• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Storied Mind

Recover Life from Depression

  • Home
  • About
    • Commenting Guidelines
  • START HERE
    • Archives
  • Self-Help
    • Recovery Stories
You are here: Home / Depression at Work / Fear of Falling and Mad Men

Fear of Falling and Mad Men

by John Folk-Williams Leave a Comment

Some Rights Reserved by memotions at Flicker

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 stopping of daily noise, the frenetic pace or the addictions that keep me riding on the surface of things and avoiding whatever I can’t face. The good emptiness drains all that out of my system. Once rid of the mind-buzz and the anxiety that goes with it, I can participate in an active silence, and things become clearer.

No, I’m talking about the opposite of that rich experience. It is the empty feeling that leads to panic and what I’d have to call dread. It comes in a flash of perverse insight when I feel again at one with the world around me, but everything in that world, including me, seems false, an empty shell about to crack open, revealing a void. And I’m going to drop in a free fall as the ground cracks under me. That used to be a regular part of my life before I could grasp that it was one face of depression.

When the panic used to strike, I’d have to react fast and leap into any activity that filled the emptiness with crowds, or, better yet, helped me believe for a time that I had never been empty to begin with. I had to hold onto a structure, a purpose, a job, something that sealed the cracking world up again and filled my days with action that was useful and important. That took me completely out of my inner self and whatever I may have really wanted and put me securely in a role or function that had value in the eyes of the world. That is how in the past I ran from the dread of emptiness and the fear of breaking and falling like part of an earthquake-stricken city.

The remarkable TV series, Mad Men, is a drama about advertising executives in the New York of 1960. Its central character creates a false self to build a career devoted to masking a reality he is afraid to reveal. Dan Draper is a “nobody” from a poor family so desperate to separate himself from his origins that he adopts the identity of a dead man to place himself in a completely different world. With his false name and false biography he becomes a brilliant and successful advertising executive, but the fear that this world could collapse never leaves him. The opening animation shows a man ascending to his skyscraper office only to see it break completely apart. It’s just a collection of lines that are falling, and the man falls with them, his world collapsed. Draper is all self-confidence, brilliance and success on the surface but also lost and searching for a kind of life he can’t get clear about.

In my teens and early twenties I was often gripped by that sudden panic at the sense of emptiness just behind the fragile appearance of things. That was one of the most terrifying symptoms of depression I had at that time, and yet it happened so often I took it as part of me, an inescapable dimension not just of my nature but of the world itself. Nothing looked stable, trustworthy, solid. It could all disappear and show itself to be as empty as I felt. That was a terrifying and perverse way of seeing myself as part of a whole, but a whole that broke into dust at a touch. Everyone seemed to be talking then about “meaning” and man’s search for it, the remoteness of God, not to mention his “death.”  To see the world as meaningless was, if anything, quite fashionable. But this was no intellectual exercise for me. It was despair and panic. I didn’t think myself into that state – it was simply the way I experienced things. It was what I believed to be true.

Later I lived in many places where I felt good about being alive, simply by looking around me at the absorbing beauty of what I saw. Something powerful and deep had changed, and it had to with finding a spiritual connection to life and also seeing around the edges of depression. I’ve never completely lost touch, though, with that other fearful side of emptiness. When in a depressive swing, I get those jolts of deep panic, I remember how I used to live with the feeling most of the time. It was something I had to run from to stay alive. I had to cover myself and the world I lived in with a sense of importance, purpose, direction, fulfillment. That usually meant a driven activity that took me far away from looking closely at what was going on inside me. As I learned more about depression, I could see that the feelings of bleakness, worthlessness, despair that are part of that condition were not the truth of my life but something I could recover from.

I will keep writing about the spiritual dimension to recovery, but I also have to point out this dark side that I still fear – despite new knowledge and belief.

Related Posts

  • Fear of Falling and Mad Men

    Some Rights Reserved by Memotions at Flickr In the midst of writing about moments of…

  • At Health Central: Men and Depression

    Just a note to let you know that I'm starting a series about men and…

  • Real's Men and Depression

    The other day I looked back at a couple of posts by Therese Borchard at…

Filed Under: Depression at Work, Men and Depression, Self-Esteem Tagged With: depression, meaning, panic, self

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Sign Up for Email Delivery

Get updates and blog posts by email.

Surviving Depression Together Now Available at Major Retailers

Surviving Depression Together


Surviving Depression Together

"John, this is a ... much needed resource. Thanks for writing it!"

- Therese Borchard, author of Beyond Blue


Learn More...

A Mind for Life Ebook Now Available at Major Retailers

A Mind for Life: From Depression to Living Well

A Mind for Life Ebook

The inner work of getting your life back from depression. This ebook is now available in most common ebook formats at major retailers.

LEARN MORE

Living Depressed

Depression affects emotions, mental abilities, self-concept, behavior, relationships and the entire body. These core posts describe the full range of symptoms affecting daily life. Read More.

Choices in Healing

Hoping for recovery gives you a motive but not a method for getting there. This section has posts about therapies and healing methods you can work with either on your own or with professional guidance. Read more.

Living Well

If you've learned how to manage your depression, you'll want a fulfilling life rather than one dominated by fear that the illness might return. In this section, you'll find posts about how to work toward that goal. Read More

Relationships in Crisis

One of the hardest challenges of living with depression is holding onto your closest relationships. This section features posts on how to help a relationship survive. Read More.

Recent Posts

  • Storied Mind Ebooks Ready to Go!
  • Notebook: Healing the Whole Person
  • Why Writing Helps Heal Depression – 2
  • Why Writing Can Help Heal Depression – 1
  • Re-Reading the Story of Depression’s Meaning

Search Storied Mind

Categories

Recent Comments

  • Linda on Helen: A Great Film on Depression
  • Anonymous on 10 Ways to Help Yourself When Your Partner Is Depressed
  • Karthika on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?
  • Adam on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?
  • Karthika on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?
  • Adam on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?
  • Anonymous on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?
  • Karthika on How Can You Communicate After Your Depressed Partner Leaves?

Privacy and Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy

Cookie Policy

Terms of Use

DISCLAIMER: None of the content on this site should be interpreted as medical or therapeutic advice about the treatment of depression or any mental illness. If you feel you need help, you should seek treatment from qualified professionals.

AFFILIATES: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Copyright © 2023 · Dynamik-Gen on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in