The other day I looked back at a couple of posts by Therese Borchard at Beyond Blue about the behaviors that distinguish men and women in their responses to depression. She quoted two different studies in posts she published about a year apart, and that’s how long I’ve been mulling over writing about this subject. […]
Guilt, Grief and Regeneration
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 […]
Depression, Identity and Hope
Some Rights Reserved by jairo at Flickr Marissa wrote a post at Wellsphere that made me pause. She was objecting to the idea found in Richard O’Connor’s book (Undoing Depression) that “I am not my depression.” She interpreted this as an evasion of accountability for one’s actions. The depressed behavior that harms relationships, for example, […]
Facing My Double in Depression
About a hundred years ago, Robert Frost wrote a famous poem about two roads diverging in a wood: “And sorry I could not travel both/ And be one traveler.” He makes his choice to take “the one less traveled by.” “Oh I kept the first for another day!/ Yet knowing how way leads on to […]
Isolation
Susan and Dano have presented in comments here two different ideas about isolation that I need to explore more deeply, with your help. This is hard for me to pin down alone. My mind wants to wander, to lose focus, to put itself to sleep because this gets at something I don’t want to face […]
Fear of Falling and Mad Men
In the midst of writing about moments of spiritual insight, I realized I had to draw the other half of that picture. The lost side of spirit is emptiness. I don’t mean the emptying that can be a stage in recovery and spiritual growth. That kind of emptiness is a good thing. It means the […]