Late January Monte Report

As has been the case for the past couple months or so, weekends continue to pose a real challenge for me. It's just so hard for me to come up with a reason to get out of bed, particularly on Saturdays. (Church generally gets me out of bed on Sundays.) The past two Saturdays I have managed to drag myself to a local eatery for brunch, which got my day going, and I've managed to get out and do some hiking. But I find myself miserably depressed during any of my free time on weekends. It's very frustrating, especially when my weekdays are generally pretty good, comparatively speaking, and it's jarring to regularly transition between my weekday and weekend moods. The above notwithstanding, my work week has become less satisfying of late due to recent staffing cutbacks and cutbacks in our benefits package. So things are challenging all around.

Here are a couple quotes from Dr. Allen's book Coping With Depression:

"I think of the need for secure attachment as a driving force in relationships throughout life. . . . [F]rom infancy to adulthood, the opportunity to form a close relationship with a sensitively responsive attachment figure offers the possibility of change from insecure to secure attachment. . . . We bank on the enduring quest for secure attachment in promoting recovery from depression; a network of supportive relationships is a good antidepressant."

At the same time, there is a benefit to a certain degree of independence:

"To be self-dependent involves the capacity to depend on others as well as to depend on yourself when others are not available. . . . A self-critical mental presence will undermine self-dependence, as will a fear that the attachment figure cannot be counted on in times of need. Secure attachment provides a pathway out of depression, not just in strengthening supportive relationships with others but also in improving your relationship with yourself." [pg 75]

I am reminded of my relationship with Julie, my best friend who died in 1995. She and I were quite securely "attached" to each other -- we could depend upon each other in a special and unique way, in a type of relationship that I haven't been able to recreate in the years since her death.

And so the work continues . . .

PS That's a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, a cute little bugger that I saw on New Year's Day.