Amy's reaction. We don't want to, even though it's going to help us.  Part of that is often a personal fear of change - we've learned how to manage around the horrible thing while it's shoved away, and we don't want to stir shit that doesn't stink. But what if we consider that monster that started the whole thing?

 

Our inner 'Angels' are complicated creatures, to say the least. These inner monsters affect us, but they don’t define us. They hide deep inside, often letting themselves be forgotten for a while so they can have a stronger effect when they show up again unexpectedly. They're the shame voices in our heads, the anxiety thoughts racing around after every interaction with people, the blob of depression that wants to glue us to our bed. These monsters fight for their existence, too. They dig in and find our most sensitive areas to make it harder to fight against them. They get louder and more obnoxious when they see us starting to make changes or choices that push them aside.

 

The inner demon tries to protect itself by projecting fear, triggering avoidance. Because fear is the strongest weapon the inner demons have, it's crippling, yet has no roots or stability in the outside world. The fear is all in our brains and can only be conquered by addressing and facing it internally. So, when you don't want to do the thing you know will help, that's exactly when it's most important to do so.

 

In the case of some of the Weeping Angels’ victims, Kathy Nightengale (from ‘Blink’) left a letter and photos for her friend showing that she’d gone on to live a fully and happy life in the past. She represents those who are able to recognize the struggles and the way these things cycle. Once she understood where/when she was and that she wasn't able to get back home, she built a new life for herself. She made the adjustments needed for a new time, and built a relationship, had a family. If the Angel that sent her back is mental illness, she closed her eyes against it and took control again. Billy did the same thing, and took it one step further by creating the DVD Easter Eggs (using his own experience to help others work through their depression). Later on, Amy and Rory will follow these examples by building a new life for themselves in the 1930s and eventually adopting a son (according to this unfilmed scene Doctor Who: P.S. from BBC One narrated by Arthur Darvill). So really, that's the key - if you keep trying to fight the Angels and get back to where/who you were before the depression/trauma, you'll always be fighting. If you accept how it's changed you, you can learn to live in the new normal.

 

In our world, we do that by addressing our past and facing our issues. This is the part where I strongly advise you to have a professionally trained counselor available to you if needed. I’m a firm believer that everyone can benefit from talking to a counselor/therapist from time to time, and that if we’re not willing to do the personal work, no therapist will be able to truly help us. We often have the inclination to bury our issues and put on the public façade expected of us. But that’s not only difficult to do when depressed, it’s usually unhelpful. Depression can have many causes (and many medical professionals struggle with agreement on these anyway) from past traumas, recent traumas, family history of depression, grief, medical problems (such as an imbalance with our neurotransmitters), chronic illnesses, even some medications can increase the chances of depression to someone predisposed to the possibility. (https://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/causes-depression#1) Treatments for depression are varied and should be customized to the patient’s individual needs, but for Pop Culture Therapy purposes, we’re going to talk about those issues we bury.

 

(From my personal journal 2-26-16)

Hate this feeling, like there's something in my throat and it's making me almost cry and making it hard to breathe and making me feel sick to my stomach - I have something that keeps trying to grow and come out, but it hurts and it's scary, so I hold it all in. Because sometimes the pain of suffering the damage is less than the pain involved in healing, so it becomes our tendency to hold our injuries and avoid the work of healing.

 

Metaphors for depression are visible in so many stories. It’s not only the isolation of the Weeping Angels, it’s also the Dark Lighters in the 1997 Charmed who make their victims feel hopeless, the Ringwraiths of Lord of the Rings who induce fear and depression in all those around them, the seemingly never-ending string of monsters and demons in Buffy or Supernatural. Depression is maybe most obviously the “intense despair and inability to feel happiness” caused by the Dementors of Harry Potter*, (http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/rowlings-gift-of-expecto-patronum/ ) and the Patronus spell used against them has been compared to CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) in the way it helps the user replace their fears with positive thoughts and memories. We can do that with many things, and using many stories that provide the protagonist with tools to fight their darkness. If much of our mental health challenges come from conflicts and traumas (of varying degree) and "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" then the source of our power, our strength comes from our traumas (demons and monsters in these stories). And this means the spells, potions, and weapons these characters use to fight the demons represent our specific tools (creative expression, affirmations, prayers, grounding exercises, mindfulness exercises, etc.) and the training and studying and preparing they do is our therapy and daily practice. 

 

In many stories about fighting against paranormal monsters, (Buffy, Charmed, Supernatural, and more) the protagonists have at some point complained about their never-ending battles and then had to adapt to the realization that this is their new normal. They keep fighting, and they win most fights, but the monsters will never stop coming. They'll never be able to completely eradicate evil. And neither will we. We can't completely get rid of our mental health challenges, can't undo the traumas, can't eradicate depression/anxiety; but we, like these characters, can grow stronger with each lesson, each battle won. Every time I come out of a depressive slump, I become a little more aware of the reality of my life, the good and the bad alike, and I see them for how they truly are. When I started noticing that, and really paying attention, I noticed that those observations helped me the next time I felt depressed. Oh, it didn't stop the depression, but I could remind myself that it wouldn't always feel this way. When my anxiety flares badly, or I spend days actively battling the shame messages I've learned throughout life, it feels like a hopeless, endless battle. But if I do my training and use my tools, I sit down with my journal and I write about it, I go to therapy and I talk about those feelings, I get out some crayons and scribble those feelings, and it's the same as these characters gathering their potions and stakes and fighting back against the thing attacking them. 

 

When Buffy meets the Shadow Men ("Get it Done" 7.15) they say they've brought her to the source of her strength, the well of the slayer power. But Buffy turned down the offer from the Shadow Men, seeing the demonic power as another trauma and fighting against it, of course. After their vision of the countless monsters coming, she worries that she made a mistake, that maybe she should have listened to them, taken what they offered. It's not uncommon for those who've been hurt to doubt themselves, and there's certainly levels of gaslighting, sexism, and mansplaining happening in this episode and the whole Slayer origin myth. It won't be until later that she'll realize the healing way to increase her power is not through the anger/fear/monster they tried to inspire/infect her with, but by sharing it. Sharing her power is a metaphor here for sharing her story, her truth, compassion. Recognizing the power in everyone else and helping them to recognize it in themselves, guiding them to a healing place of acceptance of their personal demons and their inner power to fight them. Sharing her power made her and everyone she shared it with stronger than the Shadow Men ever could have.

* This was originally written in May of 2019, and we’ve learned much more about JK Rowling’s problematic views since then. I do not support her any longer, but this particular metaphor is still very apt.