Posted by JohnD
Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:34:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by Lady Orlando at Flickr
Catatonic Kid (CK) and Isabella have had an inspired exchange of posts in the last couple of months on the use of language and creativity to engage depression, take away its power and release creativity. There are so many ideas and evocative phrases in these posts that I’ve had trouble picking out responses from the dozens that run through me. So I’m going to start with notes on writing, creativity and language and how they relate to depression – and see where these jottings take me.
To be clear, though, I can only talk about how these basic elements help me in recovery. CK and Isabella have their own truths about words and creative imagination. Each of us responds differently, and what works for me may not work for another. So this is my take, a rough rendering of my truth – maybe it’s like yours, maybe not. There are as many paths to recovery as there are people trying to figure this out.
My imagination is expressed primarily through writing, and it helps distance me from the symptoms of depression by portraying them as different characters intruding on my life. These are my visitors from the theater of depression. I can laugh at them, kick them off stage or manage their movements and cues like the director of a play.
Read more...
Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags catatonickid, changetherapy, characters, creativity, depression, healing, imagination, language, play, power, recovery, theater, underworld, words, writing | 5 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:16:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by even at Flickr
About a hundred years ago, Robert Frost wrote a famous poem about two roads diverging in a wood: “And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler.” He makes his choice to take “the one less traveled by.” “Oh I kept the first for another day!/ Yet knowing how way leads on to way,/ I doubted I should ever come back.”
When I faced a choice of two roads to my own future, I believed I could follow both and be one traveler. Why were there two roads? I imagined there were two sides of myself – one creative, artistic – the other public, drawn to political and social change – and I needed both to feel whole. What followed from this attempt were years of struggling and failing to balance both, searching for the fulfillment I needed but finding it always just out of reach on either path. I tried sprinting down one for a time, then leaving that to cut through a brambled mile of thickets to get back to the other, sprint down that road for a while, cut back through the less and less penetrable undergrowth, hit the other again – and so on. What does that mean? Among other things, it means that I spend a lot of time between the roads in those thickets – lost.
Read more...
Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags career, choices, depression, double, fulfillment, life, oneness, path, robertfrost, tension | 12 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:15:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by angela7dreams at Flickr
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.
Read more...
Posted in Connecting, Creativity, Spirituality and Depression | Tags creativity, depression, gerardmanleyhopkins, God, Jacques Maritain, johnhiatt, longing, love, spirituality, whirlwind | 14 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:02:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by Iowa_spirit-walker at Flickr
isabella at change therapy has given me much to think about, as she usually does. In her recent post, she described her take on the link between creativity and depression. She said that unlike my sense of depression disappearing in the midst of creative activity, she saw creative moments as helping her inner life get moving again. Depression doesn’t disappear but is experienced in a different way. By getting unstuck, she is reminded that she is more than her depression. Those special moments bring the bigger reality of life and oneself into view again, and that can begin the process of getting past the pain.
I’ve had that sense of it too. In fact, one of my first steps in climbing out of a dark mood is to start writing about it. Even a few sentences immediately give some perspective to what’s happening. As soon as I put into words the ugliness of what I’m going through, it begins to seem less overwhelming, less the whole of me. One of the first posts on this blog was an attempt to capture exactly that change taking place as I wrote what I was feeling in a journal.
If I’m lucky, though, I can go on from there and become so absorbed in writing that I get into a completely different state. That’s the one where depression disappears. At those times, I feel like my brain is on a different wavelength. Ideas I’ve been struggling with suddenly make sense, patterns become clear, the words flow out as I try to see where they’re going. The sense of quick discovery is exciting, and there’s a rich harmony of feelings welling up, though I’m so focused on writing that what I’m feeling gets pushed off to the edge of awareness.
Read more...
Posted in Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags creating, creativity, depression, Howard Gardner, Isabella Mori, work, writing | 3 comments
