How One Man Fights Depression - 2

Posted by JohnD Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:56:00 GMT

Some Right Reserved by Dimitry Kichenco

The storm passed. The huge trees fell beside our house. My angry, blaming depression spent itself in a fury of hard work cutting up the fallen timber, hauling branches into heaps, lifting and shoving back in place every wind-strewn planter and potted tree that had rolled away under the force of a 60 mph north wind. And then for a couple of weeks, the other side of depression emerged, imposing its quieter and more destructive character. I was full of bleak thoughts, hurting inside, carrying around a weight in my chest that was trying to pull me down into some dark lost place in a hidden underworld. My mind stopped working, settled into a fog of slow motion thought where every intention to do anything emerged only dimly in the mist. Life comes close to a standstill.

What can you do in the midst of that fog?

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Surviving at Work, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags action, ADD, adderall, depression, emsam, exercise, focus, medication, men, paralysis, treatment, writing | 4 comments

A Mother, Depression and Grief

Posted by JohnD Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:57:00 GMT

Some rights reserved by Hamed Saber at Flickr

When my mother died, I didn’t know what I felt. Throughout my life, I had been struggling to shed the influence of her searing and shaming words, her anger, at times rage, above all, her depression during my childhood. How many of us spend adult years still trying to get the attention and love that we never got from a distant parent? We know it’s not going to happen, but still we play over and over again the same roles we played as children. Once I was part of a therapy group that helped people reenact painful scenes from their family past in order to help rid those events of their power. The therapist at one point walked up to one fellow and said to him, face to face, “Your mother doesn’t love you!” – over and over again until the message really sank in. The guy looked so stricken, but the therapist went on to remind him that he was a splendid man in spite of his mother’s inability to connect with him. He didn’t have to look for the love that was never going to come. His mother had done what she could, but that was all in the past. His present was his own, and he was getting along just fine. The therapist might have been talking directly to me too, but I can’t say I ever stopped trying to win the love and approval of my mother. When she died, she was a different person in many ways than she had been when I was growing up, but, sadly for her, she never got over a fundamental hurt and disappointment that rooted itself deeply in her, probably when she was a kid looking for approval and love from her distant father. These things seem to go on and on through generations.

Several scenes came to mind in the days following my mother’s death:

Posted in Growing Up with Depression, Connecting | Tags anger, death, depression, dream, family, grief, love, mother, therapy | 9 comments

Acting, Depression and Work

Posted by JohnD Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:40:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by dbking at Flickr

I was reading Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde, about the life of Marilyn Monroe, and was stopped by a line spoken by the character known as the “The Survivor.” Norma, he said, was a natural actor because she didn’t know who she was and so was driven to try to become the character completely. That was acting, the reaching into the fictional being, to become that person totally – to fill an emptiness where most people had a strong sense of self. I’m adding my words here – but getting that thought suddenly helped me understand my own experience with acting as a depressed twenty-something. And that got me thinking about other work I’ve done because every job requires that I play a role. What drove me to acting in the first place was the inner conviction that I was wrong the way I was. I needed a self I would be proud to show the world. Stepping into a scripted role and winning the applause of a live audience made me feel that I had a reason to be alive. What drove me away from acting was an inner refusal to construct myself out of assumed identities and to depend on the highs offered by approving audiences – highs that could turn quickly to lows of rejection. Of course, I can see that in hindsight, but at the time I took the applause at face value, yearned to have it and fled in terror if I lost it. The approval meant I was worth something, the rejection meant I was nothing.

Posted in Surviving at Work, Creativity | Tags acting, blonde, creativity, depressed mind, depression, Joyce Carol Oates, Marilyn Monroe, recovery, self, work, worth | 4 comments

How One Man Fights Depression - 1

Posted by JohnD Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:05:00 GMT

Photo Credit – stewart charles – Fotolia.com

I’ve fallen back into a prolonged dark period after a few weeks of energy, buzz and a bright outlook. That’s the way it goes, riding one wave after another through it highs and crashing lows. I need (and I mean need) to write what I’m doing to counteract this latest drop as the full weight of a huge surf comes pounding down on me.

So what can I do when it’s closing in?

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags aggression, anxiety, blame, CBT, fighting depression, marriage, meditation, men and depression, rage, recovery, writing | 4 comments

The Longing to be Close - 2

Posted by JohnD Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:34:00 GMT

Photo Credit: rustyphil – Stockxpert

It was more than a decade ago when I stopped believing my own fantasies of finding happiness by leaving my marriage. I could see that those dreams were only substitutes for taking a hard look at who I was. Depression, though, made that difficult task even harder by convincing me there was no one worth knowing in this mind and soul of mine. I had a dream at that time full of images of shame that took the form of people speaking in my own depressed voice all the messages I kept sending to myself. I sat shrinking in the corner of a big room, and each of them came in turn, looking twice their normal size, to tell me what a mess I was. The gloom of that dream woke me up. I could see so clearly how my psyche was devilishly busy turning my own thoughts into hammer blows to drive me deeper underground. Something snapped, and I was suddenly alert with purpose to fight back against that force trying to kill me. It was the same powerful feeling that woke me up from depression during an earlier bout with cancer. I wasn’t going to let that darkness prevent me from rediscovering who I really was and rebuilding a close relationship with my wife.

But exactly what do you do to regain this closeness with your partner?

Posted in Partners to Depression, Connecting | Tags close, depression, intimacy, longing, love, marriage, partner, personality, therapy, Undefended Love | 2 comments