How Learning a Foreign Language Might Help You Overcome Depression
When your mind succumbs to despair you need to give it something else to think about
Nothing is more terrifying than when your own mind turns on you. There are feelings of helplessness, terror, sadness, and shame. Your mind has tremendous power, and it is capable of computational feats that can produce amazing highs and devastating lows.
Sometimes occupying your mind with an enormous task is the only way to buy yourself enough breathing room to reestablish your footing.
Riding a bike
Consider the first time you learned to ride a bicycle. When the moment of comprehension comes, it’s instantaneous. Your mind figures out the pathway to balance and you feel understanding snap into place. Suddenly you go from believing riding is impossible, to understanding it’s the easiest thing in the world. Once you learn how to ride, it’s suddenly impossible to comprehend not knowing how.
Now imagine that the knowledge of how to ride a bicycle was stripped away. Imagine it was taken along with all the other knowledge of the things that gave you purpose. That’s depression, and it can hit just as fast as when the moment of comprehension came.
Depression is like being caught forever with a sensation that you are on the cusp of a grand understanding, combined with the torment of knowing it will never come. You have a sense that a simple flip of the switch is all it would take to alleviate your pain, but you can’t find the switch no matter how hard you look.
Escape
I was depressed back in 2001 when I sold all my possessions and jumped on a plane to Peru. People sometimes look back at that choice and think it was courageous. I mean, who just blasts off to forge a new life in a different country without knowing anyone?
But I wasn’t driven by courage. It was desperation, a Hail Mary pass. I truly didn’t care what happened to me and I half expected to get myself killed.
Looking back, I know I put myself in a lot of dangerous positions. On one occasion, I got hauled off a tour bus in Ecuador by men in mismatched uniforms carrying AK-47s. They were about to drag me into the jungle and shoot me for all I knew. At the time I felt both terrified and indifferent. When they let me go, I shrugged and continued on my way.
Putting your life on hold
I think the worst part about depression is that some part of you insists it should be easy to fix. You get into this habit of believing you have to put off your life until you can get the depression under control.
“Everything will be a lot easier when I’ve managed this depression, I’ll just wait to start then.”
But that’s like saying you want to get in shape, you just want to lose some weight first. The actions that are most likely to assist your mental state are the ones that you end up avoiding.
Keeping the mind occupied
In those days, I was as disinclined to do anything as anyone else with depression. However, the simple fact that I was living in a foreign country forced my mind to work. Learning a foreign language through total immersion is an overwhelming task that serves to occupy a huge amount of your thoughts. The effort doesn’t eliminate depression, but it dulls it while stimulating the rest of your mind.
I remember waking up in the morning and going to a Spanish class in a kind of dream state. I didn’t want to go, but it was like the whole situation wasn’t real. It was crazy, I was in a distant land surrounded by strangers, and many of them were going out of their way to take care of me. Some rational part of my mind kept screaming that I should change course, but I ignored it. The absurdity of my reality created an almost invisible spark of amusement in my vast darkness, and I focused on that spark with the intensity of a drowning man.
Total immersion
Everyone deserves the opportunity to learn a foreign language through total immersion. It changes your perspective on the world and on your whole life. I remember finishing the day more exhausted than I’ve ever been. We sometimes overlook how physically exhausting it is to think. When every moment of communication requires all your concentration, you collapse in bed in the evening and enter a profound and restful sleep.
I don’t know that I’ve ever slept as well as I did during my first three months.
Perhaps something of the lethargy that comes from depression is just your mind working on a problem that you never asked it to examine. When you throw yourself into language acquisition, your mind doesn’t have enough energy left over to keep maintaining the depression. Sometimes, a little reprieve is all you need.
The memories
One thing I didn’t expect was how total immersion allowed me to recall some very old memories. As I learned Spanish, I was often frustrated in my lack of ability to communicate. I couldn’t make myself understood. Somehow, that feeling was so unique, that it brought up thoughts from when I was two or three years old. These were thoughts from the last time I couldn’t make myself understood.
Along with those thoughts came memories. I experienced very vivid images of the house where I grew up. I remembered the things I used to do. I remembered furniture. All of this because I felt like a three-year-old again who couldn’t speak.
These memories allowed me to change my perspective on life. There was an overwhelming sense of fondness. It was joyful to experience those memories again, and when they went back into storage in my subconscious, they all contained a new varnish of happiness. I think that joy reinforces you. It’s important to hold happy memories in a vault, and revisit them when you need to.
The break
After my first three months in Peru, I went back to the US and a friend of mine commented on my appearance.
“You look like you just went through boot camp.”
He could tell I’d been through a profound experience. He said that it seemed like I was downloading information, like my mind was processing things at a tremendous rate. When I returned to Peru, the language came easier even though I hadn’t practiced for a few weeks.
Like riding a bicycle, sometimes you just have to flip the switch. But even when the switch is flipped, that only means the real work begins.
A decade passed
I lived in Peru for years, and the pain slowly ebbed. This was not an easy process by any means, but what else could I do? I nurtured my little spark of light. I added wood shavings, I added kindling, and eventually, I got a flame.
I did the paperwork, got a job and a visa, and worked as a teacher. I had greater energy. I thought in a foreign language and it changed who I was.
Anything but simple
I’ve been fortunate in my life. I’ve earned a degree, I’ve written novels, I’ve acquired a foreign language, but there is nothing more difficult than battling depression.
Nothing.
I think depression is such a devious opponent because it lures you into thinking it should be simple to correct. We say “as easy as riding a bicycle.”
Do you really think riding a bicycle is easy? Why don’t you get a robot and try to train it to make all the necessary balance corrections so it can ride a bicycle? Riding a bicycle requires millions of microscopic adjustments in every direction simultaneously all while also taking account of velocity, direction, and acceleration. Your mind can do that at the snap of a finger.
Depression is infinitely more complicated than riding a bicycle. The very first thing you have to do is allow yourself to recognize the enormity of your task. It’s not a flip of the switch. You’re climbing a mountain, you’re nurturing a spark into a light with more intensity than the sun. Celebrate your victories, each and every one of them is amazing.
I’m grateful
There are memories I hold now that give me strength when things are difficult. Depression isn’t something that goes away. Even when you have a moment of relief, it can come back. You live with depression forever. You need to develop tactics to mend your mind. Hold your happy memories close and pull the feelings out of them when you need to. Memories are infinite, they’ll never run out.
I don’t know if losing yourself in foreign language immersion would help everyone, but it helped me. I’m comforted by the fact that it’s a tactic I could try again if things took a turn for the worse. In a heartbeat, I would go to Italy or Germany or anywhere. Just me and a backpack, and my mind.
Total immersion in a foreign language takes every ounce of physical and mental energy you have, even the parts that are working against you. It is very difficult, and it might work. Good luck to you on your journey, perhaps we’ll meet as travelers in distant lands. We’ll lend each other support on our road to happiness.
It’s anything but easy, and I’m grateful for all the support I’ve received along the way.
“I'd rather Be Writing” exists because of your generous support. If you have the means please consider upgrading to a paid sponsorship. I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year. I'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.
My CoSchedule referral link
Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).
Thanks for this one, Walter! I’ve been depressed in the past and still battle the “Noonday Demon” (yes, an excellent book) at times. In a few months I move to Mexico, and it will be an immersive experience and I will test your hypothesis.
i have been brushing up my high school French (surprised how much i do remember) and also have been learning some Italian. i grew up with Spanish but don't speak fluently, in my opinion but i do pretty well when i go to Mexico. with all this political turmoil and being in Flori-duh away from family and friends, i have been getting pretty depressed as well. trying to learn something new every day is helping. thank you for writing about this Walter. 💖