Daddy, What Are Those Pills: Explaining Depression to my Daughter

This morning as I was taking my daily medication, a dopamine/seratonin uptake inhibitor, my seven-year-old daughter asked, “What are those?” This was not the first time she'd asked that question, so I answered as I usually do: “It's my medication, Sweetie.” In the past, that had always been sufficient, but today she hit me with the follow-up, “What's it for?” While it never occurred to me to dodge the question, in the moment I had no idea how best to answer it. If I said “depression,” then she would probably make the easy mistake that a lot of adults make: that it was just about how I felt in the moment, and that I was taking drugs simply in order to feel better. And while I'm a strong proponent of legalizing some currently banned substances, this was obviously not the time for a conversation on that theme. I didn't want to give her the impression that I was taking anti-depressants for recreational purposes, or even that I enjoyed taking them. I don't. So what I settled on was this: “I have to take medication so that my brain can work properly.”

“What's in them?”

“Chemicals to help my brain to what it should.” She looked at me for a second, so I went on: “Everything that happens in your brain happens because of chemicals, Sweetie. What you think. What you feel. Everything. Most brains make just the right amount of chemicals to keep themselves working properly most of the time, but mine doesn't.”

“Your brain doesn't work?”

“No, my Love,” I answered. “Sometimes, it doesn't work well at all. And that means my mind doesn't work properly either.”

“What do you mean?”

“The mind is something that the brain does. Your brain makes your mind. So if your brain isn't healthy, then having a healthy mind is pretty much impossible.”

“But what's wrong with your mind?”

Another hard question. Where to begin? “Often, I can't feel things that other people feel.”

“I don't understand.”

“Sometimes, I can't make myself get out of bed or even move even though I know I have to. Sometimes, I can' feel happy no matter how many good things happen. For days, weeks. Sometimes for years, I'm incapable of feeling joy.”

“Really? Years?”

“Really, Sweetie. I've gone whole years without ever feeling joy.”

“Even when you snuggle me?”

“Even when I snuggle you. And I love you more than anything in the world.”

“And your medication fixes that?”

“My medication fixes my brain, so I can feel things that other people can feel.”

At this point, the conversation drifted, as conversations over breakfast tend to do, and soon it was time to drive her to her horseback riding camp. Since dropping her off though, our talk has been on my mind. Did I answer her questions as well as I should? Did she understand what I was saying? Will the information I gave her affect the way she sees me? Of course at the moment, I can't know the answers to these questions, but with observation, they shouldn't be hard to work out over time. Meanwhile, I'm left with a handful of other thoughts. I think I made the right parenting choice in answering her question. She has a right to know who her father is, how his brain works, and what he needs to do in order to maintain something like a viable existence. More importantly, I think I taught her something about not being ashamed of whoever and whatever one happens to be.

No one dealing with depression is unfamiliar with shame. I'd wager we've all heaped loads of it on ourselves when we've seen others doing basic things that we find difficult or impossible. And I'd also wager that many of us have been in a least one relationship in which shaming by another person was simply a part of our daily existence: maybe parents, maybe partners, maybe someone else. But shaming always has more to do with the person projecting it than the person at whom it is projected. It always carries the implicit judgment: I am a suitable measure of you, and by my measure, you have been found wanting. Shaming, in other words, is always a product of self-righteousness. By showing her, and discussing with her, my own empirical difference from the majority of our species, I hope to have given her a least the beginnings of a defense against others' self-righteousness—a way to recognize that not only her strengths but also her weaknesses are a part of her uniqueness, and that there is nothing innate to her about which she ever need feel shame. We are not born broken, or laden with a burden of original sin. We are not born imperfect according to any meaningful standard of perfection. We are simply born—breathing, feeling, and in perpetual need of each other.

As a final thought, I'd like to say something about that need. I can't pretend that I explained my condition to my daughter purely for her own benefit. She is the most important person in my life, and as much as she needs me, I need her as well. I need—we all need—to be understood and accepted by the people closest to us, or conversely to become close with those who understand and accept us. So I want my daughter to understand who and what I am in all of my flaws and weaknesses, and by extension to know that she will always be accepted in her turn.