[Anjae]

Wonder if that capacity will remain post-crisis... The funny thing is they can manupulate but they are being manipulaed big time by OW/OM. Sounds like fun!     

Eeeewh!  Imagine having a 'relationship' like that 

I think it must be fun, don't you, Kikki?  Not! But they seem to love those "relashionships"...

Was thinking about Thundarr’s supervisor view that there is no covert depression because, since a person manages to function, that person is not depressed. Well, yesterday I attended a late afternoon small cosy birthday party of a friend that has turned 50 a few days ago. He had been “celebrating” like there is no tomorrow, with parties, dinners, tons of drinking. I choose yesterday’s late afternoon party because it was a quiet one, not madness.

There were just a few close people there. Said friend was visibly depressed, he all talked about it. On the other parties & dinners, where many not so close people, work colleagues and acquaintances have been he has been putting a happy face. He had a family dinner after his small gathering and he had told me several times: I need to arrive happy, my parents and cousins will be there, I still have to go pick my daughter and do a little shopping with her. If any of them sees me like this, I’m done.

So, depressed people can put up a pretty good cover in front of all those they trust less or do not want to see them feeling the way they really are feeling.

My friend is not an MLCer but he has had an affair and become divorced. He is a bit of a philanderer and has have many short lived affairs while married. This time his wife had enough and they divorce. He is struggling with money issues, he is feeling lonely. He feels the need of looking the powerful high ranked manager of a big company he is in front of business clients and work collegues; of look happy/cheerful around less close friends and family.

He does not confide in many people so only a few of us know he is depressed. For everyone else he is a guy that got divorced but has a fantastic life.

[kikki]

He does not confide in many people so only a few of us know he is depressed. For everyone else he is a guy that got divorced but has a fantastic life.

Thanks for sharing that Anne.  A really good example of the mask with covert depression. 

[Anjae]

You're welcome, Kikki. And before he was a divorced depressed man with a mask he was man people thought had a great marriege that was already depressed and using a mask. I doubt he ever let his wife saw him the way he let us saw himk without the mask.

It has already been talked here how man (or most man) have that manhood thing that does not allow them to show their more frail, emotional side. How they hide depression and this friend of mine is one fo those guys. He is not seen as the artistic/creative type like my husband (those are allowed to be frain and depressed  ) but like a manly man.

[Rollercoasterider]

Sorry for not reading and responding sooner. I have been immersing myself in the MIDUS (Midlife in the US) survey. In a blog post I said I wanted to write something detailed for everyone to clear up things and show the primary sources and I’ve been working on that.

So far I have a pretty detailed essay that is almost 30 pages and growing. But then, I think I’ve repeated myself and am now reviewing it as a whole… and then I keep thinking of more to add.

Covert depression - He doesn't believe in the concept or at least in the context we use it. He likens it to the term "functioning alcoholic" and stated his take on this is that if a person can hold down and job, support their family and live up to their other responsibilities but choose to drink heavily at night or on the weekends then to what end do we diagnose them as "alcoholic." On the same note, if a person is able to compartmentalize and go about day-to-day responsibilities then how can we diagnose them with depression, which by definition to be a disorder would have to cause some loss of order in their life. Interestingly enough, he used the term "dis-order" for both of these concepts and also for MLC later on and noted the hyphen to differentiate it from being a DSM-IV recognized diagnosis.

Thinking a little more on covert depression, too. Since some of our spouses had been diagnosed/misdiagnosed as bipolar, would it be fair to compare covert depression as we know it more with an extreme or extended manic episode?

As I was reading up to here I was reviewing what I wanted to say in response and wondered why it took someone so long to mention bipolar!

I agree with the analysis if covert depression in many ways. When I speak of MLC being about depression, I am not saying it is Clinical Depression and Thundarr mentioned the hyphen disease versus dis-ease. MLC and the permeating depression of MLC is, in general, dis-ease. That doesn’t mean that some MLCers are not suffering from Clinical Depression, it’s just that for most the depression may not be of that level or perhaps it’s not a severe chemical issue other than in-fatuation or andro/menopause hormones.

At the same time I think OldPilot and others have a good point. Either Overt or Covert depression may be functional or dysfunctional and it sounds like Thundarr’s supervisor was considering the overt depressives to be functional, but people can be manic and out of control! It’s also so true that functionality can be faked or compartmentalized. Is a person really functional if there only able to maintain functionality because their co-dependent spouse covers for them when drinking and keeps them going—but The Wizard of Alcohol or MLC is not seen from his or her position behind the curtain.

Now about bipolar or manic depression. There is the diagnosable disease, but the terms can apply to many conditions or even attitudes and hey—water! Water has one negative pole and one positive pole and technically that fits the adjective bipolar. So instead of thinking about the disease with the name Manic Depression, think about the term or phrase as a description of a condition. An MLCe’rs behaviours are often bipolar—they do cycle! Now transfer that to idea someone who is depressed or acting overtly. When we label a condition as depression we are really only identifying what might be half or part of a condition with an opposite side. Technically the word depression is the opposite of stimulant and refers to low-energy—and so our idea of what we call Overt depression is an oxymoron. But it’s just a label. So make up a label for a disease or dis-ease—MLC for example. Then label the two ends—depression and manic or high and low energy or something else. The manic of an MLCer may not be the same manic as someone with the actual disease Manic Depression, but that doesn’t mean the adjective manic is inappropriate. But since that adjective is now part of the official label for a real disease, understand that people will associate it with that disease and may not understand you are not talking about the disease unless you explain that.

Covert Resolved and Unresolved Issues - He challenged me to define what a "resolved" or an "unresolved" issue is. His take is that to determine any issue to be resolved or unresolved we must first assign a scientific method to do so and gave an example that in order to measure this we would have to assign parameters to determine if an issue were truly resolved. In doing so we would assign a value of 0 to represent a resolved issue (meaning it had absolutely NO impact on a person whatsoever) and a variance between +1 and -1 to represent whether the issue was unresolved and to what degree as well as to determine whether its status of being unresolved has a positive or a negative effect on the person. He challenged me to not only define these parameters but also come up with a way of measuring them. There is not a way to do this. His explanation was that issues were always fluid and never truly resolved OR unresolved as the impact of their presence will vary across different settings and circumstances. There is no way to measure that an issue will have no psychological impact.

I love his explanation of this because he has made it so simple to follow, and often people do not explain it so well.

This is another example as to why I don’t consider MLC a diagnosable disease and I don’t think it should be part of the DSM. But I do wish it were recognized and accepted as something—dis-ease, dis-order, condition…

Liminality - This is the big one that lead into the full-blown theory explanation. His assertion is that we are all fragmented by the different parts of our personality and that we create constructs of ourselves to adapt to different environments and situations based on what we learn from experience does and does not work. For example, our identity at home when interacting with our spouses and children may be much different than our personas at work. We may be in administrative positions which require us to be rigid and have an air of authority, but that persona may fail miserably in the home environment. We learn to pick and choose which fragments to use in a given situation and sometimes try on different ones to see how others react. (Note from me - this sounds VERY much like the MLCer trying on different identities and keeping their 2 lives separate as their personas in the 2 lives are likely very different).

Liminality is what I call the phase or stage Jim Conway labeled as Depression. I didn’t like labeling the phase with something that at extreme levels is the name of a disease—though we use it to refer to less extreme levels as well. I was Liminal in September 2008. I was conscious of the state and deliberate about being in it. I was also depressed, but not to the level of disease—it was a Liminal Depression, not a Clinical Depression and to have used pharmaceuticals to life me up would have prevented to positive forces of the Liminality by stopping them and it would have resulted in a form of stagnation. It was terrible going to work or simply leaving the house to be out there in society. I would look down at my shoes or avert my eyes in some other way when passing people to avoid eye contact and direct communication—it was a way of trying to be invisible. I cried at my desk. I was probably severe enough that I could have been given some sort of grace regarding my employment—I lost my job not long after that period. I was quite dysfunctional at work—even though I was putting in effort.
But I’m a resilient-PollyAnna-optimist and I know it. I did not feel hopeless despair which is a marker of Clinical Depression. I knew it was a necessary period of solitude and going inward and I embraced it. I was actually excited about it even amidst the trying to be invisible. As a writer I began as a poet and it had been a long time since I’d written poetry. Well, I wrote 5-10 a week for 3 or 4 weeks straight! I was counting and monitoring my output with enthusiasm.

Yes we are all fragmented; part of Liminality is reintegration. That doesn’t mean those personas we use for different situations go away or that we will no longer have the ability to compartmentalize.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development - This forms the framework of his theory about human development, of which MLC is only a small part. Apparently the popular belief on Erikson's theories are that they are accurate BUT they are not independent of each other despite being sequential. We commonly refer to not resolving the crisis of a particular stage and revisiting it later in order to resolve said crisis. His assertion is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to not resolve the crisis of a stage that you are moving through. Also, each stage is affected by how the ones before it were resolved and each of them continue on until death. This was the eye-opening part for me and I will continue it in the next post so that I don't lose anything.

I think it’s not so much not resolving as it is the level of resolution.
Did you know that I have a large article on Erikson’s stages? It’s one of those that is no longer free. The original draft—which is what is available at the Store—is 46 pages and almost 15,000 words. I removed it from the free articles because it was not one of my most popular articles—probably because it’s so long and academic.

[underpressure]

RCR, I'd like the link to your Erikson article and where to pay for it!

[theheartknows]

RCR, I bought your article on Erikson's Stages and it was academic and also excellent! Talked to my Psychologist friend about that article and she thought it was right on!!

[underpressure]

NM. Found it!

[Anjae]

Yes, if not as a disease than MLC should be accepted as a di-sease, disorder or a condition. Otherwise I think it will be hard to make it more known and to have health, law, other professionals and people in general having a knowledge of how to deal with it.

I disagree with your opposition of medicines in Liminality (or other phases of MLC). Don’t think it prevents the positives forces or make it stagnant. If one has a MLCer who is totally depressed (clinically diagnosed, like my cousin), with suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts for months on end,  not medicate that MLCer will, most likely, result in a dead MLC or a MLCer drove into severe clinical depression.

And our MLCers are depressed. At least on the terms the doctors of my country recognise and diagnose depression. Both my husband and cousin were diagnosed with depression by doctors.

[Rollercoasterider]

RCR, I bought your article on Erikson's Stages and it was academic and also excellent! Talked to my Psychologist friend about that article and she thought it was right on!!

Thanks!

I disagree with your opposition of medicines in Liminality (or other phases of MLC). Don’t think it prevents the positives forces or make it stagnant.

I never said I was against medication; I said it was unnecessary for me when I was Liminal. Pharmaceuticals can often have the advantage of taking off the hard edge of depression and raising someone just enough to be functional for Mirror-Work. Liminality is not Clinical Depression. But someone can be depressed and pharmaceuticals may help them enought to become Liminal and for some people it is necessary to maintain a long-term medicative therapy. I'm not one of them--I'm practically unipolar toward the high energy side. Really--I sometimes drive people nuts with my hyper-energy!

[Anjae]

But you didn’t have a MLC did you? I don’t recall reading that you’ve had a crisis of your own... So, if you did not have a crisis of your own, wouldn’t your Liminality be different and less severe than the one of a MLCer? Also, I think they don’t all go as deep into any of the stages, that there are several levels within each stage.

My cousin was not a high replayer. He was a wallower that overworked, just like Mermaid’s husband. There was never OW, just fantasying about getting one. What happened with my cousin, when he was finally given the right medicines for his situation was that, at first, he become totally numb. The meds paralysed him for a couple of weeks (it was necessary to have him “asleep” and stop the suicide attempts), than allow him to raise. He has been without meds for many months, things still bumpy and he is not himself again. Well, he will never be who he was. The doctor told us that someone who becomes that depressed will never be the same person again. We still don’t know who he is/how he is going to be.

My husband refused treatment and, to my knowledge, he has not taken any meds since he was diagnosed with depression (that was before he left). Yet he seems to be able to keep an endless high energy… So far…