Guilt, Grief and Regeneration

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

Some Rights Reserved by Memotions at Flickr

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

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

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

Dropping Depression

Posted by JohnD Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:15:00 GMT

Photo Credit: JesterArts at Stockxpert

As she often does, Stephany put a thought in my mind that I haven’t been able to shake. It was a three-word comment: “You have recovered.” Nice wish, I thought, if only – ! I’ve been working on recovery so long – it just isn’t happening consistently. But the problem with interpreting this as a wish was her strange use of past rather than future tense (You have recovered). So the words kept coming back to me, and I didn’t know what to do with them. Finally, I started thinking: Well, what if we suppose for a minute or an hour that the statement – all three words of it – were true, not so much for me, but for someone? After all, decades ago I did some acting. Couldn’t I just play this part for a while? And if I did, how exactly would I, as this someone, feel? And what would I say? This could take a lot of research, I thought, but I needed to start somewhere. And the first thing would be – kicking that idiot Depression out of my life – I mean his life – the life of the guy I would pretend to be.

After jotting down a few words for this character to say, I kind of caught the spirit of this recovered thing and started to feel something unusual stirring. I heard odd bursts of laughter and then realized with a shock – hey, that’s me – I mean, of course, he, the guy I was portraying. I – he – felt really good, giggly, smiley – bizarrely out of character – my character, that is. This character, however, was recovered and so could be expected to be happy, giddy even, at having pushed depression out of his life after decades of doom and gloom. Here’s the sort of thing he (well, I, acting in the role of recovered person) might well be saying:

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression | Tags acting, angels, depression, feeling, life, love, pain, recovery, song, Stephany, violence | 13 comments