Fear has a way of setting boundaries that can’t be crossed. If you do cross them, you know you’ll pay a price – a pain or terror you can’t endure. The boundary is protection. Inside it, you’re safe. I think of the anxiety I feel when moving through depression as the warning sign. You’re getting […]
memory
The Challenge of the Ordinary
When I’m depressed, I dwell most on the failings of the past and the expected disappointments of the future, but there is also the challenge of the ordinary moments of the present. The challenge when depressed is to recognize the things I do well but unconsciously, the daily actions I’m good at but ignore when […]
The Healing Silence When Time Stops
My mental clock is always running, and most of each day I tensely evaluate what I’m doing by its measurement. Am I using this time productively, am I wasting it? Most people adapt to schedules fairly well, but for a depressive mind, time is another weapon. It becomes the relentless reminder that I am not […]
The Love Hidden in Family Depression
I’ve written about emotional abuse in my boyhood and a family history of depression as big contributors to my own illness, but recently I’ve spent more time reconnecting with the things that went right all those years ago rather than dwelling only on what went wrong. The positive side is simply the love that has […]
Doubt is Depression’s Last Stand
It was one thing to get depression out of my life. It was another to get it out of my memory. Doubt about recovery from depression could linger on and keep playing tricks with the past. Vivid memories of old words and actions while depressed continued to torture and twist through me. They became my […]
Conversations with Myself: Accepting the Past
Accepting the past is hard work. Avoidance of any part of the past that makes me uncomfortable used to be my go-to strategy, even though it never worked for long. I guess it’s the opposite of the tendency to obsess about everything I ever did wrong. (For example, reliving that humiliating interview 43 years ago, […]
Achieving Profound Change with Coherence Therapy
Psychotherapists can help us make breakthroughs in dealing with depression, but often the insights gained during a session don’t lead to permanent change. Why is it that we can’t always put the new insight into daily use and sometimes forget it as soon as we’re out of the room? That’s the problem that a new […]
Why Therapy Can Work: Ideas from Brain Research
Brain research is one of those many scientific fields that I’ll never know much about, but I find it important to get even a limited understanding of the direction of recent findings. It helps me to know, for example, that emotions are generated unconsciously through multiple brain systems before anything gets to awareness. As I […]
