In sorting through boxes of old papers today, I came upon part of a meditation and some journal notes from the period in my life when I was recovering from a cancer operation. I was dealing with depression at the same time and searching for new approaches to healing beyond the physical treatments and medications that comprised the aftermath of major surgery. I was trying to deal more with depression than cancer since the surgery had been successful.
What I found was a part of the Loving Kindness Meditation, as that had been taught to me:
May I be healed
May I feel love
May I experience myself for what I am
May I accept myself
As I have written in an earlier post, I felt my ability to deal with cancer directly and with a strong spirit came from a sudden and powerful burst of basic life force when the voice of depression was trying to lull me into using cancer as a way of ending my life. I just refused to let myself die. That resurgence of spirit carried me through the operation and its immediate aftermath, but as more normal life returned the underlying depression reasserted itself. It wasn’t long before I was searching for help again. I found it with a therapist who made extensive use of meditation. I was open to that approach since I had been reading about buddhism and healing approaches based on meditation, such as that described in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living
He distinguishes between healing and curing. Healing captures for Kabat-Zinn the ability to see things differently, to experience wholeness. Meditation is the method to attain an inner stillness in which you can grasp the fullness of your being and transcend fears and boundaries of both mind and body. As he puts it:
Moments of experiencing wholeness, moments when you connect with the domain
of your own being, often include a palpable sense of being larger than your illness or
your problems and in a much better position to come to terms with them.
… We are not meditating to make anything go away.
I meditated every day, often on long walks into the foothills near our New Mexico home. Those hours helped me first quiet the intense anxiety I was feeling (for me that’s a common part of what I go through in long depressive periods). Here is some of the guidance the therapist gave me for dealing with nervousness – an essential step before I could hope to reach an experience of the wholeness of my own being. My being was constantly zapped with electricity from all directions – the anxiety was like a dense and turbulent cover for whatever I was feeling.
Mindfulness of fears and nervousness
Number them
Focus on breath
Note them in turn, return to breath
Awareness of breathing – acknowledge breath by saying: in/out
Focus on center of chest – go way inside – explore the feeling.
And here is what I wrote one day in the midst of this work with meditation:
Crying so much in the last twelve hours, it feels like the beginning of healing. To know that I have finally hit my deepest feelings breathes relief right through me. It is all right to feel overwhelmed, to feel grief, to let it sink in that this is not an adventure or diversion, but it is really all of me. I know that I can be helpless and sad in the face of this reality. The self hate seems so rooted in the what the buddhists called the eight worldly concerns (I wanted to call them griefs) – attachment to getting material things, aversion to blame, attachment to praise, etc. Perhaps now I can feel myself touching bottom and can begin to see where I really am – what my hunger and hurt are all about. What I learn. What I die for and live for.
Finally feeling/ knowing I am sick is the beginning of healing.
Ultimately, meditation helped me see clearly the forces of anxiety, shame, self-hatred, fear darting about in me like wild birds suddenly caught in the confines of a room. Lightening-like breaks for escape, flying bodies crashed into every barrier, shot-like bursts away from a strange human waving them toward windows, caws and shrieks of panic filling the air. In meditative walks, I could finally see them as separate from me and sweep them for a time from my soul. But only for a time.
Even though the fears and anxieties and the depressed feelings of self-hate would come back again and again, something changed within me. I lost the belief that I consisted solely of those maddening furies. I could believe that I was more than the sum of those parts of depression, and this new belief was the most powerful change that meditation helped me to achieve.
The force of belief is everything in trying to overcome depression. Until I could stop believing that what I thought of myself when depressed was true, I could not begin to turn things around and heal, or experience the wholeness of my own being. Rachel Naomi Remen captures the power of belief well in her quietly remarkable book, Kitchen Table Wisdom
What we believe about ourselves can hold us hostage. Over the years I have come to respect the power of people’s beliefs. The thing that has amazed me is that a belief is more than just an idea – it seems to shift the way in which we actually experience ourselves and our lives. According to Talmudic teaching, “We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.” … Sometimes because of our beliefs we may have never seen ourselves or life whole before. No matter. We can recognize life anyway. Our life force may not require us to strengthen it. We often just need to free it where it has gotten trapped in beliefs, attitudes, judgment, and shame.
What role has meditation played in your efforts to overcome the effects of depression and its related disorders?
Image Credit: Some Rights Reserved by Denis Collette at Flickr.
Well done on addressing the depression, you have a fight response to situations and it has worked for you. I am sure that many people will learn something from this post.
The first book that taught me how to be mindful and what got me through the last several years of intense stress is ‘Peace is every Step’, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I learned to deep breathe when I hear a chime by hanging them all around trees and places in my yard. You can take that tool anywhere you go; when a bell chimes, you end up automatically breathing in and out, and let me tell you how that gives peace when you need it.
John commented (responded):
“It’s amazing how depression can dissolve so much of what you’ve learned, as if it seeks out anything in your mind that could help you defeat it.”
Yes, and additionally depression seems to step in *when* we forget the healthy ways we’ve learned (at least it seems that way for me).
Thank you for copping to the blame thing too. It helps to know I’m not the only one dealing with that.
The other thing I forgot to include in my friend’s description was to remember to breathe while sitting with the feelings. It’s amazing how the breathing — preferably belly breathing, not chest breathing — helps the feelings move on, and shallow breathing intensifies the feelings.
Kudos to your son, and to your eye for images to go with your entries.
I’m not one to meditate in the sense of sitting quietly in a state of Zen, but I find other things bring about a similar sense of calm. Listening to music for me is big part of relaxation or lifting my mood. Since I’ve gotten a dog I’ve found the long walks leave me feeling more ready to face the day and my work. Painting is a great way for me to zone out.
I did once successfully hypnotise myself years ago, but unfortunately haven’t been able to do it since. It was quite a bizarre, yet relaxing, experience.
Catherine –
Thanks for those kind words! The blog design is due to my webmaster (son) and the incredible photographs to Flickr. That’s an amazing resource – search on the Creative Commons attribution license, and they are available for blog use.
I’ve found Thich Nhat Hanh a powerful writer on meditation, mindfulness and buddhist traditions. _The Miracle of Mindfulness_ is especially good.
John
Anon for Now –
I’m glad you’re bringing back the lessons you absorbed 15 years ago. I’m going through something similar as I write about past therapy. It’s amazing how depression can dissolve so much of what you’ve learned, as if it seeks out anything in your mind that could help you defeat it.
The blaming lesson is powerful. It’s never about the other person or thing; it’s always about you. That’s something I can carry around and work with anytime!
John
I love synchronicity!
Just this eve I was talking with a friend about depression and what she is doing about hers. She’s using a form of meditation.
Here is what she suggested to me, using my example of wanting to blame others (people, societal forces, etc.) for everything bad in my life:
Sit with the feeling of wanting to blame, without going into the stories (of why, etc.). If feelings come up about the stories (without “telling” the stories) sit with those feelings. Let go of any urges to act that are based on the desire to blame; if any arise, focus on the feelings they bring up.
(I know that second sentence doesn’t necessarily make sense, but I believe that if it becomes important to one’s process, it will make sense then.)
She said that she has been doing this and even letting the process happen while she’s out doing things.
As she told me about this — and here is another piece of synchronicity with your post, John — it opened the door to the life lessons I had learned 15 years ago when I was going through my life-changing, internal work of healing from the damage done to me as a child. That work showed me that facing the parts of myself I was ashamed of would result in them falling away. It was excruciatingly difficult at first, but it became a delight to uncover another piece of fear or shame because I knew that sitting with it would lessen its hold on me. And the process would take less and less time with time.
During my major depression this past Winter, I was extremely frustrated that I couldn’t remember any of the lessons I had learned 15 years ago. I am so grateful that I have started to remember then again this evening, and I hope to bring them fully back into my life as a vaccine against losing myself in depression again.
I also made this note during our conversation, and I’m not sure whether it pertains to the above process or to the possible return of depression: “Go to meet it. Look it in the eyes.” If it’s about depression, I think the ability to look it in the eyes will follow from practicing the above.
John, as always, thank you for being brave enough to share your journey with us, so we may learn and share amongst all of us. And to all those who post comments, I thank you, too. Our common experiences shine lights on helpful tools and paths to explore. And knowing we’re not alone is one of the strongest aids.
Strange that you ask that question because I am recently trying to learn more about meditation because I think it will be good for me. I have a “meditation kit” that has a great book along with some CD’s that I’m going to try out.
I also want to try yoga.
By the way…my gawd, your blog is BEAUTIFUL. I really enjoy opening your page because I am always so pleased with the aesthetics of it. The writing is superb as well.
I got very bad depression feeling very low my husband moan at me to do things in house I just can’t do it don’t know what to do please help me
It has kept me alive.
I’m not sure I call it meditation. It’s about going in to the experience and staying with it. Over time I learn to stay with it longer. Gradually what is at the base of my experience (my fears and cares – I evaluate these positively) become evident.
Sometimes just knowing (it’s usually tied to a past experience) is enough. Other times it means making changes to how I do things.
This is what’s worked for me.