![Michelangelo Buonarroti [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASibyl_of_Delphi_-_Sistine_Chapel_-_closeup.JPG)
Accepting the risk of change has been a big step in recovery: risks are hard to take because of the fear they trigger. I’m still stumbling around with the acceptance of risk – one minute eager for anything new, the next minute fearful of every change.
I mentioned the analogy of prison when describing my rejection of the idea that depression was permanent and that I would always be in recovery. But ending the isolation of that prison brings up exactly that fear of change.
The prison constructed in my mind for self-confinement was a special place. It took care of many problems, especially involvement in the unpredictability of life:
- No way out, no struggle to escape because that choice didn’t exist.
- The cell might be scrappy in appearance but there was plenty of room for the limited movement I made from time to time.
- No colors visible in the dim light, no distracting associations to interrupt this solitude.
- All my simple needs were met. Mysteriously, I needed little food or exercise and could sleep as much or as little as I wished.
- No place to go, no person to meet, no anxiety or fear about new encounters.
- My feelings were so muted, I had no need to stir them up.
- Nothing to do, no need to self-evaluate or to dwell on my inadequacy to get that nothing done.
- No time, only a futureless, pastless present, hence nothing to regret about the past, nothing in the future to plan or feel anxious about. The future would never come.
Life was simpler, safe, predictable – even in the misery of depression. I knew what it was, and, at the time, that’s all I wanted to know. In my case, I never opened any door to get out of the isolation. The perverse comfort of confinement seemed impossible to leave when I was there. But one morning I would wake and find it was gone and knew I never wanted to go back. I kept working against a return, but then on another morning I would wake, or try to wake, and realize I was locked up again. There was no why for falling back into it and no why for getting out.
As I’ve described elsewhere, after the last five years of sustained, intense effort to get out of severe depression without going back, another sudden change has occurred. I feel again like a whole person, not the half-person who gets better for a time alongside the other half-person who is ready to take over my life without notice. This time I feel different, more fully alive. But I still have a long way to go.
There are many risks in going more deeply into the full reality of who I am. Primary among them is the risk of letting my feelings express themselves as they occur without the filtering and restraint that has kept them from others and even from myself.
Equally difficult, though, is the fear of experiencing other people for who they are, instead of the projections I read into their voices, words, eyes. Strangely, those projections always made the other person mine in a way. Disguising them in judgments of myself pulled them into my depression. I used them as witnesses who confirmed what depression told me was true, at the cost of never seeing who was really talking to me. There was no other person, only me with a different face.
Breaking out of that wrapped up self, not only to let my own feelings flow spontaneously but also to experience fully the other person before me, continues to stir up the fears that were part of a life with depression.
There is the emotional vulnerability of being present, taking the good and bad as they come. That is no problem at all in a weirdly comfortable prison cell. Complete isolation, seeing the world only as it can be seen in the dark, removes the possibility of real interaction – and risk.
I’m reminded of a scene in a film version of Dickens’ Little Dorrit
I have yet to feel completely comfortable in a world with people and feelings I must accept just as they are. Now I’m doing that far more often than before, but old habits die hard.
Some words of Carl Rogers in A Way of Being
keep me thinking about what I’m trying to achieve and how difficult it is to sustain.
To really know what I am experiencing in the moment is by no means an easy thing, but I feel somewhat encouraged because I think that over the years I have been improving at it. I am convinced, however, that it is a lifelong task and that none of us ever is totally able to be comfortably close to all that is going on within our own experience.
Do these words resonate with you? Is this kind of struggle a part of what you’re going through now?
I, too, was deeply moved by:
“Disguising them in judgments of myself pulled them into depression. That helped to confirm what depression told me was true, at the cost of never seeing who was really talking to me. There was no other person, only me with a different face.”
Absolutely and positively brilliant. Thank you.
Perhaps not surprisingly, but with great embarrassment, I admit that the idea of prison does not sound objectionable. My body has always felt like a prison of flesh, my mind a prison where thought and feeling alternately bar the way out, my relationships a prison of expectations. If the totality of my days was bound up in an actual brick & mortar prison cell, I would not be exchanging freedom for confinement. I would merely be adding another layer of separation.
I am Donna-1 responding to John and to my own comment 8 yrs ago. I still feel like this. When it was depression with physical agitation (as it always was) I could at least stay moving in my “cell” by pacing back and forth. I walked depression to the moon and back. Now, it is depression with mental agitation, something new. Or if not new, at least increased by leaps and bounds, which is especially hard inside the “cell.” I feel mentally and physically bruised by the concussive blows. Oh John, as usual you always put it so well. When I venture out on those rare non-depressed/non-agitated days it seems all things are possible. But before I can get very far the monsters out there in the Real World, much like those under my bed or in the closet as a child, threaten to grab me by the foot and pull me back. I have come a long way with self-help and self-education. But it always feels that with each attempt to change I lose the feeling of safety and my mind goes reeling. I can look back and see I am far ahead of where I was. But is more like a hall of mirrors where I’m not quite sure if what I see is a reflection of reality — maybe I HAVE moved from there to here — or an optical illusion. Or even that familiar slight-of-hand game where I am being distracted so I don’t see the trick that is being performed right in front of me. The trick: hope temporarily hides the fact I’m still in that cell in the dungeon. And similar to the man in Little Dorrit I would be an old woman imprisoned for years for not paying my debt to society of being a “normal” person. I have not contributed all I could have. I still owe. Yet if given a chance to walk free I panic and fear change and opportunity even more than imprisonment. I go back to the cold hard cell, a cup of water, and a crust of bread. I pull the self-locking door shut behind me.
Well put Donna and John. The years go by – the cell is your depression.
Hi John
You are a brilliant writer indeed. It is hard to be well in many respects. I think for some of us there is this worry that…”will I be liked if I am well?” It is a crazy concept but when you live with dysfunction…you might be with people who like you better when you are down.
And too it is somewhat easier to be down…to not have any expectations…no aspirations…no place to fall as you are already down.
Anyways…great writing as usual. You always get me to delve deeper into my own inner world.
Thank you, Diane! You’re too kind. Your question is one I’ve never asked myself. When I’m down, I’m so dysfunctional and absent that I don’t remember what’s just been discussed, even when I seem to be listening. At its worst, I speak and think slowly, and people start filling in sentences – totally embarrassing. When well, I’m really present and part of what’s happening. Friends and family always comment on the contrast. If I thought people liked me better when down, though, that would really reinforce staying in that comfortable dark cell. Will you write about this? I’d love to read the responses.
Thanks for being here – and being your brilliant and highly functional self!
John
Yes, very good question. I haven’t thought of that. I’ve been busy trying to get them to like me while I am sick! And since I am largely dysfunctional in many respects, I am more comfortable with other who are disabled or dysfunctional. Maybe I assume they aren’t going to judge me like “well” people can. Embarrassing, but I don’t think I have a chance of competing with the fully functional socially. I can at least hold on to some sense of fitting in with others when we are all comfortable in our differentness. My moment of most extreme embarrassment was when a longtime family friend told me she and her mother had prayed for me for years because they always saw me walking around vacant-eyed in church almost unaware of where I was. OMG — I didn’t know that was how I appeared. At least I take comfort that there are those who have cared enough to pray. And I feel buoyed up by it and determined to become clear-eyed and cognizant of my surroundings!
Disguising them in judgments of myself pulled them into depression. That helped to confirm what depression told me was true, at the cost of never seeing who was really talking to me. There was no other person, only me with a different face.
THAT is a brilliant insight! Absolutely genius. Not only depressives suffer from it though, most people with mental distress or even denial of mental distress (that is actually there) of any kind do…it’s a profound part of the human condition that we must free ourselves from.
I certainly recognized myself.
Thank you, Gianna! I’m very touched and kind of wordless here. Your thoughts mean so much to me. – I never know what part of my experience will resemble what others go through. It’s so helpful to know. Thank you again!
All love — John