Posted by JohnD
Fri, 23 May 2008 22:15:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by jurvetson at Flickr
Are you ever able to get away from time in the sense of measuring what you do, day in, day out? I can’t seem to escape it very often, but I’m convinced that doing so is one of the ways I get myself out of depression. Of course, the clock is omnipresent, and almost all activities in the daily world are measured against it. Most people, with their usual ups and downs, adapt to schedules for everything. But psychologically, in a depressive mind, time is another weapon. It is the constant reminder, as it keeps on going, that I am not doing enough, that I am not getting things done, that I can’t do the job, that I’m not measuring up, and on and on. I feel time as relentless pressure, nonstop stress, an overlay on reality full of warning reminders wherever I look. And as writers like Richard O’Connor
and Robert Sapolsky keep telling us, living in a state of constant stress brings on the mood disorders as brain chemistry goes on overload.
There are times, though, when stress stops, time stops, inner voices meet their match and shut down. It happens to me not by changing a negative pattern of thinking but by listening to something other than thought. Today, I’ve been recalling and reliving one of those moments, the first one I was really conscious of, when by chance I seemed to step right out of time.
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Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags anxiety, depression, fulfillment, healing, memory, renewal, resilience, spiritual, stress, time, wellness, writing | 9 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:06:00 GMT
Christos Georghiou – Fotolia.com_
WARNING – THIS POST HAS POSSIBLE TRIGGERS.
After a tough week with a lot of down time lost to pain of various sorts – as much mental as physical – I’ve been trying to draw on lessons friends have been sharing with me. They have been describing a deeper sense of who they are through each spell of this illness. And I can see what they mean. Coming out of depression is an experience of renewal, a sudden shift of perspective rendering all that was doomed and dying now reborn, all that was shadowy now brightly lit, all that was sinister now kind and inviting. This world is turned inside out but then comes right again. There is a richness to this experience, as my friends have been telling me, but still each depression is a bitter and savage attack on all I am and try to be. Call it a testing of the life energy.
I can’t relax about it, thinking of the reward of renewal after it is gone, for the simple reason that many I once knew did not pass this test. Some took their lives by overdosing on the very medication that was meant to help them, others used different means, drowning or a gun. Every time I hear of such a horror, I can’t help but feel the fear in myself that I might be seized by a crazed obsession too. I fight that, I have to fight it hard.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags faith, Fear, fighting depression, God, hope, renewal, spirits, spirituality, suicide, teenage depression | 7 comments | no trackbacks
