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.
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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
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:16:00 GMT
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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.
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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
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.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Connecting, Fighting Depression | Tags death, defenses, depression, feeling, isolation, recognition, siren, sleep, solitude, symptom, trap, ulysses | 11 comments
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.
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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
