Posted by JohnD
Mon, 26 May 2008 04:15:00 GMT
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In the midst of writing about moments of spiritual insight, I realized I had to draw the other half of that picture. The lost side of spirit is emptiness. I don’t mean the emptying that can be a stage in recovery and spiritual growth. That kind of emptiness is a good thing. It means the stopping of daily noise, the frenetic pace or the addictions that keep me riding on the surface of things and avoiding whatever I can’t face. The good emptiness drains all that out of my system. Once rid of the mind-buzz and the anxiety that goes with it, I can participate in an active silence, and things become clearer.
No, I’m talking about the opposite of that rich experience. It is the empty feeling that leads to panic and what I’d have to call dread. It comes in a flash of perverse insight when I feel again at one with the world around me, but everything in that world, including me, seems false, an empty shell about to crack open, revealing a void. And I’m going to drop in a free fall as the ground cracks under me. That used to be a regular part of my life before I could grasp that it was one face of depression.
When the panic used to strike, I’d have to react fast and leap into any activity that filled the emptiness with crowds, or, better yet, helped me believe for a time that I had never been empty to begin with. I had to hold onto a structure, a purpose, a job, something that sealed the cracking world up again and filled my days with action that was useful and important. That took me completely out of my inner self and whatever I may have really wanted and put me securely in a role or function that had value in the eyes of the world. That is how in the past I ran from the dread of emptiness and the fear of breaking and falling like part of an earthquake-stricken city.
The remarkable TV series, Mad Men
begins with an animation that captures just that sense of living in a world that could at any time break apart and drop you into free fall.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Growing Up with Depression, Men and Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags breaking, dread, emptiness, esteem, Fear, healing, i, Mad, men, Panic, purpose, recovery, self, spirituality | 5 comments
Posted by JohnD
Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:09:00 GMT
Photo Credit – JesterArts – Stockxpert
One of my wake-up moments arrived decades ago when I read a New York Review of Books essay on a government practice known as “channeling.” This was during the Vietnam draft era, and the term referred to the decisions that young men were forced to make about their lives because of the prospect of compulsory military service. There was plenty of stress to go around as I and every guy I knew tried to figure this one out. You could defer service if you went to college, then on to grad school (until they took that option away) or divinity school (a number of surprising conversions there) or became a conscientious objector or even leave the country. And there were many who wanted to serve, to let the draft take them or get a jump on the system and enlist – and they had the prospect of hot combat before them. The draft was always there to keep the pressure on.
The point of the article was that the draft had been designed to do more than just fill up slots in the army. Its unrelenting pressure and your personal stress were instruments of national policy to “channel” the better-off kids into college and graduate education or into training as military officers, while the working-class kids, with fewer options, would become the rank and file of the armed forces. That way, everybody would conform to the prevailing ideas of how society ought to work. That knowledge radicalized me on the spot. Government was getting its hands inside my mind and my deepest feelings! The hell with that, I thought, we’ve got to change this rotten system!
As it turned out, I was at that same time having my first adventures with psychotherapy. What I didn’t know until recently, however, was that psychiatrists of that period had their own policy about the treatment of depression that was to have even more long-lasting effects on my inner life than the temporary problem of dealing with military service.
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Posted in Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags anxiety, depression, Freud, Panic, PeterKramer, policy, psychotherapy, treatment, Vietnam | 3 comments
Posted by JohnD
Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:16:00 GMT
This post starts an occasional series on creativity. The word has taken on a special meaning for me as the opposite of depression. It's the energy that opens whatever is original, forceful and effective in touching others and building relationships. It's the force in my life that connects and communicates. It's everything I cannot do in the midst of depression.
Creativity is usually discussed in connection with the arts, and the idea gets overblown into talk of visions, genius, divine inspiration and all that bluster – but it goes far beyond that setting. It takes creativity to have responsive relationships with the people I love, to have the insight and imagination I need at work to solve problems and present ideas persuasively or to be part of a neighborhood, a community. It's really what wakes me up and reminds me who I am. I will likely devote a lot of space on Storied Mind to discussing creativity in this broad sense for one driving reason.
When I can't summon the energy that's hidden away, I need to keep in mind the person I know I really am. Hard as it is in that depressed state, I have to focus as much as possible on that "real" me whose mind and feelings are full of discovery and new possibilities. It's like sending out the all-points bulletin: This guy's out there somewhere – or lost in here – and I intend to get him back.
After so many years of living with depression, I have a good sense of when I'm in it and when I'm not. Sometimes I drift along in a middling state when I'm not totally in the depths and appear to be functional, but I can't really focus, I can't will myself to do much, I don't care about anything, my memory and attention don't seem to work. I manage to get things done in a minimal sort of way, but I know I'm not really there. It's usually clear to me when one side or the other – the creative or the depressed – has the upper hand. The change happens invisibly, sometimes without warning. I can be firing on all cylinders one day, then wake up the next a wreck. It could also be a more gradual transition, but I know what's going on and no longer spend weeks or months in denial.
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Posted in Creativity | Tags caliban, creativity, Panic, play, role, Shakespeare, tempest, writing | no comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:03:00 GMT
Fear wakens with me this morning. I have no idea why. It's part of a continuing down I've been in for weeks now. After a few great days when I was blazing away at ideas about my projects, depression returned and has been building in its quiet way. But it is fear that is coming on now, and I know if I don't try to get at this, it will become panic and keep me away from everything. Work has become almost intolerable. I've spent two days at the office, three days at home each of the last three weeks, barely getting the tasks completed to keep each project moving ahead. How commanding and cocksure I'm supposed to be, how implausibly shaky is the reality of my mind and heart. Now on top of the dissolving intention, the drifting mind that has to work hard to recapture even the memory of that urgent task I was about to take care of, the total loss of drive and feeling and energy, now comes the fear as well. But it's a young fear, tentative, and I'm still strong enough to push it to one side, punch through its shadowy presence, tell it to stop. I believe that if I let it flow its own course, I will be gripped by a strong panic before long. And what can you do with that inside you? That gets suicidal very quickly because there is no place to run to, no defense that can be constructed through imagery or redirected thought patterns.
Panic isn't the same as extreme fear, the kind of total horror you feel at the presence of external danger. That fear is part of survival, perhaps the ultimate survival instinct to get out of this spot and save yourself, the kind of fear and stress that soldiers must feel in combat. Panic is a shattered drive that points nowhere. it's not a useful feeling connected to survival instincts. Instead It boils the mind, the feelings, intentions, energy into total confusion and directionless flight. Flight without a destination, making you more and more desperate. What's left of your mind is searching, searching for something to hold onto, something to make it bearable for even a few minutes. How long can the body and brain sustain that destruction? What happens to you during and after those panic attacks?
But writing this little bit is helping to soften the early warning fear and anxiety. Maybe I can avoid the worst of it today.
Posted in What Depression Can Do, Surviving at Work | Tags anxiety, Fear, intention, Panic, reality, survival, writing | no comments
