I Have Mild Depression; I Need to Adjust My Way of Living

Forbearance is the breadth of a great person; forbearance is the root of the noble person.He who can forbear feels summer not hot, winter not cold;he who can forbear is happy in poverty, long in years;the proud who forbear not will fall, the rich who forbear not will lose;want of forbearance turns small matters great, and good deeds end in regret;without forbearance, father and son lose kindness and filial duty; brothers lose love and respect;without forbearance, friends lose loyalty; husband and wife quarrel the more;Liu Ling ruined his name only through not forbearing wine;Lord Chen lost his state only through not forbearing lust;Shi Chong lost his fortune only through not forbearing wealth;Xiang Yu lost his life only through not forbearing anger;those who now break the law are all who knew not forbearance;of all who founded enterprises since olden times, which one was not forbearing?Song of a Hundred Forbearances, a song of a hundred forbearances;the benevolent forbear what others cannot bear; the wise forbear what others will not.Thinking twice is the way of forbearance; turning deaf and dumb is its standard;with the word forbearance one may walk the world and make neighbors;forbearing plainness nurtures the spirit; forbearing hunger and cold establishes character;forbearing toil leaves a surplus; forbearing excess brings no illness;forbearing fleshly bonds preserves human relations; forbearing appetite spares living things;forbearing speech avoids strife; forbearing contention dissolves hatred;forbearing another's curses without retort, his evil mouth of itself grows still;forbearing another's blows without return, his cruel hand of itself loses strength;know that he who yields and forbears is the true gentleman; say not that forbearance is folly;while forbearing, men may laugh you a fool; after it, you yourself know the self-cultivation;even if men laugh, forbear; heed not their words and cease forbearing;fools of the world laugh at forbearance; the gods above hold it dear;if I am in the wrong I must forbear, and if others are wrong I must forbear all the more;when affairs arise, forbear most of all; when they have passed, forbear again;life fears not a hundred forbearances, but a single want of forbearance;without forbearance, a hundred blessings melt like snow; one forbearance reduces ten thousand ills to ash.

But the version of the Song of a Hundred Forbearances my grandmother brought back was an altered one; it had added many folk customs and colloquialisms of the rural villages of eastern Hubei. For instance, it also taught us to forbear even when someone stole our plow ox. My grandmother learned this Song of a Hundred Forbearances by singing it; I can still remember, to this day, the rhythmic, chanting way she sang it.

My grandmother induced me to patient teaching by praise and by "food bribes." She would tell me that of all her grandchildren, I was the one she loved most; she praised me as clever and filial, and told me how dearly she loved me. At the same time she bribed me with little snacks. Teaching an illiterate rural old lady to recite long, tongue-twisting poems and scriptures like the Song of a Hundred Forbearances and the Diamond Sutra is very hard and requires immense patience. My grandmother's way of winning me over succeeded. As a child I was terribly mischievous and loved to play, yet I somehow made time to sit quietly and teach her to recite.

Every time we began a new scripture, I always memorized it before my grandmother did. Recently, reflecting on how my personality was formed, I realized this special episode of learning scriptures with my grandmother had a great influence on my whole life. On a psychological test of endurance, I scored full marks—a result perhaps one in ten thousand. For a while I debated a group of Buddhists from a famous Beijing temple on the Tianya forum; later Buddhists from all over the country joined, some of them monastics. In the heat of debate they could not help themselves from using filthy language, while I alone maintained powerful self-control, from beginning to end not uttering a single swear word, keeping the Buddha's precepts against "double-tongue, harsh speech, false speech and frivolous talk."

Looking back on many things from my childhood, I now see that from the start I was very yielding: however unhappy I felt, I first considered other people's feelings. Among the Six Paramitas of Buddhism, the Paramita of Forbearance is the hardest to practice; people find it very hard to extinguish their own anger. But the first philosophy lesson of my life was forbearance, and so I have very powerful self-restraint.

Yet forbearance itself is a double-edged sword: it is both a virtue and a deep-seated flaw. Excessive forbearance means we give others the chance to hurt us. People who are too forbearing lack self-protection, or rather, they have chosen a passive way of protecting themselves. Over time this way of protecting itself produces a series of negative effects; it makes a person prone to depression and dejection.

However, my vitality may be far stronger than most people's; in this life I have hardly ever lacked energy. I have worked on two teams, and my colleagues all marveled at my focus and efficiency. My first investor even told me I was the kind of person who could do the work of ten; in a unit of time the amount I could accomplish was astonishing.

So the "forbearance" my grandmother taught had only a limited negative effect on me when I was young. In adolescence, when I encountered many things I could no longer bear, I did rise up in anger, even raising my arm and leading a crowd into fights and trouble. Many of the things I did then were things most people would not even dare to imagine.

But early education often begins to produce a ruminating effect in later youth. After twenty-five, this early forbearance education began to have a great influence on me. After thirty, I tried to forbear in all things. After thirty-five, forbearance had become my main choice in life. After forty, I could endure everything, with almost no more angry thoughts—or if they occasionally arose, I would digest them within a few seconds.

Is this good? I think it is both good and not good. The good is that forbearance reduces so much strife: if people come to scold me, I forbear, do not answer back, and avoid them, so they cannot go on scolding; if someone infringes my interests, I also forbear and say nothing. Over time I became, as Professor Seligman described, showing the phenomenon of learned helplessness.

And learned helplessness is precisely the basis of depression. Professor Seligman did some animal experiments: after shocking a dog, the experimenter gives it no chance to escape. At first the dog struggles; in the end, knowing escape is useless, it stops struggling and only whimpers. This is a phenomenon of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness—that is depression. Forbearance is essentially a state of non-struggle in the face of all the fair and unfair things that happen to us; over time, people accustomed to forbearing easily become depressed.

The root of my current mild depression lies exactly here.

I am a generally happy person, have read many books, have learned a good deal about depression, and have even helped some depressed patients; yet in the end I myself still inevitably slid into depression. When the score on the depression scale showed me at the top end of mild depression, only one point away from moderate depression, I was very calm—even calmer than before I saw the scale.

I was not depressed a year ago; even now, the scores on the various relationship subscales of my depression inventory are still normal. What is abnormal is the depressive symptoms. My main clinical symptoms are insomnia, loss of appetite, and difficulty feeling the joy of life; these produced my high depression score.

Looking back carefully, this depression began with the major outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last year. During that time I severely overdrawn my body; at the peak, I could hardly ever rest, and my brain ran at high speed continuously. I knew my body could not bear it, but the situation left no choice but to endure. There were simply too many patients, surging in like a tsunami; many medical workers may never see so many patients in a lifetime.

After that I began to show symptoms of neurasthenia, with very poor sleep. In February of this year, a relative of mine came to Beijing to petition (shangfang); the outcome was not good, and local police came to Beijing and arrested him. Because he was staying at my home and I had helped him communicate with local officials, the police even threatened to arrest me.

After he was detained in the lockup, his family tried every means to rescue him. For more than two months, on top of my work, I was constantly anxious about this matter and often lay awake all night. Because the family had placed their main hopes on me, and some judge friends I know also told me not to leave Beijing until my relative was released, lest some local police abuse their power and act wildly elsewhere.

After this, an elderly member of the family died; fearing implication and arrest if I left Beijing, I could not go home for the funeral. This event also had a series of knock-on effects, including affecting my child's state and his examinations. It further evolved and triggered many family conflicts. In the end it became a tangle of petty troubles that kept disturbing my sleep.

By this recent summer vacation, I finally realized I may already have slid into a long state of insomnia and gloom. Apart from work, I seemed to take no interest in anything; I often lay awake all night, grew sad to the point of tears from time to time, and often wanted to quarrel with my family—yet forbore and said nothing, for fear of hurting them.

After the latest violent emotional fluctuation, I finally realized I was ill. Using the diagnostic methods for depression I know, I filled out several scales, and sure enough: I had mild depression. Fortunately, my score on the "suicide" item was zero. I knew I should begin treating myself at once, so I started taking Xiaoyao Wan (Free-and-Easy Wanderer Pills), and used Gan Mai Dazao Tang (Grain, Malt and Jujube Decoction) and Erzhi Wan (Two-Earth Pill) to rescue my appetite and sleep. For now I do not want to use Western antidepressants, because I know I am not yet at that severity.

But I also know that mild depression (even a reactive one like mine), if not treated promptly and effectively, can progress to moderate or severe depression, and further along that road come suicidal thoughts.

After much thought, I finally decided to make public the fact that I have mild depression—to my relatives and friends, and to my patients and their families. Because to heal my own heart, I need your cooperation. For years I have appeared before you as a dutiful family member and physician, sparing no effort to help others out of pain, ready to sacrifice myself rather than let down family and friends. I have borne too much pressure, and now I have truly reached the point of being unable to bear it.

I am ill. I need to adjust my way of living and working. I must lighten my load; both body and heart need sufficient rest, so that I can recover. I know many of you cannot understand this illness called depression. I hope you will not offer me needless comfort and greetings; what I need is a quiet period.

I have an INFP personality type, also called the philosopher or mediator type. People with an INFP personality are given to reflection; they can not only lead others to the depths of the soul but also be their own spiritual mentor. Give me a quiet spell, and I will rescue myself from this depressed state.

I may need to make some changes. In the past I always over-sacrificed myself to make others happy, and that is wrong. In the long run it will hurt me. I am not saying I should not in future be tolerant and kind to others; I am saying that everything must be in moderation. I want to love myself and build boundaries for myself. I need to rebuild my relationships and keep a certain distance from the people and things that cause me excessive physical and emotional drain. If I do not, sooner or later I will slide into moderate or severe depression. I cannot collapse, because the people who love me still need me.

I have a good enough foundation to resist this reactive depression. For a long time I have kept good work and exercise habits, and those habits are now saving me. Although I am in a depressed state, I can still work efficiently and do high-intensity exercise or physical labor, and I still keep it up every day; this persistence gives me enough strength to keep running outward from the deep pit of depression. So this is atypical depression for me—a total emotional collapse brought on purely by overdraft from overexertion.

My self-evaluation is not as low as in typical depression; I have been recognized by many people, which is entirely different from the low sense of worth of a depressed patient. A comprehensive mental-health assessment I took showed no distortion of my personality and a very sound psychological foundation. Even these words I am writing are full of positive force, utterly unlike a typical depressed patient; so I believe I will recover quickly.

I have simply worn myself out. I hope the people around me will consider how to lighten my burden rather than add to it. Every day I deal with pain, death, terminal illness, suicide and all manner of negative things; as I gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into me. I need to reduce other influences that could destroy my psychological supports; I need time, and I need my own personal space.

I hope soon to feel again the beauty of mountains and rivers, the brilliance of blue skies and white clouds, the passionate joy of being alive, and to be cheered for half a day by the sight of a single flower. I do not want to spend too long in this drizzly mood, or be constantly sunk in gloom. I will drive this sadness out of my heart and find again the positive, sunny self.

I want to show my weakness to everyone: I am not an iron man so strong he cannot be broken. I am only an ordinary mortal; my flesh and blood cannot bear an infinite burden. I can still handle my current work, but more than that I cannot endure.

These are all the thoughts of my heart. I write them only so that I may be heard, but at the same time I hope to be left undisturbed. Outside of work, I hope for more quiet, solitary time to rebuild my heart on my own. Do not try to reason with me; I have read many books and can work things out myself—I simply cannot control my emotions. When you see me zoning out, I hope you will not ask what I am doing; I am just switching off unnecessary functions, letting myself run in a low-energy state to cut the drain. When my strength returns, I will emerge from this state on my own.

Finally, I hope no one worries about me. I can help myself, or with the help of professional colleagues, come out of this; I just need a little time. Thank you for your understanding and support over the years. I love you all.