We Did Not Know What Was Coming Series: Depression in the Time of Trump

PREFACE: To say the last seven years have been a journey of growth for me and this country is an understatement. To help me process and cope with the roller-coaster of emotions I have felt these years, I started writing on Medium right after the 2016 election. My last series ended December 31, 2020, after Biden won the presidential election.

Recently I realized I missed writing “in my journal” and decided to go back to the very beginning and re-read my essays. I wanted to see where I started out on November 9, 2016, and where I am now. I decided to repost my favorite blogs with a short present-day commentary and continue onto current times.

I hope a few of you will join me on this journey of recollection, reflection, and learning. Little did we know what we were headed into.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Depression in the Time of Trump: Dec 16, 2020

Words are powerful. They can heal a broken heart, give hope to dreams, inspire great beauty, or teach a generation. They can also start wars, destroy marriages, or sow hate and division among neighbors. Sometimes words are very clear in their meaning. Sometimes they mean different things to different people in different contexts.

That is why it is important to clarify Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s use of the term depression within her five-stage model of grief. Kubler-Ross maintains that once stage one shock and denial begins to subside, stage two anger softens and the reality that stage three bargaining will not get the result one hoped for, the individual moves into stage four depression.

Emptiness and grief enters the person’s life on a deeper level, deeper than they ever imagined. It brings on a period filled with sadness, despondency and sorrow. It is not uncommon to cry often and not be sure what triggered the emotional surge.

Changes in eating and sleeping patterns occur. People experience fatigue and lethargy, inability to concentrate, and a lack of interest in life. Many have described waves of grief sweeping over them, subsiding, and then returning over and over again. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever.

A respected psychiatrist, Kubler-Ross championed the idea that this type of depression is not a sign of mental illness; rather, it is the appropriate response to a great loss. She differentiated grief depression from clinical depression in the following ways:

Grief Depression:

· There is an identifiable loss

· The person’s focus is on the loss

· There is fluctuating ability to feel pleasure

· There are fluctuating physical symptoms

· Closeness to others is usually comforting

· One can feel a wide range of emotions

· The person may express guilt over some aspects of the loss but not all

· Self-esteem is usually preserved after the loss

· Thoughts of death are typically related to wanting to be reunited with the deceased loved one

· Talk therapy is often sufficient to help an individual through their grief without the use of medication

Clinical Depression:

· A specific loss may or may not be identified

· The person’s focus is on self

· There is an inability to feel pleasure

· There is prolonged and marked functional impairment

· Persistent isolation from others and self

· Fixed emotions and feeling “stuck”

· Generalized feelings of guilt

· Feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing are common

· Generalized thoughts of death related to feeling worthless, underserving of life or unable to cope with the pain

· Therapeutic support and medication are often necessary to help relieve clinical depression

I think it would be fair to say any number of Americans have experienced what Kubler-Ross defines as “great loss” during Trump’s tenure in office. Here are just a few of the tragedies we have faced and continue to endure:

· 16.5 million Covid-19 infections and 300,000+ Covid-19 deaths

· Assaults on the ACA

· Child separation at the southern border

· Attacks on gender identity protections

· Enforcement of the Muslim Ban

· Support of extreme right-wing groups

· Attacks on BLM and an overall increase of hate crimes

· Record unemployment

· Roll backs on climate saving measures

· Attacks on a woman’s right to chose

· Voter suppression

· Attacks on First Amendment Rights

· Alienation of world allies

· 25,000+ public lies spoken by Trump as documented by the Washington Post

· Trump and Republican refusal to accept the legitimate presidential election of Biden

How could any thinking/feeling person not suffer from some degree of depression? What is important to me as a person and therapist though is to go deeper and name the nuances of grief depression. I found an interesting article by grief specialist Litsa Williams, LCSW which does exactly that.

On May 8, 2020 Williams wrote: 7 Types of Grief You Should Know Right Now. While her focus is primarily physical death, all the points Williams makes are equally relevant to the non-death losses inflicted upon us by Trump. I have excerpted pertinent segments from the article:

Secondary Loss and Depression:

When it comes to grief, it is easy to focus on the one, big, central, or “primary” loss that someone is experiencing [the tragedies listed above would be considered primary losses], but the reason grief can feel like it upends every area of life is that a primary loss can kick off a string of secondary losses. After experiencing a devastating loss, grieving people are often surprised to find there is a ripple effect of subsequent losses.

The primary loss causes such significant shifts and fractures that there is a domino effect of losses related to things like finances, friends, community, worldview, faith, sense-of-self, and the list goes on.

These secondary losses can unfold over time. There may be some you are acutely aware of immediately following a loss, and some may arise as the weeks, months, and years pass. Being aware that these secondary losses may arise can help us self-assess when we are caught off guard by a new feeling of loss or pain. These secondary losses are a normal part of our grief and need to be addressed and mourned…

Disenfranchised Grief and Depression:

Disenfranchised grief is when a person feels denied the right to grieve by family, friends, community members, or society in general. This happens when the loss isn’t seen as worthy of grief; the relationship or situation is stigmatized; the mechanism of death or the situation is stigmatized; the person grieving is not recognized as a griever; the way someone is grieving is stigmatized.

When a loss is disenfranchised, it means the grieving person isn’t getting the support or validation they need. This means different things to different people. Where one person only needs validation from themselves, another person may feel they need the acknowledgment of their entire family, community, or society. Regardless, the impact of disenfranchised grief is that the person experiencing it feels alienated, invalidated, ashamed, and/or weak…

Nearly everyone in America who is not a natural-born white, Christian heterosexual male in relatively good health has been targeted by the policies of the Trump administration and probably is experiencing disenfranchised grief and depression.

Non-Finite Loss and Depression:

From childhood, people form ideas and beliefs about how they think and hope their lives will turn out. People imagine, make choices, and work towards the future they think they want and, in some cases, need. But many things are out of one’s control.

When someone doesn’t have the child, partner, job, [president and government], or life they want, they may experience non-finite grief. Non-finite grief is something a person may carry with them for a long time. It continues as they struggle with the push and pull of trying to achieve their hopes and dreams but continually finding that life falls short of their expectations.

Any time our life doesn’t match up with our expectations or schema, we are at risk of non-finite grief depression. If external life circumstances are creating dissonance between what you thought things would look like or be and what they do look like now, grief depression is likely…

Cumulative Loss and Depression:

Cumulative loss refers to the experience of suffering a new loss before you have the chance to grieve a first loss. It comes up when we suffer multiple losses in quick succession. It’s important to note, grieving the death of a loved one is never really “done”. It’s common for new losses to bring up memories and emotions about past losses. So some amount of cumulative grief is almost always a given.

There is no magic answer for how to cope with cumulative grief. If you have suffered multiple losses, either all at once or before integrating the previous loss, one is prone to grief depression possibly slipping into clinical depression. . . .

We are deluged with cumulative loss in the time of Trump. Each day we lose protections of our civil rights, our livelihood, our standing in the world, our health care, our access to clean air and water, our lives. We are not able to absorb and begin to grieve one loss before we are assaulted with another.

Anticipatory Grief and Depression:

While the William’s article is written for someone facing the physical death of a beloved, it has relevance for those of us expecting or anticipating the next Trump/Republican travesty or assault on our citizenry and country. Just feel into your own experience as you turn on the morning news or open your internet sites.

Here is the thing about grief — though we think of it as something that happens after a death, it often begins long before death arrives. It can start as soon as we become aware that death is likelihood. Once death is on the horizon, even just as a possibility, it is natural that we begin to grieve.

Though this is different than the grief that follows a death, anticipatory grief can carry many of the symptoms of regular grief — sadness, anger, isolation, forgetfulness, and depression. We are aware of the looming death and accepting it will come, which can bring an overwhelming anxiety and dread.

More than that, in advance of a death we grieve the loss of person’s abilities and independence, their loss of cognition, a loss of hope, loss of future dreams, loss of stability and security, loss of their identity and our own, and countless other losses. This grief is not just about accepting the future death, but of the many losses already occurring as an illness progresses.

When we know a death is imminent our bodies are often in a state of hyper-alertness — we panic whenever the phone rings, an ambulance must be called, or when our loved one deteriorates. This can become mentally and physically exhausting. The same is true of watching a loved one suffer, which is almost always part of a prolonged illness. Caring for them as they suffer takes an emotional toll on us. Caring for ourselves seems impossible. . . .

What is so difficult is that unlike a finite death, Trump’s assault is ongoing. Covid rages across the states. Unemployment benefits and rent protections are about to expire and McConnell will not consider a relief bill without liability protection shielding corporations from Covid lawsuits. Despite recounts in three battleground states, more than 50 legal defeats since Election Day, including the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Electoral College certifying Biden as president elect, Trump continues to insist that he won the presidential race. It is astounding. How can one not feel overwhelmed and depressed?

I return to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for reassurance. Again, she states that stage four grief depression is not a sign of mental illness but the appropriate response to a great loss. Again, she reminds us that in grief depression:

· There is an identifiable loss

· The person’s focus is on the loss

· There is fluctuating ability to feel pleasure

· There are fluctuating physical symptoms

· Closeness to others is usually comforting

· One is able to feel a wide range of emotions

· The person may express guilt over some aspects of the loss but not all

· Self-esteem is usually preserved after the loss

· She is confident that in time one moves out of depression toward acceptance and meaning.

It helps me to hold onto that. It helps me to see her statements as mile markers on the map out of the fog of sadness. It reminds me to treat myself as I would treat any client who came to see me and stated she or he was in deep sadness and depression about Trump and his supporters.

How would I work with my client? I would ask her to begin naming all the things Trump and Republicans in office did that hurt her. We would sit together as she cried. I would ask her to name more. We would continue to sit together, name and sit more. Week in and week out, I would ask her to name her pain and we would sit with that pain.

I need to do the same for myself exploring very specifically the pain from my own disenfranchised depression, my own secondary losses, my own non-finite, ambiguous, cumulative and/or anticipatory depression. I need to name and feel all I lost — just as I would encourage my clients to do.

I know enough in my years of experience as a human being and therapist that if I do that my grief sadness will begin to soften. I just have to patiently sit in the darkness long enough for all my sadness and pain to feel known, heard, seen and accepted. That sounds so simple but it is one of the hardest things a human being can do.

I also do one more thing for my clients when we sit in their grief depression together. I offer them hope. I survived traumatic and complicated grief which was the result of my sister’s murder. It took five years for me to begin to breathe again. It took another five to find glimmers of hope and joy in the world. It has taken 40 years to accept and make meaning of her death. I am still on that journey but I am a living, breathing example to my clients we can heal from terrible loss. I am grateful I can do that for my clients.

In this moment though, I need to find someone to provide that hope for me. I need to find someone to exemplify hope on the journey to social justice, decency and equality. I need to follow someone who has gotten through soul deadening grief to show me that healing of grave social injustice is possible.

There are many I can learn from but one man captured my heart when quiet tears of joy streamed down his face the night Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election. That man is John Lewis, civil rights icon and Democratic Congressman from Georgia. Days after the election Lewis was asked to reflect on his feelings about the upcoming inauguration.

Lewis said, “I don’t know whether I will be able to control myself [at the Inauguration]. I will be on the platform, and I’m going to try to keep my balance and not have what I call an out-of-body experience. I want to be able to see down the Mall and past the Washington Monument and get a glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial, where we stood 45 years ago.

When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought — I never dreamed — of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected President of the United States. My mother lived to see me elected to the Congress, but I wish my mother and father both were around. They would be so happy and so proud, and they would be so gratified. And they would be saying that the struggle and what we did and tried to do, was worth it.”

I have watched and listened to John Lewis since 2008. Never was he nobler and braver than the months after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer when he stood and marched with the members of Black Lives Matter decrying the murder of George Floyd. Our country lost a giant on July 17, 2020.

I am so happy that prior to his death, Congressman Lewis was able to read Jon Meacham’s book His Truth Is Marching On — John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Lewis was pleased with the work. I bought the book.

In the coming days I will give myself tiWme and permission to sit in silence naming my pain over the countless travesties Trump has and continues to unleash on this country. I will allow my tears to flow that tens of millions of Americans support his cruelty. When the tears ease I will open Meacham’s book and begin to read the map of John Lewis’s life. I pray he will help me find my way through the darkness to acceptance and meaning. I can think of no more profound and sacred practice to begin as 2020 comes to a close.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Commentary: December 23, 2023

I wrote the article above almost three years to the day. The winter solstice, the shortest darkest day of the year has just passed. Light is returning to the world. The timing is so interesting to me.

Everything I wrote in the article above at the end of 2020 still applies to me personally though I will say the grief depression is not as deep. I think there is something about the long view of time that is helping me.

In the last year I have read a great deal of history about this country. I am struck by how crude and coarse a people we have been since our country’s inception. I am struck by our selfishness and greed and cruelty to one another going back to our original settling. And yet, and yet, and yet we have survived as a country.

A few decent brave forward thinking human beings have somehow managed through the centuries to drag us toward the light. Somehow, we have preserved and grown better and deeper, at least a tiny bit.

So, though I continue to feel my grief depression about the travesties of trump, his political surrogates and magas, I sense there are those few decent brave forward thinking human beings out there in America right now trying to drag us toward the light of a better democracy and society as we lurch into 2024.

My personal winter solstice has just barely passed because of these known and unknown heroes. Because of them, there is a minute or two more light in my own inner world. I am grateful. Thank you. Amen.