Yes, a serious bout of depression can leave you
feeling isolated and hopeless. But Karen
Krizanovich believes that it can also have a
very positive effect on your life.

Around one in five Britons gets depression at some point in their lives and I was one of them, following a miscarriage and divorce. My condition wasn’t chronic, manic or psychotic, but there were times when I woke up disappointed to be alive. Depression can ruin relationships, cause people to lose their jobs and even to self-harm. So why would I think that it can be positive?

Learning how to cope with, and gradually recover from, depression is like rediscovering how to walk after an accident: you take small, progressive steps. We know the value of sometimes learning lessons the hard way, and depression can be a tough experience that leaves you with skills and personal insights that can help make the rest of your life much more rewarding.

The intense negative emotion and self-scrutiny of depression also cuts through your usual muddled collection of thoughts and can leave you with a more focused way of thinking. An international study this year, by a group of researchers from universities including Stanford in the US, showed that depressed and previously depressed people did better on a job-search computer simulator because they were more analytical and thorough.

Alastair Campbell and athlete Dame Kelly Holmes have both said that depression has helped them succeed by increasing their ability to concentrate on specific targets.

Depression can force you to find resources within yourself where you thought there were none, and can create the kinds of hope and strength that do not fade. It's a challenge that, ultimately, sows the seeds of its own demise, and can lead you to a life of going from strength to strength, rather than merely hanging on.

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Web special - more from Karen Krizanovich

It’s one of those things you don’t want to admit to. I’d gone into a slump. As a writer and broadcaster, I’d always been busy writing and talking about exciting things such as film and relationships. Now, I could hardly leave the house. Nothing seemed worth the effort.

“Nothing’s happening because you can’t handle it,” said a friend of mine, a very successful museum curator. His words shook me up. I was forced to realise that I was being crushed by the one thing I couldn’t admit to: I was suffering from depression—so much so that, if it wasn’t for an NHS doctor by the name of Ludders, I probably wouldn’t be writing this now.

Some months later, I was encouraged by Gill Hudson, Reader’s Digest’s editor-in-chief, to examine the aftermath of this horrible period. It’s a ghastly thought that depression may have a positive side—and it’s not a popular idea either. I’d broken an arm about ten years earlier, and that arm wasn’t better than the other one. But I felt that depression had given me “life tools” I hadn’t had before. Was this depression’s silver lining?

To make sure my experience wasn’t unique, I talked to experts and friends, and found supporting research. I tried to look at my own life dispassionately. While I didn’t particularly want to delve into the details my own misfortune, I had to tell “my story” so others would feel free to tell theirs—at least to themselves.

I’ve learned that it’s OK to “take a hit”. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to feel bad, but not for long; you have to fight the good fight to get yourself back. You have to make yourself see people. You have to force yourself to think loving and healthy thoughts. You have to fake it until it’s real—and it may never become real. But you have to try anyway. (When things get bad, I play the final scene from Zorba The Greek on YouTube—anything to get me looking upwards, as it were.)

In a way, my depression was a crash course in self-love and self-caring—and that means exercise, eating correctly, stopping smoking and keeping in contact with those you love. It could mean meditating, seeking solitude and being silly. Most of all, I learned the importance of making new and embarrassing mistakes: depression taught me to learn like a child all over again. (Do kids worry about getting stuff wrong? Not really. They just keep going.) I’ve used my experiences with depression in the upcoming book Two Cats and a Bottle of Vodka, a comedic novel of how one fictional woman tries to avoid being a female depression statistic.

Although this article is likely to be misunderstood and is even more likely to upset a lot of very depressed people, it’s not designed to be irksome, outrageous or a panacea. I wrote it as food for thought—to be read and mulled over. For me, wrestling with depression is one of the hardest and best things I’ve ever done. My friend Donna Lee tweeted this quote by Auguste Rodin just as I was finishing the article: “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” That’s what I want people to understand about the very human and very common state of depression: you can use the experience wisely in a way that’s unique to you.

The very best thing I can hope for? That one person gets up in the morning and says, “No. Today the bad feelings are not going to win.”

Visit Karen’s website at krizanovich.com

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