Posted by JohnD
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:40:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by anna_pearson at Flickr
These are journal excerpts about my fitful beginning work with meditation as a guide through depression.
After a day of feeling the chaos of panic, immobilized at work, I went to see JL, first therapist in years. This guy is real. He wasted no time, quickly running through some patterns he observed (explaining that he was hurrying things up because I had been through therapy) and then hit on something that caught me off guard completely. He said he knew how much I loved my brother, he could hear it in what I said, he could feel it in his body. At that, realizing it was true, I wanted to cry, almost did, but covered it with a forced jerky laugh, fooling no one. I was right there, ready to let loose with the feeling I have been sitting on for so long. He explained that he had methods, he did not shoot from the hip. He realized he could have pushed harder about my brother and gotten somewhere, but he prefers to work carefully, using the models he knows from Buddhist psychology. The guy wanted me to know he’d been around, as he says, raised in different cultures and countries. This should be good. I like his attitude: We can break that cycling, that pattern, we can break that, I guarantee it. Who talks like that these days? I sense in him that he’s witnessed, probably experienced, conversion or at least deep insight within the light of a powerful soul. But he’s not trying to become my guru – at least I hope that’s true.
Read more...
Posted in Explanations, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags anxiety, breathing, Buddhist, depression, kindness, loving, meditation, monster, Panic, peace, psyche, rage, relaxation, stress, therapy | 13 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by JohnD
Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:14:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by wili_hybrid at Flickr
Reading old journals reminds me how full of twists and turns a recovery road can be. Along the way, I have encountered strong presences that restore a sense of balance – when I have let them. For years, though, I could not let them work within me for more than a few moments. I’ve edited a few journal entries that show the struggle. I was partly aware of the possibility of change, partly convinced I could not break the cycle I was in.
.......
Stress has a lot to do with depression, we’re told, and time has a lot to do with stress. And it’s true, my life is timed, and time runs out before I’ve done enough. Enough to prove my value, enough to quell the sharp-edged voice talking me toward nothingness, enough to win a race I mindlessly run. That’s all the stuff of stress. But I see another side to it. Staying within time is a protection as well. The sequence carries me from place to place, job to job and builds a structure to guide and shelter me, stressful and exhausting though it is. “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back wherein he keeps alms for oblivion.” It can be a prison, time, but its walls shut out thought and feeling that carry me in dangerous directions. So there is tension and stress inside those walls, but fear of something worse on the outside. Can that change? Can I step outside this beating time without becoming lost?
Read more...
Posted in Surviving at Work, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags culture, depression, Montana, mountains, Native American, New Mexico, prison, Pueblo, recovery, stress, tension, time, tradition | 5 comments
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.
Read more...
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
Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:28:00 GMT
Photo Credit: Eraxion – Stockxpert
Part of my recovery consists of putting two and two together. I’ve learned to see links between things I’ve done and felt that I never knew were connected to depression. Blowing up in rage, feeling extreme anxiety, even panic at meeting a group of new people, deep fears and fantasies, memory loss – understanding that all of those problems fitted in with depression was surprising but also comforting. That painful barrage of living began to take shape as a single condition, and the new knowledge gave me a sense of empowerment. All that mess wasn’t just me, fixed in fate forever. It was part of an illness that I could work on and start to recover from. And now, thanks to research about the multiple impacts of stress on body systems, I can add another link. My well-hidden inner boiling in response to the pressure of every obligation, every unmet goal, every imagined requirement I impose on myself – all that too has a connection to depression but perhaps a different one than the others. The response to the extreme stress I so often feel may be a major cause of depression rather than one of its many effects. To find out more about this, there is one book everyone has to read: Robert Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Third Edition
.
Read more...
Posted in Explanations, Fighting Depression | Tags depression, emotion, glucocorticoids, major depression, mental illness, neurochemistry, psychology, recovery, Robert Sapolsky, stress, stressors | 2 comments | no trackbacks
