Well Dwellers

At this time of year (December/January) the symptoms of those living with, and often suffering from clinical depression are amplified, often to the point of self-destruction. Statistics show us that the majority of self-destructive behaviour happens not during the annual dark days of 21 – 27 of December, but 30 – 60 days later, long after the seasonal greetings of “Good Will To All Men” are nothing more than a distant memory.

Imagine yourself living in a well - a well-dweller if you will.

Your life as you know it may be a bit tighter than others might experience it, but it is YOUR well. You may not have chosen this particular well as it is deep, dank, dark, and seemingly inescapable without super powers that you simply do not have – so you accept your situation an try to move through life the best way you know how – putting one foot in front of the other, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, all while being surrounded by the walls of the well that nobody else can see.

For 42 weeks of the year your well serves you well – it keeps you safe from the do-gooders who might want to use THEIR super powers to free you from your well, often with good intentions, but with no concept of the depth and strength of the walls of your well.

Then there is Thanksgiving in October and a soft start to the silly season.

Do-Gooders come out of the woodwork – people who would not give you the time of day for the rest of the year, have perma-grins and are spouting off any variety of deep winter greetings that are intended to chip away at the well walls they cannot even see.

The culmination of these seasonal well-wishers ends sometime late on the 25^th of December; the more aggressive of these greeters last an additional 24 hours.

The sheer volume of the “well-wishers” who are blissfully unaware of your well, can drown out the coping mechanisms you have developed to the point that these coping mechanisms start to fail, cracks appearing at the bottom of the well, driving you deeper into the abyss.

As one slips deeper into this abyss, social integrations fade (after all, who wants to be in in the company of a grouch in the “Hap- Hap-Happiest time of the year”?) and Durkheim’s theories are proven over and over.

Your demeanor DOES NOT CHANGE throughout these eight to ten weeks  as indeed your well is still your reality, and you get labelled with any number of epitaphs:  ‘Grouch’, ‘Grinch’, and ‘Scrooge’ being the most polite of the names muttered under the breaths of the better people in society, including ‘friends’ and family.

Fortunately by December 27^th life is back to your normal for the next 42 weeks as people revert to ignoring that which does not affect them directly.

In the meantime, your well has gotten slightly deeper, more dank, and darker, making social integration slightly – almost unperceivably – more difficult for another year – until Thanksgiving, when the cycle repeats.

So if you are a do-gooder who wants to help, what can you do?

1. ASK if the Well-Dweller wants anything (sometimes, sitting silently with a coffee is enough).
   
2. Consider Eeyore: Even though Eeyore is clinically depressed, he still gets invited to participate in adventures and shenanigans with all of his friends, and they never expect him to fell happy, they just love him anyway and never leave him behind or ask him to change.
   
3. Do not assume the well-dweller want to talk because you do. Not every well-dweller is able to verbalize in terms that other non-well-dwellers understand. They may have alternate means of interpreting their pain – from writing to music to interpretive dance.
   
4. Unless you have a Masters in Clinical Counselling – if you REALLY want to talk about it – be prepared for the long haul. Well-dwellers may have been in their situation for decades, sinking deeper into the abyss day by day – it can easily take just as long to bring them out of the well. If you are not prepared to potentially spend years listening to what will sound like incessant whining, don’t even start (see #1 & 2 above).