Isolation

Posted by JohnD Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:03:00 GMT

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Susan and Dano have presented in comments here two different ideas about isolation that I need to explore more deeply, with your help. This is hard for me to pin down alone. My mind wants to wander, to lose focus, to put itself to sleep because this gets at something I don’t want to face – so bear with me as I try to chain together a few thoughts about what is happening in the urge or the necessity to isolate.

Dano has written with crushing power about the worst times of depression when the illness flattens her under its unremitting pressure and pain. Isolation, then, is not a choice but a necessity. The ability to face others, to speak, to interact is completely stripped away.

I know that when I’m crashing into the thicket of Depression, I need to be alone. The very act of making eye contact, speaking, inhaling and exhaling have become monumental tasks. I feel contagious, as if by even being near me, others will get sucked into my mental black hole.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Connecting, Fighting Depression | Tags death, defenses, depression, feeling, isolation, recognition, siren, sleep, solitude, symptom, trap, ulysses | 12 comments

Longing for Spirit

Posted by JohnD Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:15:00 GMT

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I’ve written about moments of spiritual insight in my life, moments when time is stopped, moments when I have felt transported to a different level of awareness, all pain and depression gone. These moments have come mostly by surprise, without conscious seeking. But having experienced them, I nurtured a hope that they would return. In time this became more of a longing for spirit in my life.

I still feel that but wonder what it is exactly that I am longing for. What do I imagine I will find – some flash of insight, the opening of a spiritual reality such as the great mystics describe – a union with God? Am I imagining that an experience like that will make these painful states of depression disappear forever? Is it possible to look for spiritual insight only as a means to cure a specific illness? Of course, that search is about something much more fundamental.

Posted in Connecting, Creativity, Spirituality and Depression | Tags creativity, depression, gerardmanleyhopkins, God, Jacques Maritain, johnhiatt, longing, love, spirituality, whirlwind | 14 comments

Healing Sound and Depression

Posted by JohnD Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:54:00 GMT

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Have you heard it, felt it? In the sound of a human voice there may come a wave of healing. Of course, it could also be a scarring knife edge or shriek of pain that can hurt or terrify, but here I want to talk about the power of voice to restore lost harmony. Let’s put it as a question: in your experience can the human voice help move a depressed, disordered being closer to wellness?

The voice, after all, comes from deep sources. It finely carries the emotions, reflects the slightest change of feeling, broadcasts the intention of a speaker and can load the simplest words with complicated meanings. It is a big part of all the nonverbal bonds we form with people that are the real basis of relationships

Once I heard a speaker of the Dine (Navajo) Nation give a prayer and blessing to a conference room packed with almost one thousand people. He sent his prayer out slowly at first, the English words and separate phrases clear, much as you would hear in any invocation, but then he picked up the pace, building to a chant in the rapid rhythm and intonation of a ceremonial singer.

Posted in Explanations, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags ceremony, chanting, culture, depression, dinenation, healing, prayer, soul, sound, vibration, wind | 14 comments

Taking Depression Apart

Posted by JohnD Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:00:00 GMT

I run a race with depression that keeps me on edge. The stakes are high because we race to take each other apart. I intend to keep the lead. For years, I’d hit the wall and lose the bare will to win. But somehow I got back not just the energy to move but a belief in myself that had long been lost. I can separate myself from depression, understand it’s a condition to be dealt with and so gain the inner strength not to give up anymore. Of course, in this race I never quite get to the finish line. There is no ending.

You can’t live with depression for fifty years, as I have, and fall for easy answers or mental tricks or chemical doses as ways to escape the problem and get on with your life. Bill Wilson once wrote an essay in The Language of the Heart that told his history with this problem. He couldn’t understand how the breakthroughs of the 12-step method could work with alcoholism but not with depression.

Posted in Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags 12, attention, Bill Wilson, cycle, depressionsymptoms, focus, obsessivethinking, recovering, step, Therese Borchard, treatment, will | 14 comments

Dreams in the Castle of Melancholy

Posted by JohnD Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:56:00 GMT

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I wrote recently here about masking emotions from myself as I grew up through my college years. Here’s what happened to change that, or at least start me on a different path. As often happens with me, it started in a dream:

For so long, I lived in a beautiful fortress made of defiant walls. It stood remote in sheltered hills, safe from attack at any angle, approached only over steep rugged trails that few could manage. I often flew over it in dreams, its great length and height visible in every detail, almost touchable in my smoothly gliding passes. I would sail higher to see more clearly the narrow isthmus between great continents in which it lay hidden. But always I would wake in stillness within it.

Daily I strummed inside its intricate corridors. They never grew familiar, no matter how many times I walked them, mentally mapping each turn and door. The picture never stayed in my mind for long. In a vast structure of dark rooms I could be lost for days, looking for light in windowless corners, testing each door for new discoveries. At times, its night-like shadows would envelope me in comforting invisibility. I could see nothing, nothing could see me.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Growing Up with Depression, Connecting, Men and Depression | Tags anger, breakthrough, castle, dreams, family, isolation, life, lonely, love, melancholy, rage, recovery | 6 comments