How can we help a job hunter who is depressed?
By Richard Bolles
That leads, of course, to the next question: can it be fixed? Or, as I put it last week "How can I help alleviate their depression, or even make it go away?"
The popular answer to this question, currently, is often the prescribing of Prozac, Paxil, and other drugs of that class. Typically, Prozac is prescribed by a doctor or psychiatrist, when a person is experiencing at least three of the following symptoms, and experience them nearly every day, all day, for at least two weeks:
- Tremendous draining of energy, feeling tired or exhausted after the simplest effort, all the time.
- Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy.
- Feeling restless and unable to sit still.
- Having problems concentrating or making decisions.
- Sleep is a big problem; too much or too little.
- Feeling worthless or guilty.
- Having thoughts of death or suicide.
Into the definition are also thrown, sometimes, problems which by themselves don't necessarily indicate depression: headaches, digestive problems, sexual problems, being anxious or worried, and feeling pessimistic or hopeless. All this, to describe the mood disorder called depression. And, if there are periods of elation alternating with the depression, it is called a bi-polar mood disorder.
Many in such circumstances have found Prozac to be a wonder drug, lifting for them the dark curtain of depression, in a truly miraculous way.
But it is worth noting that there are people in depression for home Prozac has been a curse. It is one of those drugs (there are others) which, if they don't cure you, don't just leave you as you were, but have a nasty habit of sometimes making your depression much worse. I have seen this happen. It is sobering, to say the least. In such cases, obviously, Prozac is not the answer. Moreover, there are people in depression who don't want to take drugs, for one reason or another, and often for very good reasons. Drugs are rarely laser beams; most often, they are shotguns. And they often go in and muck up lots of things inside you, besides the target they are intended to work on.
When people are fighting depression without the aid of drugs, we can often help alleviate their depression, while they continue their job-search, if we offer them:
- Focused listening,
- Informed understanding,
- Supportive empathy, and
- Compassionate strength
We should begin with the focused listening, and notice things. What's to notice about the depression? Well, its severity, for openers.
Over the years, I have found it useful to think of a depression as similar to "respiratory ailments". You could even metaphorically call depression "the respiratory ailment of the psyche". The metaphor is dumb, but it's useful.
Useful, because the metaphor reminds us that not all depressions are created equal. As everyone knows, the phrase "respiratory ailments" refers to a whole spectrum of illnesses, ranging widely in severity—from "the sniffles", or a cold, at one end, to double pneumonia at the other.
Likewise, depressions range widely in severity, as earlier ages knew well. Before the present popularity of the single word, depression, there used to be a whole gaggle of words to sum up various degrees of mood disorders—such as sad, down, glum, in the dumps, or some reference to colors—such as blue or black. What this very good vocabulary conveyed, above all else, was the truth that depression could vary from day to day, from season to season, in its severity: "I'm feeling a little blue, to day," meant a mild, ever so slight, depression, on the magnitude of the sniffles. Whereas, "I'm in a really black depression," meant a severe depression, on the magnitude of pneumonia: "A dark night of the soul." In severity, depressions range wildly—earlier ages knew.
Often, we don't. So, when we are first observing a job-hunter, or anyone, in depression, it is useful to remind ourselves of this, by noticing: Of what severity is this depression—is it only as mild as a cold, or is it as severe as pneumonia? (One sign of the former: the ability to still laugh. One sign of the latter: suicidal thoughts.)
Where do we proceed from there? Well, informed understanding is next. We need to read everything we can get our hands on. If we are Web-savvy, prowl the Internet. If there are seminars offered on this subject by mental health professionals, attend them.
But beyond the learned books and doctors, we need to talk more with our own colleagues, those in our own profession—career counselors—about such questions as, "What do you do when you are dealing with a depressed job-hunter?" We talk with each other already about this job hunting technique or that. But we need to go deeper in our conversations with other career counselors, for it is this information brought directly from the battlefield, so to speak, and brought by our colleagues, that is often the most valuable. "I tried this, and it worked, with a particular job-hunter who was feeling depressed. " More of that kind of sharing will broaden our informed understanding.
What else do we have to offer job-hunters who are fighting this battle? Empathy and compassion. Think of our work in terms of colors. When a job-hunter is in a depression, it is as though all the colors in their life have become muted. The bright reds, blues, and yellows of their life have lost their luster, and have faded instead to the faintest pastels, or perhaps only gray. In our goal of helping them to overcome depression, we are actually setting out to restore the colors of their lives to the vivid tones they used to know. In that work, then, we come as painters. And empathy and compassion are the paintbrushes at our disposal, to help accomplish the restoration work.
