Depression

The Heavy Lift of Depression

January 8th, 2013

Greater than any other human struggle, depression is the most pervasive. When asked by someone unfamiliar with therapy (social contact, dinner party?) to explain exactly what I do, I find myself describing the most common obstacle to feeling well and happy: depression. Every psychological practice varies. Each clinical approach attracts it’s own self-selected group of maladjustment. The current DSM-IV-TR, the “bible” of psychiatric disorders is one of the largest volumes on my bookshelves. So many ways to be unhappy. Depression appears most regularly as that constellation of conditions both internal and external, that besets and often imprisons those who suffer from it. It amounts to an absence of joy for life. Considered as a spectrum of severity, from the milder end of “having the blues” to chronic, unalleviated, suicidal “frozen-ness”, depression affects everyone at some time and each of us differently. Scott Peck, in his culture-shifting work “The Road Less Travelled”, describes the possibility of “healthy depression”. He maintains that depression starts as a healthy reaction to loss, especially to those losses that affect us in ways beyond our concious awareness. He illuminates the premise put forward by Judith Viorst in her book Necessary Losses: “life is difficult”. Life is endings and losses, starting with our loss of infantile dependency shortly after birth, through our loss of childhood innocence at puberty, through our post-teenage loss of the fantasy of invulnerability, through our mid-life loss of youthful vigor, through the deaths of those we love and the ending of relationships of every kind. Even the awareness of our own inevitable death. Viorst and Peck suggest that it is our reluctance to honor and grieve these “necessary losses” that turns healthy depression into dangerous, continuous and life-sapping decline. We want life to be comfortable and happy all the time. We shrink from the awareness that life is both sublime and tragic. We are reluctant to pause and absorb the inevitable feelings that come with loss: sadness, fear, anger. We find ourselves “armoring” against loss instead, especially men, and especially men in Western cultures. We keep a “stiff upper lip”. We use substances like pot, coke, cigarrettes, food and alcohol to keep the demons at bay. We teach “boys don’t cry”. We turn “physical fitness” into a personal form of “loss control” by hardening our bodies and our spirits to deflect these hurts and sorrows. No surprise that we see a resurgence in so many forms of yoga and meditation, ancient wisdom paths that seek to re-open our hearts and bodies to our natural feelings, bringing uncommon levels of wellness and resiliance. Counterintuitively, as we slow down and grieve from time to time, as we accept and mindfully experience our natural journey through sorrow and pain, we make ourselves emotionally, spiritually and even physically stronger and more able to move on from loss and difficulty. The best psychotherapy can help us through these difficult times with grace and dignity. It can often be lifesaving.

Namaste,
John

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