Posted by dj on June 21, 2000, at 10:30:11
In reply to Re: Night Moves Into Sadness and Pain, posted by jupiter on June 20, 2000, at 9:33:16
>
> Thank you dj--the above describes me to a T. >You've really given me something to think about.Jupiter,
"Undoing Depression" is one of the books which really helped me get some solid context around many of the confusing views of depression out there. The reason it is very good is that Richard O'Connor looks at the varying ways depression is portrayed from both a personal and professional (he runs a mental health clinic, I believe, or did) vantage and relates what he learned from both perspectives without getting mired in one view or another.
There are other books cited on Dr. Bob's book link which are also very good. William Styron's "Darkness Visible", Marianne Williamson's "Return to Love" and Tracy Thompson's "The Beast: A Journey through Depression" were ones that I found particularly helpful as they are all very well written, and very informative from personal perspectives. The last one I suspect you might most relate to as she describes her relationship challenges from her perspective and how she worked through them. Marriane Williamson is also very good on relationships.
The following article was also seminal for me in providing perspective and eventually led to me doing the 'Disengaging Depression' program at the Haven (http://pdseminars.com) which this describes the thinking behind the origins of:
THOUGHTS OF DEPRESSION
. . . Judith LemonDepression is a subject that Joann Peterson and I kept coming back to when we spent her post recovery time together this past February. It had been on my mind since I had been diagnosed with diabetes in 1996. It was very current for Joann because she feared a slide into isolation or depression if her physical limitations precluded significant contact with friends and groups at Haven. The more we discussed our own individual fears,and our experiences with depressions, as well as our experiences as counsellors, it became clear that depression has many faces and is problematic to a large population. The more research I did into the subject, the more confusing the picture became. There were not only conflicting descriptions of what defined depression, but also a huge continuum of traditional treatments and alternative care interventions.
What did become clear was that whatever our own individual experiences were, we were not alone. At any given time at least 15 per cent of the general population suffers from some form of depression. Part of the difficulty in the diagnosis of depression is the fact that the word itself has bad press. I realized that over the years, I had always avoided seeing myself as "depressed." I preferred to think of myself as having a depressive personality style that affected my daily decisions; but, never would I label myself as "being depressed." Like so many others, in the word I felt the physical sense of rigidity and fixation.
William Styron, the author of Sophie's Choice, and who suffered from acute bouts of depression, states in his book Darkness Visible "When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need to register a strong protest against the word depression...it is a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It slithers...innocuously through the language like a slug...I would lobby for a truly arresting designation 'Brainstorm', a veritable howling tempest in the brain."
Depression is alternatively expressed as an emotional illness, a physical disease or a process depending upon the background of the person describing it. However it is defined, it is a problem that has been misdiagnosed, mismanaged and where individuals are often mistreated. We do know that depression is not abnormal or crazy; it is not a bad mood, a phase of life, 'the blues' or getting old. Depression is more intense, it lasts longer and it significantly interferes with effective day to day functioning of the individual. The effect on the family can be equally devastating. Primary care physicians report that often, prior to the diagnosis of an individual's depression, the entire family will have an increase in illnesses and accidents.
Looking at its many faces, depression may begin with a clear or dramatic event or loss, or may be existential in nature. More often there is no obvious explanation or identifiable situation. For some the repressed energy that contributes to depression is linked back to pre-adolescence.
By depression I mean a freezing of life energy, isolation, an entrapment in old or faulty beliefs, a source of internalized anger, and often, incomplete grieving. These are manifested by withdrawal from contact and relationships, disruptions in patterns of appetite and sleeping, confusion or inability to focus or make clear decisions, increase in anxiety and/or fearfulness and sometimes suicidal thoughts. Abraham Lincoln said in the midst of his own depression "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family there would not be one cheerful face on earth."
Current treatment modalities favour medications and sometimes brief, solution focused therapy. In talking about this with Joann Peterson and Linda Nicholls, we began to review the changes people made in residential groups that taught concepts of personal responsibility, addressed belief systems and added elements of breath, creativity, movement and enhanced contact with others in a personal, vulnerable way.
The three of us grew excited about creating a program at Haven that would offer these elements for people facing depression, as well as those living and working with it. We decided on a five day residential format what would begin in January 1998. The name of the workshop is Disengaging Depression and it will be offered three times during 1998.
Judith K. Lemon, MA CEAP, is a Certified Mental Health Counsellor, and the Director of the Employee Assistance Program in Bellingham Washington.
poster:dj
thread:37856
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000619/msgs/37990.html