Depression and Our Bodies
By Dan Lukasik
Working as a lawyer and struggling with clinical depression is a tough.
I know, because I deal with both every day. In a peculiar sense,
it is really like having two full-time jobs that absorb all of
our time. As we know, the daily demands and stress of our jobs
as lawyers are often unremitting: deadlines to meet, phone calls
to return, and that motion to argue in court the next morning.
We often feel that others who aren’t lawyers really
don’t
understand us and our work because they haven’t “walked in our
shoes.”
The “job” of being depressed seems to parallel my
experience as a lawyer. A common experience of feeling depressed
is feeling alone and isolated. When people who care about us
reach out to help, there are times we push them away out of a
sense of bitterness thinking: “You really don’t know
what it’s like to be a lawyer.”
Yet, there may come a time when we might want to begin seeing
depression and our vocation as lawyers a little differently.
Not as two jobs, but really one. The one job is finding a way
to take care of ourselves. Mother Teresa once said
that what God expects of humanity is that we be “a loving
presence to one another.” Taking that further, I would
suggest what God equally expects is for us to be a loving presence
to ourselves.
In any law firm, the barometric pressure of stress rises and
falls frequently. Consequently, we often find it difficult to
be a “loving presence” to ourselves: to eat well,
exercise, get enough sleep, and nurture a support structure of
good friends. The gale-force winds of stress, burnout, and depression
can begin blowing and disconnect us even from this basic agenda.
Yet, if we are to regain our health in the midst of depression,
we must return to these basic concerns because depression afflicts
our minds and our bodies. Our physical state—our
precious bodies—get hammered by the unremitting punishment
that depression dishes out. I have often described it to friends
as “wet cement running through my veins.”
The biochemical imbalance that is so often a part of depression
affects every part of our physical makeup: our eating, our weight,
our energy level, and our ability to sleep. How can we realistically
hope to “feel better,” to regain the healthy ground
that depression has knocked us off, if we don’t offer a
loving presence to our tired and afflicted bodies left unbalanced,
weak, and fatigued in depression’s wake?
Being a loving presence to our bodies is like being a loving
parent. We need to pause—and to have a support structure
of people who remind us to pause—to ask ourselves what
is good for our bodies. My family doctor once told me that our
bodies are like giant tape recorders that remember everything
we have done to them. Too little sleep, too much stress, or not
enough exercise tells our body that we simply don’t care
or don’t have the time for it. This pattern can have catastrophic
consequences when depression hits because the body that we need
to help us is not fully able to be our ally. Because it has been
ignored, it is of little help to fight depression and actually
participates in it. Antidepressant medication can be a way, especially
in the beginning, to begin to soothe our bodies, to calm our
minds enough, so that we can begin thinking of how we are going
to rebuild that loving relationship with our bodies.
One of my favorite parts of the Bible comes from the Old Testament:
the Twenty–Third Psalm. To me, it speaks about the journey: “Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they
comfort me.” All humans must make this journey. We must
all “walk through the valley” of a life that is certain
to have its victories and times of happiness, but also its stunning
defeats and times of deep sorrow. The shape of those victories
and defeats take a particular form for lawyers, even more so
for lawyers who struggle with depression. The valley can feel
more like a deep trench with no way out. Our bodies can feel
buried in this trench with no light or air able to penetrate
depression’s paralyzing weight. Yet, there are steps each
of us can take to begin our climb out of this hole. In my experience,
our bodies are like the ladders propped against the trench of
depression. The great Psalm tenderly says to us that we are not
alone: God is there with us in the deepest darkness. Yet, I
would also suggest that our bodies are there for us also, waiting
to assist us in our journey toward wholeness.
Dan Lukasik helped form the partnership of Cantor Lukasik Dolce & Panepinto, P.C. Mr. Lukasik is currently a partner and represents plaintiffs in personal injury cases and civil rights matters in state and federal court. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for Community Service from the University at Buffalo Law School Alumni Association for his work in helping lawyers with depression. In addition, he and the Erie County Bar Association were given the New York State Bar Association’s Award of Merit for the creation of the Committee to Assist Lawyers with Depression in Erie County. Mr. Lukasik is the chair of that committee. Please visit his website, www.lawyerswithdepression.com. In addition, a depression blog for law students, judges, and attorneys was just launched in May 2009. It can be accessed through the website.
© Copyright 2009, American
Bar Association.
