Listen to this
Because my usual tunes are gone I've downloaded some old radio programs to listen to ... and I ran across this Speaking of Faith episode about depression. You can listen to it here. It's free.
(As an aside, I have to put forth the disclaimer that the host has a kind of annoying way of articulating the first sound of every word when she's reading something ... but the content is good.)
It's been more than a year since I've had any symptoms of depression at all, and more than seven since I've been really crushed by it. But it's kind of like my divorce, or September 11, or any other traumatic experience—I can go weeks and even months without thinking about it, and then I'll see or hear or remember some random thing and suddenly the tears are rolling down my face all over again. It isn't because I feel sad, or because I'm re-experiencing the trauma. It's more like I just feel really, really OPEN. Permeable, like everything's moving through me. In depression, this kind of intensity felt overwhelming, like something that just might kill me. These days it feels ... how does it feel? It feels good, because when I feel it moving through me I see that I am able to endure it now. I can even welcome it.
This man in the program was recalling a psychologist who said something that I'm going to be thinking more about, because I had intuitively felt the same idea myself, and yet until I heard him say it I'd never really thought of it in quite this way. The therapist said, You seem to look at your depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?
Losing my mind and my will broke me in some ways I'm still just starting to understand. It's not a romantic or innately spiritual or even meaningful experience, at least not while you're in the midst of it. It's just awful. But I am grateful for it because being cracked open and broken down like that has made it necessary to put myself together again, and I think I'm doing a better and gentler job of it now than I was able to do in my teens and 20s. I hope so, anyway.
(As an aside, I have to put forth the disclaimer that the host has a kind of annoying way of articulating the first sound of every word when she's reading something ... but the content is good.)
It's been more than a year since I've had any symptoms of depression at all, and more than seven since I've been really crushed by it. But it's kind of like my divorce, or September 11, or any other traumatic experience—I can go weeks and even months without thinking about it, and then I'll see or hear or remember some random thing and suddenly the tears are rolling down my face all over again. It isn't because I feel sad, or because I'm re-experiencing the trauma. It's more like I just feel really, really OPEN. Permeable, like everything's moving through me. In depression, this kind of intensity felt overwhelming, like something that just might kill me. These days it feels ... how does it feel? It feels good, because when I feel it moving through me I see that I am able to endure it now. I can even welcome it.
This man in the program was recalling a psychologist who said something that I'm going to be thinking more about, because I had intuitively felt the same idea myself, and yet until I heard him say it I'd never really thought of it in quite this way. The therapist said, You seem to look at your depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?
Losing my mind and my will broke me in some ways I'm still just starting to understand. It's not a romantic or innately spiritual or even meaningful experience, at least not while you're in the midst of it. It's just awful. But I am grateful for it because being cracked open and broken down like that has made it necessary to put myself together again, and I think I'm doing a better and gentler job of it now than I was able to do in my teens and 20s. I hope so, anyway.
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