Tag Archive | love

Are you Elsa or Anna? What Frozen says about depression.

We received our pre-ordered* copy of Frozen yesterday, and now that my kids have now watched it about 87 times, I fancy myself somewhat of an expert on the movie. Based on personal experience, I also fancy myself somewhat of an expert on depression. This post is whence the twain shall meet.

Frozen DVD

Ben and Molly are overjoyed to receive their Frozen DVD

Since Frozen was released in theatres, it has been receiving quite the buzz – I’ve heard about it being an amazingly feminist movie – Disney finally redeeming itself for decades of Princess culture. I’ve heard that it’s allegory for gay pride and/or propaganda for ‘the homosexual agenda.’ I’ve heard from people who refuse to watch it until they stop hearing that goddamn song 8 times a day. I’ve heard from people who love that goddamn song so much that they sing along to it 8 times a day (*cough* me *cough*). And I’ve heard that it’s a piece of irritating garbage with half-rate singers, cheesy melodies, and the worst Princess-related story-line Disney has ever written.

My take on the movie itself? I’m a fan. I enjoyed the music and Disney’s deliberate send-up of its own patriarchal history of damsels in distress, handsome princes on white steeds, and true love at first sight. There was a cute blink-and-you-missed-it nod to diversity with a presumed 2-dad family and a neat twist on the usual moustache-twirling villain. Like so many children’s books and movies though, even with those giant leaps forward it still barely squeaked past the Bechdel test and there wasn’t a person of colour to be found (but no ethnic caricatures, so baby steps, right?).

Now we get to the part of the post about depression – the part that I start hyperventilating every time I think about writing. In so many ways…more and more each time I think about it…Frozen provides a perfect metaphor for depression. Beyond that, Frozen manages to provide dual perspectives – showing us a view of depression from both inside and out.**

Frozen stickers

Are you an Elsa or an Anna – Or maybe both?

We don’t all get literally shut away in our rooms and directed to not let anyone see how we feel, but the messages are all around us, every day:

Snap out of it. ••• Boys don’t cry. ••• Put on your big girl panties. ••• Man up. •••This too shall pass. ••• It could always be worse, right? ••• Behind the clouds, the sun is shining. ••• Every cloud has a silver lining. ••• Tomorrow is another day. ••• What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. ••• Take it like a man. ••• Don’t air your dirty laundry in public. ••• It’s all in your head. ••• Life’s not fair. ••• Time heals all wounds. ••• Into every life a little rain must fall. ••• Pull yourself together. ••• Try and think about something else. ••• Fake it till you make it. ••• Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.

Like Elsa, many of us with depression are expected to have our ‘moments’ in private, hiding away and telling ourselves over and over, “Don’t let it out. Don’t feel. Don’t let them see,” until we have mastered the knack of acting like regular people, at least when it matters. And when you’re depressed you want to do that anyway – it’s exhausting out there! Like Elsa shut up in her room, I had a mantra in high school – I sang Simon and Garfunkel in my head, over and over – “I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.” I still get knots in my stomach when I hear that song or even think those words. “Don’t let it out. Don’t feel. Don’t let them see. Don’t feel. Don’t feel. Don’t feel.” Out and about, of course, you do your best to fake it – act normal, keep up with your schoolwork, get good marks; “Don’t let them in. Don’t let them see. Be the good girl you always have to be.”

When depressed, many people, myself included, engage in self-destructive behaviour, either because it gives you an outlet – a real reason, a tangible excuse for all those feels in your head that shouldn’t be there because there’s nothing really wrong, or because it can blunt those feelings, if only temporarily. Many people are also carers – If you spend all of your energy looking after the people around you, you just don’t have time or energy to think about yourself. Bonus points if they are dealing with real actual problems that are worse than your imagined ones so you can tell yourself you’re upset because you’re worried about them!

And like Elsa, for many people there comes a point when it’s just too hard to keep up that façade. Something brushes past your desperately clinging fingers, and all those emotions finally burst out. And often that’s followed by a sense of relief and calm – when you hit rock bottom, you finally have the freedom to be yourself. You don’t have to answer to anyone. You don’t have to pretend anymore. And it doesn’t matter what people think – You are perfectly okay the way you are, and they should just leave you alone and let you be. You’re not hurting anyone, right? It doesn’t concern them. You can build your ice castle up around you, shut the world out and be yourself by yourself.

But as we saw with Elsa, depression doesn’t just stop at being sad. Depression is a selfish illness – and before you react to that statement, please hear me out, because I’ve got the damn thing, so I’m pretty comfy owning that statement. When I’m depressed, I’m pretty effing selfish. When you’re depressed you’re irritable, rage-filled, irrational, unable to enjoy ordinary enjoyable things; you can’t sleep; you sleep too much; you’re lazy and unmotivated – and those traits don’t just impact you. They impact everyone around you. Recall Ben’s, “other kids’ parents play with them, but you don’t.” When you’re depressed, you don’t have the motivation to play with your kids, to tidy your house, or to keep your temper at the best of times, let alone when your kids or spouse are getting to you.

JD Bailey, Honest Mom, has written about the scariest part of depression – the rage. This is a fury that bursts out of you, uncontrollable and terrifying in its intensity. You feel it building inside of you – heart pounding, jaw clenching, until it gets to a point where it’s unstoppable and suddenly you’re lashing out, verbally, physically, mentally. Not everyone experiences the rage, but if you do it’s terrifying – for you and for the people around you. This can be the point for a lot of people when you realize that you need help. Up until now, you have held it all in and let yourself believe that it’s not affecting the people around you – but the first time you create that giant snow monster and set it loose on people, screaming, “DON’T COME BACK, (or “JUST EAT YOUR DINNER,” or “WHY WON’T YOU JUST SLEEP?” the impact on those you love becomes undeniable.

There was a meme sweeping Facebook last week starring Eeyore:

eeyore

Image from http://www.strongmindbraveheart.com/10-things-depression/

It urges us to accept people with depression as they are, warts, unhappiness, and all – and I agree, up to a point. It is important to let yourself, and your loved ones, feel. If you need to grieve, grieve. If someone is hurting, don’t tell them “It could be worse,” or “Pull yourself together.” People need space to be upset, to be sad, to be angry – but there is an extremely fine line between supporting and enabling. Poor Eeyore – his friends patted him on the back, helped him find his tail, and rebuilt his house of sticks when it got blown away, and I’m sure he really appreciated it. But he was still sad. And at some point, probably one by one, they said, “Oh, screw it, I guess that’s just Eeyore,” and they still let him tag along, because they didn’t want to be mean, and they let him just be his depressed self. And Eeyore was still sad.

And it might not have helped, but then again it might have, if one of them had said, “Hey Eeyore? I know it’s not really any of my business, and I’m not judging you, but we’ve found your tail and fixed your house and it just seems like you’re hurting a lot and you’re never really happy. I care about you and I really want to help you get the help you need.” And maybe Eeyore would have said piss off, which is fair, and hopefully that friend would have said, “Okay, buddy. I’m here though whenever you’re ready.” But maybe Eeyore would have had a good cry on that friend’s shoulder because finally someone got that he was sad, and he didn’t even know why, and he did want to figure out how to stop it, and then maybe he and that friend might have started Googling some options.

Frozen had a happy ending. The much more difficult ending would have been the one where Anna, out of self-preservation, has to let go herself – letting go of guilt and walking away, understanding that whatever that other person decides to do, it is not up to you to change them. There can come a point, in loving someone who is depressed, when you have to love yourself more. I’ve done it. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty, but it was hands down the best decision I ever made.

Elsa needed Anna, because by herself, she didn’t know that she wasn’t okay, and Anna stepped up and, against all odds, reached out, again and again. People with depression need Annas. It’s hard to do it on your own – first because you don’t always realize that you need help and after that because even when you realize it, that help is not easy to get. Even when Elsa pushed her away, and even when Elsa hurt her, she kept reaching out, until finally Anna was able to break through Elsa’s self-involvement, to show her that isolating herself wasn’t protecting anyone, and that even though her actions were affecting her loved ones, they loved her and wanted her, warts and all – but only the warts she wanted to keep.

Elsa kept her powers – the magic that was integral to her personality – but got the help she needed to be able to control it, not be controlled by it. Her power no longer called the shots. People with depression can be pretty awesome. We often have wicked cool senses of humour – Elsa created Olaf, didn’t she? Scratch the surface of many very funny and talented people (The Bloggess***, and pretty well every other humour blogger in the world) and comedic actors, for example – and you’ll often find depression. We tend to be realists and are pretty comfortable with our own warts…and maybe a little too comfortable pointing out other peoples’.

If, like Elsa and Anna, we find that happy ending, we don’t become different people – we’re generally the same dry, sarcastic, realistic people as before, just a little easier to live with, and finding it a little easier to live with ourselves.

~ karyn

 

 

 

*Pre-ordering? Not actually a thing. You order. You don’t pre-order. Ordering is when you say, “Can I have this when it’s ready?” Pre-ordering would be saying, “Can I have this when it’s ready to be ready?” or something. Like pre-registering – what the heck is that? What do you do when you pre-register? You say, “Sign me up for that thing I want to do! Here’s all my information!” You know what I call that? REGISTERING. Yeesh.

**For another take on Frozen and depression, walk the plank over to Domestic Pirate for a powerful post on how Elsa and Anna represent the two warring voices of depression in her head.

***Seriously – if you haven’t read Let’s Pretend This Never Happened yet, you need to. You will ugly cry and laugh hysterically at the same time. So…uh…like my friend David recommends, try to avoid reading it in public.

A Passion for Compassion

I heard once that the a sociopath is someone who is born without empathy while a psychopath is someone who uses empathy to his/her advantage. In one of my university social work class there was an intense argument about nature versus nurture – Is empathy innate or learned? As I recall, I took the innate side of the argument then but I’ve since changed my tune. I believe that empathy can and should be taught starting at a young age.

Making friends

Baby Ben and my nanny Carol (Carol is disabled from a brain aneurysm and mostly non-verbal)
©PicklesINK 2012

The Oxford Dictionary defines empathy as, “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another,” and Wikipedia notes, “One may need to have a certain amount of empathy before being able to experience compassion.” I think of empathy as the ability to recognize how another person feels and compassion as the drive help them feel better. Both empathy and compassion have been important parts of my life and I feel that they are two of the most crucial interpersonal skills I can pass on to my children.

Boys

Photo of two boys standing on a bench looking at a tree
©PicklesINK 2012

I have a lovely friend who is a much more of an attachment-parenting, Dr. Sears-reading type than I am, and I remember on one of our earliest playdates thinking, “Wow, she’s got it so together – she talks to her kids about their feelings when they misbehave  and never raises her voice with them!” As it turns out, at this same time, she was looking at me and thinking, “Wow, she’s got it so together! She doesn’t mess around when her kids misbehave and they listen to her when she uses her ‘mommy’ voice!”

One of the things I learned from this friend and incorporated into my own parenting style was the use of the word “kind” when I praise my kids. There is an awful lot out there about the pros and cons of praising your children (read for yourself: I just Googled “pros and cons of praising children” and it’s like a table-tennis match – “Praise your children!” “Don’t praise your children!” “Dos and don’ts of praising your children” “Are we setting our children up to fail?” etc.). I disagree with the extremes on either side (perhaps the parents who chant, “WOW GOOD JOB!!” 18,000 times a day and the people who read and write articles accusing those good-jobbers of manipulating their children and creating “praise junkies” should be locked in a giant arena to fight it out so the rest of us can get on with life).

The middle ground is:

  1. Yes, we do use praise to “manipulate” our kids. It is one of the tools that we have to teach our kids to act appropriately and be productive members of society.
  2. True, too much empty praise sets kids up for disappointment (“But mommy, you told me I was a great hockey player and I DIDN”T EVEN SCORE A SINGLE GOAL!!”).
  3. Praise is the most effective when it is specific and descriptive (but sometimes we parents are busy and distracted and the odd, “Good job!” never hurt anyone).

I was thinking recently about how I use the word “kind” and I realized that the reason it appeals to me is that it fits that third criterion as it is much more specific and descriptive than the usual “nice.” “Nice” is something you just happen to be whereas “kind” describes a choice that you have made to make another person feel good. When I use it I usually pair it with a description of the other person’s emotions – “It was so kind of you to share your cookie with Molly, Ben. Look how happy that made her!” or conversely, “Oh dear, Molly – that was not very kind. Look how sad Ben is because you snatched his toy.”

A tool that I use (that this friend admits borrowing from me in return!) is that when someone has been hurt, I ask Ben and Molly to apologize and then to ask the injured party, “Are you okay?” and if the answer is “No,” to ask, “What can I do to help?”

Helping hand

Papa lends baby Ben a helping hand climbing up
©PicklesINK 2012

There is a lovely program called Seeds of Empathy that has been in place at Ben and Molly’s school for many years (you may also have heard of its older sibling, Roots of Empathy, which works with school-aged children). These programs introduce a baby to a classroom as a “Teacher” to foster empathy and compassion in the children over the course of the program year. A trained “Family Guide” helps the children to observe the baby’s development and label his or her feelings.

Ben and Molly hugs

Cuddles for Ben and baby Molly
©PicklesINK 2012

The other day, Ben shared one of those everyday 5 year-old boy heartaches that makes my inner mama-bear rear up on her hind legs and start pawing the air the:  “Mommy, Daniel* called me a baby. He said that Diego is a baby show and I shouldn’t watch it because that makes me a baby…and that made me feel little and I don’t like feeling little.” He paused for a few seconds and then added, “But then Joey whispered in my ear, ‘I think you’re really big.'”

Photo of polar bear
©PicklesINK 2012

This mama bear wants to find Joey, his parents, and the Seeds of Empathy creators, buy them several bottles of wine, and dole out hugs all around, because empathy and compassion are clearly thriving in that classroom!

The outcome of all this so far is that although their impulse control (or lack thereof) frequently gets the better of them, if either Ben or Molly does something that upsets the other they’re often comforting each other before I have a chance to say, “What happened, guys?” – which in turn makes me feel pretty good!

~ karyn

* Names have been changed.