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Depression

The Human Heart feels things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand. – Robert Vallett

Depression is a universal experience; the majority of us experience it to some degree in our lives. However, people are often labeled as being depressed when, in fact, they are grieving. Depression and grief can look similar to a casual observer, and someone going through a major loss can even confuse their grief with depression, because the two can feel similar at times. The main forces that often cause someone to feel depressed are anger and meaninglessness. You may have heard that depression is anger turned inward against the self. Less often, people talk about feeling depressed because of the meaninglessness they feel in their lives. Depression that arises through anger can be thought of as a reaction/response to change.

Unwelcome change, the kind we resist, is especially hard when we perceive a lack of hope for a beneficial outcome. Change can deprive us of the familiar – the surroundings that make us feel comfortable and at ease. Even if the situation is not that great, for example, if our inter-relationship dynamics are poor, it is still familiar, and we feel comfortable with the ability to predict what we will be experiencing, thinking, and feeling.

Major loss-producing change makes us reevaluate situations as well as our expectations and assumptions. It forces us to grow and adjust and to accommodate a ‘new normal’. Different circumstances, even if they are improved, can be frightening, especially when a lot of change is taking place and we are under a lot of stress with limited or no support resources.

Depression related to anger turned inwards is analogous to being stuck in a phase of grief sometimes referred to as protest. Unconsciously, we may not want to give up the old and to acknowledge things are different and will be forever. This kind of depression is essentially a protest against change and an attempt to deny it. This struggle is often unconscious; we are not aware that we are protesting the loss-producing change.

Another, perhaps less talked-about dynamic of feeling depressed relates to not having a sense of meaning to counterbalance change. Having meaning can serve as an anchor in a raging sea of change. It can help us stay centered, provide us with hope, and help us to forget our own problems by providing us an external focus on someone or something we care about. One way of thinking about meaning in life is to view it as a way of staying the course through a challenging transition. Meaning helps us to let go of the past and move forward beyond the scope of the change we experience.

Meaning offers us an identify and provides both a reason for living in our head and a felt sense in our heart. It keeps us out of the supplications and questioning common when in an existential crisis (when we think, I am, therefore I exist. But why do I exist? What is my reason for living?). The second form of depression, which develops from our reasons for living and our relationship to life, is referred to as existential depression.

Existential depression exists when we live in a vacuum of meaninglessness or emptiness, and it is born out of the crucible of meaningless experiences. Existential depression is a state of mind and mood devoid of the impetus required to navigate through the impermanence of life. Though it may not be anger turned inward in the form of protest in service of denial, without meaning, our will is held in suspension over a chasm. We have neither orientation to give us direction nor motive to move us toward the other side, where we may embrace our human journey through creating a new normal.

HELPFUL RESOURCES

From the lighter side – 

For more resources [click here].  Scroll down to the Depression section