Ceremonies of Magic, Imagination and Play

Posted by JohnD Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by a whisper of unremitting demand at Flickr

Merely Me wrote a wonderful post on the importance of bringing play back into everyday life. It is the forgotten tonic among adults in general and depressed adults in particular. She paints a vivid scene of a group therapy session where she coaxed recovering addicts into playing rather than talking about themselves. Some brought in precious toys they’d probably had for years, and everyone got immersed in their games. It sounded like they felt the release of a long-buried instinct – for play is surely one of the basic human instincts.

Her post brought to mind one of the most extraordinary people I’ve known. He was a born teacher infusing his own life and the lives of those around him with imagination and play as a natural part of his instinct for life.

Steven and his lifelong friend Maria arrived in town one day, found a small space they could rent to start a school and dubbed it Little Earth. Its first citizens were both kindergarten age kids and the dozens of figures emerging from the imaginations of this gifted pair. The little kids referred to them as the grownup kids because they took the imaginative adventures and instinctive games of children as seriously as any event in adult life. They accepted kids on their own terms, could speak their language, play with them, win their confidence and teach them through play-adapted methods.

Posted in Connecting, Creativity | Tags AIDS, angels, ceremony, children, circus, death, education, imagination, instinct, life, magic, medication, Merely Me, play, school | 10 comments | no trackbacks

Meditating through Depression - 2

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.

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

Isolation

Posted by JohnD Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:03:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by Eddi 07 at Flickr

Susan and Dano have presented in comments here two different ideas about isolation that I need to explore more deeply, with your help. This is hard for me to pin down alone. My mind wants to wander, to lose focus, to put itself to sleep because this gets at something I don’t want to face – so bear with me as I try to chain together a few thoughts about what is happening in the urge or the necessity to isolate.

Dano has written with crushing power about the worst times of depression when the illness flattens her under its unremitting pressure and pain. Isolation, then, is not a choice but a necessity. The ability to face others, to speak, to interact is completely stripped away.

I know that when I’m crashing into the thicket of Depression, I need to be alone. The very act of making eye contact, speaking, inhaling and exhaling have become monumental tasks. I feel contagious, as if by even being near me, others will get sucked into my mental black hole.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Connecting, Fighting Depression | Tags death, defenses, depression, feeling, isolation, recognition, siren, sleep, solitude, symptom, trap, ulysses | 12 comments

A Mother, Depression and Grief

Posted by JohnD Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:57:00 GMT

Some rights reserved by Hamed Saber at Flickr

When my mother died, I didn’t know what I felt. Throughout my life, I had been struggling to shed the influence of her searing and shaming words, her anger, at times rage, above all, her depression during my childhood. How many of us spend adult years still trying to get the attention and love that we never got from a distant parent? We know it’s not going to happen, but still we play over and over again the same roles we played as children. Once I was part of a therapy group that helped people reenact painful scenes from their family past in order to help rid those events of their power. The therapist at one point walked up to one fellow and said to him, face to face, “Your mother doesn’t love you!” – over and over again until the message really sank in. The guy looked so stricken, but the therapist went on to remind him that he was a splendid man in spite of his mother’s inability to connect with him. He didn’t have to look for the love that was never going to come. His mother had done what she could, but that was all in the past. His present was his own, and he was getting along just fine. The therapist might have been talking directly to me too, but I can’t say I ever stopped trying to win the love and approval of my mother. When she died, she was a different person in many ways than she had been when I was growing up, but, sadly for her, she never got over a fundamental hurt and disappointment that rooted itself deeply in her, probably when she was a kid looking for approval and love from her distant father. These things seem to go on and on through generations.

Several scenes came to mind in the days following my mother’s death:

Posted in Growing Up with Depression, Connecting | Tags anger, death, depression, dream, family, grief, love, mother, therapy | 9 comments

Maggie's Gone

Posted by JohnD Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:22:00 GMT

Today we lost Maggie, our aussie who showed us what shepherding was all about. She was four months shy of 15, what's that – about 75 in human time? Over the past year she had been steadily losing her mobility – we've been carrying her up and downstairs for a few months, and during the last week she wasn't even able to stand to relieve herself. Tammy, the vet, and one of her assistants arrived at 2:15 in the afternoon, both dressed in their dark blue pajama work clothes. I had been digging Maggie's grave for the past few hours, a grim business in 100 degree weather, hacking with pick and shovel through the glinting clay hardpan to shape a deep home for her. I was drenched in sweat. L had been trying to occupy herself by mending a pair of jeans she can't even fit into. We were both frayed. We took Tammy and her helper across the small courtyard, to the Taos sofa where Maggie was panting uncomfortably.

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Connecting | Tags death, depression, family, feeling, grief, home, human | no comments