One of the classic symptoms of depression is a lack of motivation, and cheery judgmental folks often judge the depressed as “lazy” when they lie in bed and wake up only to watch Jeopardy, then go back to bed.
But if you’ve ever been severely depressed, you know how overwhelming it is to just gin up the strength to live.
And to really “live” in the Dance in the Rain/Instagram Life way?
To tweak the words of Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a severely depressed person to dance in the rain.”
That’s why mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the United States. It’s not because people are lazy. It’s because dread, hopelessness, and misery strip us of the strength to do anything.
In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes, “No one ever told me about the laziness of grief” and “it’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting.”
Well, science is starting to understand why.
Studies are showing that the chronic low-grade inflammation that can lead to depression significantly affects our levels of dopamine.
Dopamine is what drives motivation. If you have low levels of dopamine, you probably can’t gin up much motivation.
Now a fascinating new study in Trends in Cognitive Sciences is giving us some idea of why.
Basically, chronic inflammation tells the body to fight something, and dopamine gets the short end of the stick.
Or as the study authors put it: “the immune system disrupts the dopamine system to help the brain perform this recalibration.”
That doesn’t happen to everyone, but in the depressed, it appears the immune system often doesn’t work right and affects your dopamine levels.
(Think about Elijah, retreating to the cave during his battle with a depressive episode. He seems to have lost motivation to prophet it up).
In the same way, you and I feel like retreating from our responsibilities during a bout of depression. It’s our dopamine, not some grand design to get out of things just because we want an extra hour to play Madden Mobile.
Of course, we have to fight through this, but it’s also important to give ourselves grace, and also for others to understand the scientific basis for this very real loss of motivation before they text us: “Go to the ant, you sluggard.”
Painting: Ennui, Walter Sickert.
