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.

Oneness, Depression & Jill Bolte Taylor

Posted by JohnD Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by absolutwade at Flickr

The story of her stroke and remarkable recovery are now well-known, through her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, through the remarkable 18-minute video of her TED talk and through multiple interviews and articles in national media. Though Jill Bolte Taylor emphasizes her professional experience as a neuroanatomist, she has become a star not of science but of a kind of humanist spirituality. She passionately pleads for a shift of humanity toward the intuitive side of life and the dwelling in a state of peace achieved by apprehension of the union of all things through a powerful energy or life force. That is the state she came to by the impact of a stroke that stripped away all other mental functioning, including the understanding and speaking of language, as well as the command of her own body.

At one point in the TED video, she refers to the “nirvana” she reached through physical disaster. Her description of this state of oneness with things is remarkable and matches those of others who have achieved such experience through spiritual discipline, mystical encounters or an altered consciousness assisted by hallucinogenic drugs. But this is no momentary vision. It was what she had left of her mind, her awareness, her functional capacities in the aftermath of the stroke. And it is the state she says is accessible to her whenever she becomes oppressed by the tensions and depression that can be brought on by excessive dwelling in the analytic, verbal, organizing part of her mind.

Creating a Way Out of Depression -1

Posted by JohnD Sun, 01 Jun 2008 01:10:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by KayCey97007 at Flickr

WARNING: IDEAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Thanks to a series of compelling posts on creativity by Isabella Mori at changetherapy (part of an exchange with Psyblog), I’ve been trying to understand more clearly what happens when creative work takes place. I haven’t gotten there yet (can’t say I expect to solve this puzzle since more learned and insightful people than I have been trying for a long time). But I would like to throw out a few ideas I’ve picked up in my reading, and then ask you to share your thoughts.

Now why should I get into this in the first place? Simply because I know that when I’m working creatively I’m in a different state where depression doesn’t exist. Just like the spiritual encounters I’ve been trying to describe that stop time and this despairing condition, there is something about creating, even at my modest level, that draws out a force within me that dissolves depression. What is that? Can I package some and pull it off the shelf when I need it? Here are a few of the insights that gifted thinkers have offered. They make sense to me, but this is just a starting point. I hope we can build a dialogue to go further into creativity and its ability to make depression disappear, at least for a short time.

Working Depressed: Changing Careers

Posted by JohnD Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Some Rights Reserved by fdecomite at Flickr

I’ve just gone through a six weeks experiment to see if a moderate dose of lithium would strengthen an antidepressant that’s been fading in effectiveness. No such luck. Instead, I went through a tortured sequence of headaches, dizziness, muscular wobbliness, loss of balance, tremors and thick mental fog that always hits in depression but this time was intensified by the strange poison in my blood. I felt mentally impaired for several weeks, with difficulty retaining enough organizing facility to give a short presentation. Try doing your job when you’re under that influence. The crisp one-two-three main points at a meeting become uh, one is something like this or maybe that and somewhere in here is two and was there another point, uh, let’s see, uh, well, never mind. Eyes glaze over, exasperation is high, things are said, I am called on the carpet afterward. That’s humiliating, though plainly justified, and it’s just not the way I’ve been regarded by my peers before the onset of this last period of illness that now adds up to several years.

The lithium experience may have intensified the sluggishness of thinking that always comes with depression, but that symptom even without the impact of lithium has done more to undermine my effectiveness at work than any other. I’ve written other posts about this problem, but things have only gotten worse in terms of performance. Since I can’t function at anything like the top of my game anymore, I’ve decided to pull back from active practice and instead focus on using the knowledge I’ve gained through 25 years in a profession to write and mentor younger people trying to learn the ropes. Those are things I can still do quite well.

Working Depressed: Mind Trap

Posted by JohnD Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:50:00 GMT

Photo Credit: Yakobchuk – Stockxpert

It can be so hard to get work done when a depressed mind is guiding you into a maze of mirrors. At each moment you seem to see clearly, but what you see is only your own image staring right back at you. I remember an incident, from quite a few years ago, when I was managing a board meeting of a group I had set up and run for some time. In a months’ long depression, I had been isolating myself from the other staff and neglecting key issues that needed to be addressed. That didn’t keep me, though, from imagining that everything was fine. Toward the end of the afternoon session, I suddenly felt the tone of the meeting changing. I became convinced that my fellow staff members – we’d been friends for years as well as colleagues – were turning things against me. Each of the three of them went out of their way to insert one-liners about this or that problem, and each comment seemed a needle of accusation that took me by surprise.

Older posts: 1 2

Writing to Recover Life from Depression

Guilt, Grief and Regeneration

Oneness, Depression & Jill Bolte Taylor

Creating a Way Out of Depression -1

Working Depressed: Changing Careers

Working Depressed: Mind Trap

About

Categories

Recent Comments

From My Library

Experience Project

Tags

Top Posts

Helpful Blogs

Copyright

Archives