Depression does a number of things to your sense of enjoyment and twists how you experience day to day challenges. At the darkest point of my last depressive episode anhedonia turned everything I used to enjoy into bland, seemingly meaningless activities. CBT/Talk Therapy helped me push through and being able to provide feedback to my therapist gave me a clearer picture of the things that began working and the things that weren’t. In the last year or so I’ve tried to do things that were related to my past interest but not quite.
I’ll preface here that as a hunter/target shooter what follows may or may not trigger negative reactions to some, so please if you are sensitive about firearms you can stop here. If not please continue scrolling down.
Before my divorce I thought my passion lay in photography but eventually I felt like I was hitting several artistic walls and I stopped feeling like I was really gaining anything. Social media made it much worse as there was always this weird sense that I needed to appease some stupid FB doctrine of likes. Following my divorce I realized anhedonia was perhaps the biggest symptom of my depression. Nothing I did felt fulfilling. All the old activities I did were bland and in some cases painful as they triggered me to remember my married years. My ex-wife was not a fan of firearms. She tolerated them for my sake I think but I don’t think she really enjoyed that I had an interest. Free from those concerns as I improved through therapy I looked to take up my side arms again.
The occasional weekend at the range turned into real drilling at the range. Cleaning and getting out there to shoot became one of the few times I could do something and be totally focused. A year and half later after ‘getting back’ on the range, I find myself helping friends to rekindle their interest and me looking to improve enough to shoot in an amateur league. Two sessions down and I’m feeling great that while each league night poses some challenges and I’m certainly testing myself in skills I’ve never used, I am learning a lot. That in itself is a big win in my book.
By contrast my other exploration outside of my comfort zone will seem like a complete homebody. Bread. Baking was never my thing in my teens or as a young adult. When I was married my wife was the predominant baker in the household. It was something that in some ways seemed to be too involved for me (stand mixers, yeast, proofing) but I found it to be so far off from my normal types of cooking that everything was interesting. Every little bit of knowledge became novel and a potential thing I could grow from.
Working through depression is never easy and I find myself certainly walking a fine line with my choice of coping tools. Everyone has to find their own path, their own means to staving off the depression in a constructive, healthy manner. While my ‘bullets and bread’ approach won’t apply to everyone, I hope it gives you pause to think about something you might consider trying that’s just outside of your comfort zone.
