Inspired by House M.D. Actor, Hugh Laurie: Contemplating Manufactured Happiness and What Happens When It Doesn’t Work
By Jessica Rae on May 17, 2008 in Commentary, Featured
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I’ve been catching up on the season three episodes of the TV show House M.D. that I haven’t seen. Has it been confusing to watch season four previous to this? At times, yes. But I can deal with some challenges (like matching black socks together). I always enjoy watching the show, even re-watching it. While I like all of the characters in their own way (somehow - even the ones I don’t like…if that makes sense) my favorite is Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie. As for why or how so many people like the charming but jerkish character, I don’t know. Maybe we like the refreshing way he’s blunt. Maybe we just like jerks.
I googled for Hugh Laurie today, and via Automated Daydream I found this article from March 29th, 2008. Something that interests me is the fairly open way that Laurie has discussed his clinical depression. Like far too many other people, I suffer from it as well (in the form of chronic treatment resistant depression). Admitting this feels strange, because I don’t know who might see it. It’s difficult to talk about, but significantly more difficult to never talk about, or never admit - because it’s a part of me. My feelings on this seem to be echoed in a quote from the article:
So, do I gather he doesn’t like doing interviews? “No, but who would? Obviously, you’re in a very vulnerable position. You are putting your testicles out on a chopping board. Well, not a chopping board, that’s not a good image… I get anxious about a lot of things, that’s the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can’t stop thinking about things all the time. And here’s the really destructive part: it’s always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.
That is exactly how I imagine this will play out. I will write this, and then over-analyze whether I should have posted it for days later. When it doesn’t matter anymore. But I’m wearing my resolve-face for now.
Laurie is an intelligent man who I imagine would be quite lovely to talk to about a range of subjects. Something interesting that caught my attention was when he said, “Marcus Aurelius, I think it was who said, ‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.’” That holds great weight, I think. If I learned anything in my University Psychology classes it’s that perception is everything. I’m also rather fond of a Thoreau quote that says something to the effect of, “We only see what we are prepared to see.” Which I think also speaks to people (myself included) who will see what they want in a situation. And still, I wonder about what Aurealius said.
The essence of the quote I believe can even be found in a quote from the show Felicity, “Things happen to us, but it’s our reactions that matter.” But are we really that in control of things? Can you control your mind? I’m quite aware that one can trick the mind (hypnosis can work on certain people - Freud proved that, and placebos certainly can be helpful tools) but I’m not sure if it can be controlled. And if you could, would you want to?
In a depressed mind, the estimate of things is different than one that isn’t depressed. I found this to be true when I expressed in a therapy session how especially low I felt while I was suffering a cold, and I was told that for me something like that could hit harder than for someone else. And my therapist didn’t mean just me-specific, she was talking about depressed people. Being depressed and then getting a cold can seem like so much more than how it would register for a majority of other people. I know that before I was this depressed, a cold never made me feel that bad. And it’s very frustrating to try and explain or express how you feel when others are more likely to say you’re being dramatic.
I am not certain if the quote is from House M.D., but there is a quote from somewhere that goes along these lines: “You want people to care? Get a disease that people can see.” To say I’ve never experienced a bias because I have a mental health disease instead of a physical one would be a big lie. Why a troubled mind seems less important than a troubled brain - well, that’s just how it seems to be seen, in my realm of life. Comparing these things is impossible, and unfair. Yet, I do feel overlooked, as though they are unjustly compared and weighed - with preference given to someone with a visible pain (and sad, miserable, or apathetic faces alone don’t count). If nothing else, if people don’t see a big ol’ bandage, they’re free to assume you’re just fine. Even if you tell them otherwise.
I myself, when not in the depths of despair, find it difficult to understand how that despair truly tastes. By this thinking, maybe it’s unfair to ask anyone else to. I think of the infamous To Kill a Mockingbird quote, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” But then I think, you can try on the same shoes, but they’ll be walking a different path. You can’t exactly know. It’s an entirely different experience. The way someone with beer goggles on would stumble over nothing. But, maybe I’m talking jibberish.
As Joan on Joan of Arcadia would often say, I feel like a sub-defective. I feel damaged in a way that no super glue has a hope of fixing. Mind you, this is the outlook of someone who has tried years of things with no results. (And of course, also the outlook of someone who has a depressed mind that they have to overcome in daily though processes - to different successful degrees.) At first, feeling like a guinea pig, trying pill after pill, seems exhausting. By now, I just dutifully swallow my pills and try not to hang too much hope on them. There are no cures, there are only ways to maintain a depression. Which, in itself, feels like a depressing fact.
You can try to make your way through a mental heath condition with pills, or without pills. I don’t know which way I think is the most beneficial. I am certainly skeptical of medication, and what it is exactly doing to my brain. But I can’t deny that it does seem to help some people. I can’t deny that I wish it would work for me.
My friend, Tara, was recently talking about the book Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts: What Causes Mental Illness, by Ty C. Colbert. Intrigued, I found this page that discusses the book. I think it is worth reading.
Something else that I recently stumbled upon that I enjoyed reading was the post Dealing With Depression; Going into the Void on scienceofenergyhealing.com. While it does specifically state that this is not targeted to help with clinical depression, I found it to be beneficial. Particularly the meditation exercise at the end.
(If you are later inclined to wonder why this post is peppered with TV show quotes, it’s not because I feel the need to fill a quota. It is just that I have memorized bits of writing from shows I’ve beloved. Dawson Leery of Dawson’s Creek may have thought that all of the answers to life’s questions are in movies, but I think just maybe you can find an awful lot of them in TV shows. Good writing, in any medium, can make you think.)
Images are from hughlauriefan.com, amber-tamblyn.net, and kerirussell.fanhost.com
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