Have you ever looked for work while underwater? I’m guessing not. But you may have felt that way if you were experiencing depression while job searching.

A client recently described the challenge of managing both situations at once, for which I’m grateful. When you’re not currently feeling depressed, it’s easy to forget that others are. No matter how well turned-out someone might be for a meeting, or how responsive to an email, that’s not necessarily an indication of how they’re feeling.

As a reminder, some of the more common signs that you may be depressed include changes in sleep patterns or appetite, isolating yourself, not enjoying favorite activities, feeling lethargic, or feeling persistently sad.

If you’ve had this experience, or if you’re having it now, you might be frustrated by others who don’t seem to understand why you’re “not getting more done” or “not moving forward” or however else it’s not-so-gently phrased.

Rather than blame the messenger (even when the message is given awkwardly), it makes sense to take that question literally: Why indeed are you not getting more done? If the answer is “Because I’m too depressed,” maybe it’s time to work on that.

Easier said than done? Probably. But not trying isn’t the answer either, so you’re going to have to jump in somewhere. Otherwise, you risk extending your job search, which could increase your symptoms.

Not to scare you, but in a Gallup poll from 2013, researchers found that the incidence of depression was doubled for individuals in the general population without a job (12.4%) as compared to those with full-time work (5.6%). Not surprisingly, the study found that the percentages increased the longer a person had been unemployed.

So how to end the cycle? As a starting point, ask yourself: Do you have a history or diagnosis of depression, or is it something that started with the job search? While “job search depression” isn’t a diagnosis of its own, it’s certainly common. The process can be challenging, demoralizing and even humiliating and if it goes on and on, it can seem hopeless and pointless. That’s a perfect breeding ground for feeling depressed.

If you’ve had a history of clinical depression, you could be feeling a double whammy at this point. On the plus side, you may also have learned ways to cope with your depression in the past.

The following list of tips and steps isn’t in priority order — because each person’s situation is different — but some or all of these could be a good starting point.

• Normalize the unemployment or job search experience. It may be unique in your life, but it happens to nearly everyone. It’s a part of life and nothing to feel ashamed or embarrassed about.

• Don’t dwell on things. If you made a mistake that put you in this position, that’s history. If someone else caused your problems, that’s history too. Now is the moment you need to manage, along with plans for the future.

• Don’t personalize rejection. In nearly every case, employers are turning down “the candidate,” not you. They don’t know you, so they’re not rejecting you. They’re choosing someone else and eventually you’ll be the one chosen instead of others who are being turned down. It’s just how it works.

• Put yourself on a schedule. Even if you only job search a few minutes a day, make it the same time and place if possible. Make a routine so you can compartmentalize the task rather than letting it envelop the whole day.

• Include self-care in your routine. A walk, a conversation with a friend, meditation — pretty much anything you can do on a daily basis will help. Extra points for getting out of your house or apartment, even if it means phoning your friend from the sidewalk or a coffee shop.

• Use your tools. If you’ve used therapy or medication in the past, now is the time to revisit those tools. If you haven’t yet tried therapy, why not give it a go? If cost or scheduling are barriers, even a free hotline conversation could help.

• Stay busy. Having at least two or three activities planned for each day will reduce the opportunity for binging on videos or gaming.

• Focus on activities that build self-esteem. Hobbies, volunteering, time spent with a mentor, self-help podcasts and books … you deserve outlets that lift you up, regardless of your employment status.

These tips represent starting points, in terms of managing the emotions and logistics of this situation. Next week’s column will focus on getting unstuck in the job search itself.

Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

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It’s 4 AM.

I’m roused out of my uncomfortable sleep on the wooden bed with the wooden pillow, in a room barely big enough for the bed and my bag, by the incessant ring of the bell. I’m taking part in Wat Suan Mokh ten-day silent meditation retreat in Surat Thani Province, Southern Thailand.

I’m here with about 50 other foreigners all seeking peace of mind, mastery of thought, a quenching of desire, Nibana – Enlightenment. I emerge from under my mosquito net and make my way outside where I hear the splashing as participants pour buckets of cold water over themselves from the huge cement troughs in the courtyard.

I join in the ritual. There’s nothing like a cold bucket shower to wake you up in the morning.

We trudge towards the meditation hall as the first greyish light begins to reveal the silhouettes of the palm trees lining the surrounding hills. Fifteen hours later, we fall back into our wooden beds, another day of conscious breathing, conscious walking, conscious eating, consciously coming face to face with ourselves. Away from distractions – no TV, no phone, no reading, no writing, no computers, only one meal a day – just us and our thoughts.

Like many Jews seeking spirituality, I didn’t consider my own tradition a relevant place to find what I was looking for.

We are learning to focus all our attention on our breath, trying to discover the inner peace, bliss and higher awareness that lies underneath the constant babbling of the monkey mind…

Judaism and Spirituality?

Like many Jews seeking spirituality, I didn’t consider my own tradition a relevant place to find what I was looking for. The few religious Jews I saw didn’t seem so spiritually connected and what I knew of the religion seemed to me just a load of laws and details, too rigid for a free spirit like me.

Yet, after six years living in the Far East studying martial arts (black belt in taekwondo and brown belt in Aikido), partaking in several 10-day silent meditation retreats, yoga courses, fasting and hiking in the Himalayas, it was a great surprise for me to find that Judaism has a rich and deep tradition of meditation and spiritual practices for increased awareness and self-mastery.

The average American spends 90% of their waking hours looking at a screen. The mindfulness trend is a backlash to the rampant mindlessness.

The term Mindfulness is trending nowadays with mindfulness books selling millions of copies, yoga centers popping up all over, meditation apps flooding the market. This isn’t so surprising, given the trend it’s reacting to: rampant mindlessness. According to a recent survey, the average American spends 90% of their waking hours looking at a screen. Many people admit that the first thing they do when they wake up and last thing they do before they sleep is check their phones for messages and updates. Many work in front of a computer, in the bathroom they are checking their smart phone, in the gym there are screens, at home is TV, social media and Zoom on the laptop, and many go to the movies or sports bar on their night off. The average person has at least five notifications channels – Whatsapp, SMS, Instagram, phone and email, buzzing and beeping all the time.

Add to that Linkedin, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube – we’re being constantly bombarded by things vying for our attention.

Part of the reason for this is that when we don’t have distractions we are left with possibly our worst enemy – our own mind. The voice in our head doesn’t stop from the second we wake up to the second we go to sleep. For many people, that voice is not the most uplifting, kind, sweet, positive companion to be stuck with. So we distract ourselves – which of course is not a real solution.

Rather than trying to escape from the mind, we need to learn to calm and control it, turning it from an enemy into our best friend. Your thoughts create your whole experience of life; therefore, it is imperative that we learn to start calming and controlling them.

Passive and Active Meditation

The primary aim of meditation is to tame the mind, to stop it jumping around so fast and uncontrollably, to observe it, focus it, calm it down and experience the stillness hiding beneath. There are, generally, two types of meditation – passive and active.

Passive meditation is the exercise of quieting the incessant chatter of the mind. One way to do this is focussing all awareness on something in the present moment; for example, the breath or one of the five senses. In Jewish meditation this is called hashkata – quieting. When, inevitably, the mind starts up its chatter again, the key is not to get frustrated, just smile and return your awareness to the steady inhale and exhale of your breath.

Another meditation technique is habata – non-judgmentally observing all thoughts and emotions that arise and letting them pass through the consciousness without reaction or resistance. Rather than judging yourself, blaming others, fighting or engaging in the thought, we just watch it pass like a cloud in the sky, or a wave on the sea.

After a while, the breaks in between the thoughts get longer as the focus gets more consistent and effortless, at which point it feels like the deep peace you experience when the baby finally stops screaming and drops off to sleep at three in the morning.

We’ve all experienced this sublime state naturally for a few moments, perhaps

when listening to classical music or the birds singing in the park or feeling the sun

on our face on a beautiful spring day. Life is often like treading water, with constant waves of challenges, emotions and responsibilities rolling towards us. So much of our energy is taken up with thinking that on the rare occasions when we rise above our thoughts (even for a short while) it is like withdrawing onto the beach, finally resting, finding serenity and recharging.

Active meditation involves using the mind in a focused and controlled way to get deeper understanding into things, create certain thoughts, feelings and beliefs and approach life in a more positive and empowered way.

An example of this in Jewish teachings is hitbonenut – contemplation. Contemplating all the gifts we have in life arouses gratitude, contemplating the beauty and majesty of nature arouses awe, contemplating the fact that we won’t be here forever (in the right, healthy way) arouses purpose and vitality.

Jewish teachings are replete with references to meditative ideas and practices. The Torah teaches us “Don’t be drawn after your negative thoughts and desires.” Ethics of the Fathers, a collection of wise teachings of our sages, teaches, “Who is strong? The one who tames and controls their negative internal world” (4:1), and Kind David teaches that our spiritual and personal growth has to be done joyfully.

Joy is not dependent on external circumstances. It is a state of mind, a perspective on life.

In Hebrew, the word for being in joy is b’simcha, Joy is not dependent on external circumstances. It is a state of mind, a perspective on life. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, pointed out that the letters of the word b’simcha, in joy, also spell the Hebrew word “machshava” – thought. Your happiness is completely dependent on how you are thinking.

Calming your mind isn’t just a path to finding peace and happiness, it’s the key to revealing your Divine Essence – your soul. The word for breath in Hebrew is neshima, which shares the same root letters as the word for soul – neshama. The Torah teaches that God imbued Adam and Eve with a Godly soul by blowing from His own essence to give them life and vitality. By focusing on our breath and the life force it gives us, we can come into contact with our Divine Soul.

From ashrams in India to monasteries in Thailand, Himalayan hikes and martial arts on a Korean beach, I took a long journey to discover that what I was looking for was at home all along.

Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen runs an online Authentic Jewish Mindfulness Course looking into the wisdom and tools you need to develop physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health, vitality and wellbeing www.litmindfulness.org

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Benton County agreed Tuesday, April 18 to permanently fund eight new positions while searching for counselors who will serve as the fast-moving, in-person response team to mental health crises.

The challenge will be filling the positions by the start of the state fiscal biennium in July.

Elected leaders signed off on creating positions needed to staff two-person teams who will try to intervene between those most likely to be involuntarily hospitalized, arrested or removed from their family and police officers, who most frequently respond to behavioral health emergencies.

“We feel more than confident about this being a cost-neutral point for the county,” county Mental Health Director Damien Sands said.

Permanent funding will come through Oregon Health Authority and a per-teammate, per-month rate from InterCommunity Health Network, the regional Medicaid service coordinator.

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Congress in 2020 replaced the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline with a nationwide, all-hours crisis hotline available by dialing 988.

The hotline serves as a point of contact for suicidal and distraught callers and as a dispatcher in an attempt to get more people experiencing mental health crises on the phone or in a chat with a trained counselor.

Federal regulators took 988 live in 2022.

The country was responding in part to widespread protest that year over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin.

That was around the time municipalities began looking to Oregon for a possible mobile crisis response model in a Eugene-based nonprofit, CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets.

Responders with mobile crisis teams are trained to interact with people who are disoriented or can’t care for themselves or function while affected by addiction or severe mental illness.

Those are calls where someone is experiencing an emergency but isn’t a danger to others or requires medical aid.

In many communities, police respond to behavioral health crises. As many as one in four people killed by police are experiencing severe mental illness, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center in a 2015 report.

While Congress directed the Department of Justice to find how often police kill people with mental illness, exact national numbers aren’t available because just two in five law enforcement agencies volunteered their crime statistics.

Oregon law enforcement agencies participated at a higher rate — 208 out of 235 in 2021, or 88.5%.

The state Legislature made a $15 million appropriation in 2021 to fund two call centers, in Portland and Salem, and build up local governments’ teams providing mobile crisis services.

Oregon mandated that each community be able to respond to 988 calls. A state law requires all formally recognized community mental health programs to staff two-person teams available to respond to calls around the clock.

In communities like Albany and Corvallis, those teams must be available to respond to a crisis within an hour.

A Linn County employee told Mid-Valley Media in 2022 that staffing would be key to implementing the crisis line and mobile response teams.

“Workforce is obviously a question mark right now, and we do need a workforce to support this,” said Tanya Thompson, a mental health program manager.

A bill working its way through the state House would create a funding baseline for mobile crisis teams in each of Oregon’s 36 counties and pull multiple funding streams into a single source of revenue called the 988 Trust Fund.

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Alex Powers (he/him) covers agri-business, Benton County, environment and city of Lebanon for Mid-Valley Media. Call 541-812-6116 or tweet @OregonAlex.

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