Posted by JohnD
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:13:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by zoutedrop at Flickr
George Eliot wrote these lines in Middlemarch about 135 years ago:
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
In the midst of severe anxiety or panic I have heard something like that roar and found there is a price to pay for such a heightened sense of ordinary life. I suppose the only way we can navigate a world of massive sensations is by screening out everything that distracts us from the single goal we have in mind at any moment. There are times when I am stopped completely by a roar that shakes me deeply, but I can’t be sure where it’s coming from. Is it only inside my mind or is it, as Eliot suggests, sounds of ordinary life we can’t bear to hear for long? I’ve written about one terrifying incident when a shrieking chorus of everyday sounds overwhelmed me. It was clear then that my mind had been consumed by a level of anxiety and panic more intense than any I had known to that time. It was all inside me, and I could even imagine ending my life just to stop that inner roar.
There was another incident, though, when I felt the impact of sound and even emotion that seemed to come from people and actions around me. I say “seemed” because it is so hard to understand what was happening. Something sharpened my nerves and perceptions, but I didn’t just hear the detail of the sounds. I sensed keenly what other people were feeling but not talking about. I’m not claiming any special powers here. It happened when I was recovering from a cancer operation. Everything was electric.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags anxiety, cancer, confusion, depression, energy, feelings, focus, George Eliot, intensity, Panic, recovery, surgery | 10 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:04:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by kevindooley at Flickr
Here are more journal excerpts from many years ago about my first experiences working with meditation to deal with depression. Unlike Revellian, as he explains so well in a recent comment here, I have not so far cultivated meditation as a long-term practice and discipline. Nevertheless, from these first attempts I found a method that has helped blunt the deep stress and anxiety that accompany depression. Sometimes it can even bring me out of a deep downswing.
Today I tried meditating while getting one of my periodic bone scans – one grisly aftermath of a cancer exam. Has it metastasized to the bones? If so, likely an agonizing death ahead – but fortunately that’s not probable. This is the second one, and the first only showed the widespread spots of arthritis that one day will give me a lot more pain than they do now. To do the scan I have to lie down on a narrow gurney and be absolutely still while this big machine moves slowly over my whole body, just an inch or so away.
So I worked at meditating during the scan and that made the time pass very quickly. It also distracted me from the fear of the machine’s humming invasion that recorded every inch of my body’s deepest structure. I couldn’t help but think of death while this was happening, and even the narrow gurney reminded me of how small a body gets when the life is gone. I strained to hold still since there was nothing to rest my arms on, but I finally figured out that I could keep my hands from slipping off the cold side bars by tucking the thumbs just under my hips. Still I couldn’t get a restful position for my elbows. So I closed my eyes and meditated on loving kindness and tried enumerating the things I was worried about and afraid of. Those fears felt more distant then, not as urgent – more like empty shapes or brief flashes rather than stabbing realities. After the scan, I felt a peacefulness that made it easier to hear whatever the results might be. Once again, I was clear of any sign of cancer in those aging bones.
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Posted in Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags breath, cancer, death, depression, God, grace, kindness, Lakota, life, love, meditation, prayer, recovery, spirit | 17 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:28:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by denis collette at Flickr.
In sorting through boxes of old papers today, I came upon part of a meditation and some journal notes from the period in my life when I was recovering from a cancer operation. I was dealing with depression at the same time and searching for new approaches to healing beyond the physical treatments and medications that comprised the aftermath of major surgery. I was trying to deal more with depression than cancer since the surgery had been successful.
What I found was a part of the Loving Kindness Meditation, as that had been taught to me:
May I be healed
May I feel love
May I experience myself for what I am
May I accept myself
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Posted in Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags anxiety, belief, buddhism, cancer, depression, healing, Jon Kabat-Zinn, meditation, Rachel Naomi Remen, shame, wholeness | 9 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:27:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by Karo666 at Flickr
I’ve been looking back at the way I’ve thought about depression and my stance toward dealing with it, and I’ve started to wonder: Could I imagine and adopt in my life a different approach to this illness?
What starts me on this track is my encounter with the experiences of so many other thoughtful fellow-sufferers who have achieved a way of living with depression that finds some positive value where I find none. What are they seeing that I’m missing? As I’ve indicated repeatedly, I see depression as an intruder, a trespasser that steals the vital energy of creativity that is its opposite. My last post recognized that while others whom I respect may have very different experiences, I have always wound up cheering on a Jane Chin or Therese Borchard or Peter Kramer who see depression as a disease that is just as welcome in life as cancer. – Ah, cancer—well, that gives me pause. I find a similar tension in the experiences even of terminal cancer patients. Some kick at their condition in anger and bitterness while others find a transformative spiritual experience in what they have to endure. This has nothing to do with the fact that cancer is a disease; it has everything to do with adapting to the experience of living with a potentially deadly problem. My own experience with cancer brought out a fighting spirit that got me through and that persists in my stance toward depression. I firmly believe in the need for using all available treatment options in responding to depression -it is an illness that can kill me. What I’m thinking about now is the way I live my life with this condition as a permanent part of my mind, body and soul. Can or should I adapt to it in a different way?
I’ve been trying to pull together my own sense of how my imagination has brought about my current adaptation to illness with ideas from Donald Karp’s intriguing book, Speaking of Sadness
. The results are surprising.
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Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags adaptation, cancer, creativity, depression, Donald Karp, illness, imagination, Jane Chin, PeterKramer, psyche, soul, Therese Borchard | 8 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:28:00 GMT
I have a hard time being a patient or thinking of myself in that role. In one sense, to be a patient means to be sick, to be under treatment by a medical professional, to be undergoing all sorts of tests and therapies. See the trend there – the intolerable passive voice says it all. I am having things done to me – I am leaving it to others to cure me. Of course, they ask for my cooperation (be a good patient), which means I should do what they tell me to do. “Patient” comes from a Latin word that means “to suffer.” And suffering comes in two varieties: you suffer when you feel pain and you suffer when you allow something to be done. Both fit the classic role of the patient – you’re in pain and you allow doctors to treat you. So, what’s wrong with that, especially if you seek out the best treatment you can find?
The problem is that none of the treatments I’ve encountered can get the job done. I can’t wait around for treatments to work on their own. If I don’t take an active role in treatment, then nothing will help for long. That’s because the human factor, the will to heal, makes such an enormous difference. As I found in dealing with cancer, I have to function as a partner with each new tool I use and see it as one element of an overall strategy for getting better. As is true of every depressed person, though, there are those times when I am so severely ill that my active contribution to healing fails. Standing up can be hard enough, let alone trying to wage a campaign against the illness. The hope then is that whatever external treatments are applied will soften the impact of depression so that I can get back enough energy and presence of mind to activate myself once again. That’s the partnership.
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Posted in Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags activist, cancer, emsam, partner, patient, recovery, treatment | no comments | no trackbacks
