Posted by JohnD
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:15:00 GMT
Photo Credit: JesterArts at Stockxpert
As she often does, Stephany put a thought in my mind that I haven’t been able to shake. It was a three-word comment: “You have recovered.” Nice wish, I thought, if only – ! I’ve been working on recovery so long – it just isn’t happening consistently. But the problem with interpreting this as a wish was her strange use of past rather than future tense (You have recovered). So the words kept coming back to me, and I didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, I started thinking: Well, what if we suppose for a minute or an hour that the statement – all three words of it – were true, not so much for me, but for someone? After all, decades ago I did some acting. Couldn’t I just play this part for a while? And if I did, how exactly would I, as this someone, feel? And what would I say? This could take a lot of research, I thought, but I needed to start somewhere. And the first thing would be – kicking that idiot Depression out of my life – I mean his life – the life of the guy I would pretend to be.
After jotting down a few words for this character to say, I kind of caught the spirit of this recovered thing and started to feel something unusual stirring. I heard odd bursts of laughter and then realized with a shock – hey, that’s me – I mean, of course, he, the guy I was portraying. I – he – felt really good, giggly, smiley – bizarrely out of character – my character, that is. This character, however, was recovered and so could be expected to be happy, giddy even, at having pushed depression out of his life after decades of doom and gloom. Here’s the sort of thing he (well, I, acting in the role of recovered person) might well be saying:
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression | Tags acting, angels, depression, feeling, life, love, pain, recovery, song, Stephany, violence | 13 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:35:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by absolutwade at Flickr
The story of her stroke and remarkable recovery are now well-known, through her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey
, through the remarkable 18-minute video of her TED talk and through multiple interviews and articles in national media. Though Jill Bolte Taylor emphasizes her professional experience as a neuroanatomist, she has become a star not of science but of a kind of humanist spirituality. She passionately pleads for a shift of humanity toward the intuitive side of life and the dwelling in a state of peace achieved by apprehension of the union of all things through a powerful energy or life force. That is the state she came to by the impact of a stroke that stripped away all other mental functioning, including the understanding and speaking of language, as well as the command of her own body.
At one point in the TED video, she refers to the “nirvana” she reached through physical disaster. Her description of this state of oneness with things is remarkable and matches those of others who have achieved such experience through spiritual discipline, mystical encounters or an altered consciousness assisted by hallucinogenic drugs. But this is no momentary vision. It was what she had left of her mind, her awareness, her functional capacities in the aftermath of the stroke. And it is the state she says is accessible to her whenever she becomes oppressed by the tensions and depression that can be brought on by excessive dwelling in the analytic, verbal, organizing part of her mind.
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Posted in Explanations, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags brain, christian, depression, Jill Bolte Taylor, language, mind, mystic, neuroscience, oneness, peace, peacefulness, spirituality, Thomas Merton, vision | 1 comment
Posted by JohnD
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:32:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by Aron Escobar at Flicker
I had lunch with M one day to talk business, and I got on with him well. We were both excited about the projects we were working on, but soon got to more personal things. I told him about the depression I kept fighting and about treatment to keep it in check. He went into a lot of things about his life I didn’t know, then paused before opening a big door into a troubled past.
He talked about his separation from his wife – how they had put everything on the table – and now were doing great again. His big problem was that he was an addict – to fantasy and sexuality. I listened hard to what he was saying, staring intently into a part of my own life I didn’t want to see.
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Posted in Partners to Depression, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags compulsive, family, fantasy, men, obsession, power, recovery, sexual addiction, shame, wife | 22 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:14:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by wili_hybrid at Flickr
Reading old journals reminds me how full of twists and turns a recovery road can be. Along the way, I have encountered strong presences that restore a sense of balance – when I have let them. For years, though, I could not let them work within me for more than a few moments. I’ve edited a few journal entries that show the struggle. I was partly aware of the possibility of change, partly convinced I could not break the cycle I was in.
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Stress has a lot to do with depression, we’re told, and time has a lot to do with stress. And it’s true, my life is timed, and time runs out before I’ve done enough. Enough to prove my value, enough to quell the sharp-edged voice talking me toward nothingness, enough to win a race I mindlessly run. That’s all the stuff of stress. But I see another side to it. Staying within time is a protection as well. The sequence carries me from place to place, job to job and builds a structure to guide and shelter me, stressful and exhausting though it is. “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back wherein he keeps alms for oblivion.” It can be a prison, time, but its walls shut out thought and feeling that carry me in dangerous directions. So there is tension and stress inside those walls, but fear of something worse on the outside. Can that change? Can I step outside this beating time without becoming lost?
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Posted in Surviving at Work, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags culture, depression, Montana, mountains, Native American, New Mexico, prison, Pueblo, recovery, stress, tension, time, tradition | 5 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:18:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by windiepink at Flickr
I keep remembering those amazing moments, all too brief, when I had the sense of stepping out of time, schedules, worry, depression into a different kind of space that was free of all that. It was an opening to peacefulness, calm and a sense of being that I can only call spiritual. As Jill Bolte Taylor
put it, she achieved a state of utter peace and oneness with the universe after undergoing the most drastic experience imaginable, a stroke that took away much of her mental functioning and memory, left her unable even to move. But inwardly, she gained access to a world of being that still remains available to her after recovery. Thomas Merton
focused himself on a life of contemplation to achieve a state of union with God, but to do this he withdrew from the everyday world into the silence and discipline of monastic life. These two can stand for the many who have found access to such states only after calamitous events or prolonged and demanding practice that involves a separation to some degree from the ordinary demands of living.
I count myself among the greater number who make do, if very lucky, with glimpses of such things that suddenly strike through all the worries about the big and small events that put us on a roller-coaster of feelings and imaginings. Dwelling on these moments now, I’m looking for what they might tell me about finding a way to a more lasting recovery from the long-term effects of major depression than I have yet been able to achieve. Here is one such moment.
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Posted in Connecting, Spirituality and Depression | Tags Blue Velvet, David Lynch, depression, God, Jill Bolte Taylor, peacefulness, self, spirituality, Thomas Merton, vision, wholeness | 10 comments
