Articles on Depression:

Depression

Depression is one of my most favorite things to work with. As weird as that sounds. I've written at length about it, via the links on this page.

In life, there's a feeling of having to project a particular persona to be accepted by others. The tragedy in doing so is that you're forced to hide your real experience in life - who you really are. Depression is often the outward expression of your deep need to share your deep experiences of life and be seen in these experiences with another.

Depression is a sense of my experience of life that has dried up, and I no longer experience the flow, energy, or movement of things. The river of life within has been damned, and parts have dried up. In a way, I've felt that in depression, we're able to detect and sense life more than when we're not. It's felt like the experience of having a cold drink on a summer day. You can feel the cool free flowingness of the liquid filling in the crevices and spaces in your chest all the way down to your pelvis. Life begins to feel this way again.

In Seattle, we've all had the experience of going about life day after day in the winter, and then one day, the sun pierces through the clouds, and we're touched by a beam of sun. It's like in the movie Shawshank Redemption when the main character plays the Mozart final, and everyone in the courtyard freezes and looks on in a state of bliss. This is the essential act of Turning Towards in working with depression. That we pay attention to what moves us, where we feel a sense of warmth, closeness, and something that we like and gives our life an experience.

The act of grieving is intimately connected and a part of the course of working through depression.

Grief

We ALL have moments in life where life got off the rails, and we all of a sudden, realize life is so far off track from where we intended. We begin to realize that so much of our behavior, decisions, values, and even relationships have been built around coping with these moments. Most of us would be far healthier or further along in our mental health if we took more time to grieve what we've experienced in life.

Grief is a part of every client's course of psychotherapy, and these are some of the most powerful moments for both of us. It's in our grief that we clean and mend our wounds. It's from the place of grief that we begin to sense, experience, and create a new life.

Loneliness

Loneliness is a pervasive state in our current culture. In Seattle, we all joke about the “Seattle Freeze,” this idea that it’s hard to get to know folks on a meaningful level and create a sense of community. I hear it all the time. You could be having a great conversation with someone, and then all of a sudden, you feel as though the person is disinterested or slowly moving away. Or after having a splendid time with someone, you can’t seem to get in touch with them. Or there is no follow through on promises to get together again, just vague reassurances that it will happen. These are the kinds of things that can leave us feeling intensely lonely and disconnected from that which we need the most: relationships.

We all have a mask that we present to others, bringing our best and perhaps even false self forward for fear that anything less would be unacceptable, rejected. In talking about facades, Carl Rogers states that “modern man has become far too good at deserting his experience to take on a way of being that will bring love.”

So often, we feel we have to project a particular persona to be accepted by others, and in doing so, are forced to hide our real experience in life. It is this experience and our actual and deep feelings tied in with them that are crying out to be shared with another(s).Loneliness can be in the context of how we relate to others, but there is also a loneliness that can come from feeling cut off from oneself.

This is the deep and central origin of loneliness. "Can I be with myself?" The taking on of traits and changing ourselves for the sake of being loved and accepted inevitably builds a wall within, hiding our true identity from even ourselves.

Loneliness in Relation to Others

Loneliness, like depression, stems from a lack of connection in life - a lack of relationships in which we can communicate our real internal experiences to another. We can be with a group of people and feel so completely utterly alone and lonely. Something within us is begging to be seen, felt, shared with another. Even if just to our partners. Yet, we fear if we speak up, we'll lose the presence of another - which is just enough to coax us and keep us going on - yet in doing so we’re forfeiting our life.

We may be afraid of something that has already happened to us, perhaps a time when we spoke up in a relationship, saying, “I am feeling this,” and are met with, “If you feel that way, I will not love you.” So we begin to internalize what we should feel, not what we actually feel, to feel loved, and accepted. Eventually, we give up being ourselves without even knowing it.

Loneliness That Lies Deeper

There is also a sense of loneliness that lies a bit deeper than that within relationships with others. It is within our relationship with ourselves. The mid-life crisis comes to mind when it’s so common to have spent years establishing and developing a career, possibly creating a family, but there is this growing sense of not knowing one’s own identity.

Get in touch today

If you've been touched by something I've said, and are interested in therapy, send me a note, and we can find a time to connect.