So she describes in the midst of a long, fascinating interview with Terri Gross, which I had the pleasure of listening to during a rare long drive last week. (The video above is from Jon Stewart; quite entertaining.) The entire Terri Gross interview is splendid. But a high point — an unexpected stretch amid a conversation with many small surprises — is Maddow's description, during a short, remarkably chipper exchange about her depression, of several of the black dog's most defining features. A lucid, engaging concision seems to come naturally to her.
Maddow loves her job, and she's clearly a confident person. Yet she sometimes labors under the imposter syndrome that many depressive types have — the feeling, as she put it,
This sense of disconnection she describes is a central feature of depression, in many ways its essence, along with the feeling of deadness: a sense of isolation from your own life and from others. You're cut off even if you're surrounded by people who care about you. This amazes those around you; they can't believe that you can't feel their wish to help you.
That said, Maddow is clearly a pretty high-functioning depressive; she gets the job done (with help from a staff) even when she's down.
I don't watch any TV, and very little streaming video. But this interview makes me want to make time to watch Maddow work. She comes across not just as highly intelligent but as someone with an extraordinary level of deep empathy and — something really hard to summon — a social and moral courage: the courage to confront people and differ with them, including some people I find intolerable and don't feel I could be civil with, and treat then respectfully, all in front of an audience of millions. Really quite something. This is a great listen.
