full image - Repost: The Stockdale Principle, or Learning to live with Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde and not lose your mind... (from Reddit.com, The Stockdale Principle, or Learning to live with Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde and not lose your mind...)
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Over the past eighteen months or so, my attitude toward my wife’s depression has been undergoing a transformation. I wasn’t quite sure myself of what was coalescing inside my own head, but it has recently begun to make sense to me. Even after living with my wife’s illness for most of our twenty-two-year marriage, there were things that weren’t completely clear to me – and still aren’t –but which are making more and more sense. I initially came to this subreddit looking for help, but over time, it has become clear to me that I had most of what I needed to cope with my situation already, I just needed to somehow come to that realization for myself. It may well be that I was brought here to be of help to others more than to find help for myself, but maybe that's another story…In any event, since I have been here, there are things that have become clearer to me than they were before. To explain this, I have to start off on a tangent:Admiral Will Stockdale was the highest-ranking American prisoner of war during the War in Vietnam. After the war, he wrote extensively about his experiences in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” one of the harshest POW camps run by the North Vietnamese, and about the effects of imprisonment not only upon himself, but also upon his fellow POWs. Article IV of the Military Code of Conduct states: “If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.”As the highest – ranking prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, Admiral Stockdale took command of his fellow American prisoners, and set up a command structure among them. He noticed a pattern: prisoners who took an overly optimistic attitude eventually either lost their minds or died. Similarly, those who adopted an attitude of “this sucks and we’ll never get out of here” also either lost their minds or died. But those who took an attitude of “this sucks, BUT we’ll find a way to get through it” survived and maintained their mental health. After making this observation, Admiral Stockdale set up a network among his fellow prisoners to establish and maintain the attitude of “this situation sucks, but we’ll find a way to get through it” among the prisoners of the Hanoi Hilton. As a result, the prisoners’ mental health and morale markedly improved – in spite of the often-poor treatment, or mistreatment, they received from their captors.This mental process became known as the “Stockdale Principle.”What does this have to do with dealing with my wife’s depression? Well, as I mentioned, over the past year and a half, my attitude toward my wife’s illness has undergone a significant change. That change hasn’t been completely clear or apparent to me –even though it’s happening inside me – but the nature of mental processes can be mysterious.Anyway, to make a long story short, after dealing with the Jekyll/Hyde duality of my wife’s depression and being blindsided more than once by the cyclical nature of the illness, something inside me has shifted my understanding of what I’m experiencing. Up to this point, I have seen Jekyll as the norm and Hyde as the aberration, but lately my conception of my wife’s illness has undergone a 180° shift. Now, I see the Hyde phases as the norm and the Jekyll phases as the aberrations.While that might not seem very uplifting or much of a cause for celebration to some, to me, the one who is experiencing most directly the difficulties of interacting with my wife on a day-to-day basis, it’s a major improvement. Why? Because it means that I’ve made peace somewhere within myself with the reality that my wife has a lifelong illness, and that I have to find ways to cope with that illness. Even after twenty years of living with her depression, I had not completely internalized the reality of her illness. I have managed somehow, unconsciously, to implement the Stockdale Principle, and to say to myself “this sucks, BUT, I’ll find a way to get through it.”What that means in the short term is that I’ve managed to take some small advantage of my wife’s latest Jekyll period to mend some fences. If you have read my initial post: “New here and looking for help,” you’ll have some idea of what I mean. Things are going reasonably well between us at the moment (better than they have in the past couple of years, actually) and while this improvement hasn’t led to better things happening in the bedroom, things are looking a bit more hopeful in that department.Of course, I won’t be posting any details about that development, if and when it happens, but for now, I’ll just enjoy an improvement in the overall marital landscape that is better than I hoped for.
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