Theater of Depression

Posted by JohnD Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:34:00 GMT

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Catatonic Kid (CK) and Isabella have had an inspired exchange of posts in the last couple of months on the use of language and creativity to engage depression, take away its power and release creativity. There are so many ideas and evocative phrases in these posts that I’ve had trouble picking out responses from the dozens that run through me. So I’m going to start with notes on writing, creativity and language and how they relate to depression – and see where these jottings take me.

To be clear, though, I can only talk about how these basic elements help me in recovery. CK and Isabella have their own truths about words and creative imagination. Each of us responds differently, and what works for me may not work for another. So this is my take, a rough rendering of my truth – maybe it’s like yours, maybe not. There are as many paths to recovery as there are people trying to figure this out.

My imagination is expressed primarily through writing, and it helps distance me from the symptoms of depression by portraying them as different characters intruding on my life. These are my visitors from the theater of depression. I can laugh at them, kick them off stage or manage their movements and cues like the director of a play.

Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags catatonickid, changetherapy, characters, creativity, depression, healing, imagination, language, play, power, recovery, theater, underworld, words, writing | 10 comments

Creating a Way Out of Depression - 3

Posted by JohnD Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:02:00 GMT

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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.

Posted in Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags creating, creativity, depression, Howard Gardner, Isabella Mori, work, writing | 3 comments

Creating a Way Out of Depression - 2

Posted by JohnD Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:20:00 GMT

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I want to explore a lot more about creating and the creative process, but first I need to examine methods to keep depression from undermining the creative work I try to do. Or should I even put it that way – is it depression that stops me? For years, I told myself I couldn’t work when in a mental fog of depression, my will to act paralyzed, my motivation even to imagine a new writing project completely gone. Does it have to be that way? Here are a few writers who say NO!

Near the beginning of Julie Fast’s Get It Done When You’re Depressed, 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.

Posted in Surviving at Work, Connecting, Fighting Depression, Creativity | Tags art, creating, creativity, depression, Fast, Fear, Fritz, Julie, Robert, work, writing | 2 comments

Stopping Time, Stopping Depression

Posted by JohnD Fri, 23 May 2008 22:15:00 GMT

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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.

Posted in Connecting, Fighting Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags anxiety, depression, fulfillment, healing, memory, renewal, resilience, spiritual, stress, time, wellness, writing | 9 comments

How One Man Fights Depression - 2

Posted by JohnD Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:56:00 GMT

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The storm passed. The huge trees fell beside our house. My angry, blaming depression spent itself in a fury of hard work cutting up the fallen timber, hauling branches into heaps, lifting and shoving back in place every wind-strewn planter and potted tree that had rolled away under the force of a 60 mph north wind. And then for a couple of weeks, the other side of depression emerged, imposing its quieter and more destructive character. I was full of bleak thoughts, hurting inside, carrying around a weight in my chest that was trying to pull me down into some dark lost place in a hidden underworld. My mind stopped working, settled into a fog of slow motion thought where every intention to do anything emerged only dimly in the mist. Life comes close to a standstill.

What can you do in the midst of that fog?

Posted in What Depression Can Do, Surviving at Work, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags action, ADD, adderall, depression, emsam, exercise, focus, medication, men, paralysis, treatment, writing | 4 comments