Guilt, Grief and Regeneration

Posted by JohnD Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:12:00 GMT

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A breakthrough to healing can come at the most unexpected time. The other night I was trying to divert myself by watching a mystery episode from an old British series. Instead of taking my mind off things, this story pushed me into a past history I had long kept at a safe distance.

The film built its story around a soldier haunted by his experience of violent death in Bosnia, especially the sight of a basement floor piled deep with the corpses of women and children. Much later, after his return to civilian life, the shock of another act of violence brings back the Bosnian memories and plunges him into such an intense guilt that he loses his power of speech. A minister, he somehow internalizes guilt for such horrors that have nothing to do with his own actions and is even driven to seek atonement for them. And so he tries to find punishment by confessing to a killing he did not commit. It’s based in part on Pat Barker’s fine novel, Regeneration, about a World War I combat veteran slowly brought back to health through the efforts of a gifted psychiatrist. These stories bring to life the hard work of recovery.

Certain dramatic scenes often have powerful resonance for me, often triggering grief and tears, but I have never been able to understand what was going on. Why should such powerful feelings fill me in response to fiction? I could see reasons for such reactions when brought on by the real-life stories of veterans suffering complete collapse from the traumas of combat. However, I thought of that more as empathy for their suffering rather than as response to my own far less violent family disturbances. The other night, though, things began to get clearer.

Posted in Growing Up with Depression, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags childhood, family, feeling, grief, guilt, life, loss, love, mind, patbarker, PeterKramer, recovery, regeneration | 15 comments

Depression, Identity and Hope

Posted by JohnD Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:08:00 GMT

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Marissa wrote a post at Wellsphere that made me pause. She was objecting to the idea found in Richard O’Connor’s book (Undoing Depression) that “I am not my depression.” She interpreted this as an evasion of accountability for one’s actions. The depressed behavior that harms relationships, for example, can’t be dismissed as something you’re not responsible for – it has a real impact because of your behavior, and you remain accountable for what you do. And so, in this sense, she insists: “I am my depression.”

I agree with the need to be accountable. I have hurt those around me by being emotionally absent, self-involved, unable to talk, irritable or in a rage, or behaving badly in any of the ways that are symptomatic of depression. But O’Connor’s intention with this formulation, I believe, isn’t aimed at releasing people from accountability. It’s a way of reminding those suffering from depression that they have an illness, that there is hope for recovery, that they should not confuse the symptoms with the totality of their human identities.

I think a better way of putting this, however, is another sentence that appears frequently in books about how to deal with this condition: “I am more than my depression.” In other words, my identity isn’t defined by behavior linked to the illness, but it also says that I am my depression, in part.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Connecting, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags belief, depression, hope, identity, imagination, intention, marissa, recovery, richardoconnor, treatment | 10 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

Requiem: Religious Belief and Mental Illness

Posted by JohnD Sat, 17 May 2008 22:16:00 GMT

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In writing about heightened states of mind I’ve experienced, I keep wondering about what they mean, what they are. Are they signs of a spiritual reality pushing into the midst of the everyday world? Or are they artifacts of mental disorder? The first time I had such an experience, as a college student, I thought I was going crazy and even wrote a poem about this episode of “madness.” It was only six years later when I had a similar experience – which I accepted without doubt as spiritual – that the earlier one took on new meaning as having that same quality. I was no longer afraid of it and didn’t have to push it off as a bizarre and crazy moment. Instead I came to focus on such experiences as part of a way to find healing in the midst of depression as well as deeper insight into life. Spiritual experiences could be one more way to struggle through a chronic condition. But could the experience of depression be another force like spirituality that can terrify but also push me to new awareness? Could the sheer suffering of mental illness be experienced in a spiritual way?

That’s the question behind the quietly intense German film, Requiem. It tells the story of a young woman who experiences seizures and hears strange voices. These have long terrified and confused her, but eventually she comes to interpret the suffering in purely religious terms.

Posted in Explanations, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags belief, Catholic Church, culture, depression, exorcism, mental illness, religion, Requiem, society, spirituality, treatment | 6 comments