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

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

Men, Depression and Sexual Addiction

Posted by JohnD Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:32:00 GMT

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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.

Posted in Partners to Depression, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags compulsive, family, fantasy, men, obsession, power, recovery, sexual addiction, shame, wife | 20 comments

Masks of Depression

Posted by JohnD Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:38:00 GMT

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Do you think it’s possible to be going through some phase of depression and have your emotions so locked away inside you that you don’t notice a thing? I’ve written about feeling anger and rage and never associating those feelings with depression, though they were tightly bound together. But here I’m thinking of an earlier time in my life – mostly in high school and college.

Through the teenage years, I sealed all feeling up tight. I guess that was an extension of childhood and being one of those kids teachers admired as so precocious, so adult. The other kids might rage, cry, scream where I would analyze and shake my head at their childish behavior. That distancing got more extreme as a teenager. I didn’t show anything but mildly friendly feeling to anyone. I did feel things deeply, at least fear, anxiety and anger – but these were no-shows externally. I was calmly cheerful most of the time. There was a mask in place, and the only symptom I thought I had were frequent migraines. But that was something inherited from my mother. I knew that because she explained it to me as she lay on the sofa sinking fast into her own depression. I would grow out of that, she said.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Growing Up with Depression, Men and Depression | Tags childhood, college, depression, energy, face, family, game, high school, judgment, mask, men, mother, shame, social anxiety, teenage, women | 6 comments