Actually petal, depression is not a test of personal character or stoicism. I may be blessed with Britain-during-the-Blitz fortitude, but what I've discovered is you can't handle this on your own.
The only way out is by calling on something which is bigger than you. The 12-step programme calls it a Higher Power and, as Christopher Hitchens' number one fangirl, I certainly don't call it God, but I do know that you need to believe -- to have faith in something outside yourself.
Something, ugh, can't believe I am writing this, spiritual.
I haven't discovered what yet, but so far I find running is medicinal. Being in nature also calms the over-active noggin.
"Meditation may be a challenge for you," my therapist said tactfully. "You're not a human thinking, you're a human being. You need to learn to just BE."
Easier said than done. Up until now, Descartes was my only God - I've always preferred cold rationality to emotional disarray - with an unshakeable belief that everything can be solved if you use the old bean. Plato said passions make it impossible for us to think.
I have a degree in philosophy but post-grad metaphysics turns out to be not a lot of use when you are writhing in emotional pain.
Even genius David Foster Wallace discovered his monstrous intellect was an impediment rather than an advantage; recovery required modesty rather than brilliance. (He died.)
Austere intellectual truths don't help. My brain can't solve this; only my soul can.
Yuck, next I'll be buying crystals and sharing naff mantras ("The cure for everything is salt-water: sweat, tears or the sea").
How did I get so twee? So much for all those books -- I found salvation on a tea towel.
It's not that I can't analyse my affliction: I am an outlier with an over-developed response to intermittent reinforcement, especially from father figures, which triggers some kind of wacky dopamine-depleting feedback loop.
But breakthroughs in neuroscience are no help. The more I think about the mechanism of why I'm consumed with self-hatred, the more I loathe myself. This isn't mad, actually. It is quite rational to be negative: it's called "depressive realism". Studies have shown mildly depressed people are more likely to make accurate rather than self-serving judgments. When depressed we see ourselves and the world as it actually is, rather than deluding ourselves with soothing bollocks. Since being depressed is a rational response to a grim world, maybe the only way out is to stop thinking and start feeling.
This is not as hippy-dippy as it sounds. In his meticulously researched book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg cites several studies that show you can change your habits or break addictions through brute willpower, but if you want it to stick when you come under intense pressure, you need something extra - you need to believe in something bigger than yourself.
Sports teams discover this when they choke. It is the belief that the universe - something out there - is supporting you rather than being a random unfeeling cosmos that makes the difference.
There has been a long tradition of separating passion and reason, but academics are now looking at ways to bring emotion and cognition back together.
"Minds without emotions are not really minds at all. They are souls on ice," Professor Joseph LeDoux writes.
So, with my newfound appreciation of emotion, should I choose who to vote for based on instinct rather than reason this time? Maybe not. Because things that are obvious are not necessarily true, and many things that are true are not at all obvious. When to think, and when to feel? This Saturday: which one is going to guide your decision? As Winnie the Pooh (the bear of little brain, not the politician) says: "Think, think, think."
