A Relentless Hope: Surviving the Storm of Adolescent Depression, by Dr. Gary Nelson. Reprinted by permission of Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. The book is also available at www.survivingteendepression.com.
The following excerpt is from Gary Nelson’s book, which details his son's struggle with depression as a teenager.
Irritability and reactive anger, even rage, are part of the struggle for many depressed youth. It feels like more little things bother them, and bigger things bother them even more. In other words, little things that another might shrug off and say, "What's the big deal?" register as irritation on the screen of the depressed teen. In some ways the depressed teen feels very little. They're numb. In other ways they feel too much.
Remember the last outing to the beach when you spent too much time having fun in the sun and baked yourself to a crisp? You went inside, showered, and changed. Then, that first moment you stepped back into the sun you experienced a real awakening. Gentle sunlight fell upon your skin. Normally you might welcome it as a comfortable experience. Now, with freshly charbroiled skin, you greet the same gentle sunlight with shrieks of pain. Suddenly the gentle rays feel like a blowtorch glowing red hot against your skin. You feel the same sunlight as before the sunburn, but with the sunburn you feel it so much that it's intensely painful. Feeling that kind of pain, you scream, yell, run for the car, or do whatever else is possible to avoid the painful sunrays.
This sunburn analogy is one way of grasping the idea that teens fighting depression feel some things too much. That's why they seem to overreact to the same stimuli experienced by others. They are not really "overreacting." They are actually trying to deal with an intensity of feeling that others are not experiencing. The teens are suffering from "emotional sunburns." They feel too much and respond out of their pain in ways that are sometimes inappropriate and hurtful. Before going on, let's stretch the sunburn analogy just a little further.
Suppose while you're in that parking lot with the sunburn, you make a mad dash for your car to avoid the pain, and accidentally step on the toe of a stranger standing nearby as you race for relief. The stranger might not take the time to put all the pieces together and figure, "Ah, they must have a whopper of a sunburn and are trying to get out of the sun. I'll try to be understanding and not get upset with them." No, there's a better chance that in that squished-toe moment the stranger will wince with pain, and shout something through clenched teeth like, "You jerk!" or worse.
Gina Palladino 03/04/08
This is a very moving account of a father’s battle with his sons’ depression. But how lucky he was that things turned out well. My sister’s teen is in the midst of a really low point and has been diagnosed. I will send her this article to give her some “relentless hope.”
Read more comments