Creating a Way Out of Depression - 3
Posted by JohnD
Some Rights Reserved by Iowa_spirit-walker at Flickr
isabella at change therapy has given me much to think about, as she usually does. In her recent post, she described her take on the link between creativity and depression. She said that unlike my sense of depression disappearing in the midst of creative activity, she saw creative moments as helping her inner life get moving again. Depression doesn’t disappear but is experienced in a different way. By getting unstuck, she is reminded that she is more than her depression. Those special moments bring the bigger reality of life and oneself into view again, and that can begin the process of getting past the pain.
I’ve had that sense of it too. In fact, one of my first steps in climbing out of a dark mood is to start writing about it. Even a few sentences immediately give some perspective to what’s happening. As soon as I put into words the ugliness of what I’m going through, it begins to seem less overwhelming, less the whole of me. One of the first posts on this blog was an attempt to capture exactly that change taking place as I wrote what I was feeling in a journal.
If I’m lucky, though, I can go on from there and become so absorbed in writing that I get into a completely different state. That’s the one where depression disappears. At those times, I feel like my brain is on a different wavelength. Ideas I’ve been struggling with suddenly make sense, patterns become clear, the words flow out as I try to see where they’re going. The sense of quick discovery is exciting, and there’s a rich harmony of feelings welling up, though I’m so focused on writing that what I’m feeling gets pushed off to the edge of awareness.
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, she quotes an artist suffering from depression who made an important discovery. Although she had been thinking she could not work when depressed, a friend asked her if she could see any difference in the quality of the work she produced when feeling good and when feeling bad. She realized that there was no difference. That was an eye-opener. She realized that even when she felt low and lacking the will to get to her creative work, she was still capable of producing the painting that gave her such deep fulfillment. Now she’s focused on her work, rather than on her feelings about whether she’s able to get started. For her, this realization has made all the difference, and she’s painting whether she’s excited about her work or unable to stop crying.
