MIND MOVES:Making sense of the world in which we live, writes TONY BATES
HE TWITCHED slightly when he was asked on radio to speak about “battling depression”. The interviewer was respectful and sympathetic, but somehow his language didn’t feel right to this young man.
He immediately tried to clarify, that for him, the experience of depression hadn’t been a battle, but something that he had come through, a part of his development, perhaps even a necessary stage in figuring out who he really was.
It had begun when he was 14 years old, a time when his life had begun to feel crowded by numerous demands and pressures. He had begun to lose touch with something in himself in his struggle to become an adult. His recovery involved a rediscovery of who he was as a person.
Medication and the support of a good doctor had been part of that journey. Now he was off medication and had found a way to live with himself and feel happy about his life.
Sometimes we talk about depression like it is something outside of ourselves that happens to us for no apparent reason. We talk about it like it is a disease such as diabetes, cancer or pneumonia. This puts a name on what we may be going through and gives us some relief that we have not done something wrong to bring this experience on ourselves.
But while this may give us temporary relief, it can also give depression a power over us that can make us afraid of the experience. We may regard it as a negative experience, we struggle against it, and we run away from it. We think of it as something larger than ourselves, something that may overshadow our lives and from which we can never be entirely free.
Our lives are interwoven with emotions of all kinds, every day. There are no negative emotions or positive emotions. All emotions offer pathways to understanding ourselves more and more each day, and this understanding enables us to make sense of the world in which we live.
When the way we feel becomes hard for us to accept, when we are having repetitive thoughts about how negative we are as a person, when we cannot seem to shift this thinking and are at a loss as to how to live in the world, we describe this experience as depression.
Depression is a word we use very loosely as though it were exactly the same experience for everyone. In fact, it is very particular to each person who feels that way.
When we become caught up in the brokenness of depression, we need some guidance as to how we can get back on our feet and regain some control over our lives. Putting some structure on our everyday life is necessary before we can relate to the deeper hurts and losses that make us vulnerable to depression. We recover from depression when we find the strength in ourselves to listen to our experience and hear what it may be trying to tell us about what has brought us to this place in our lives.
It is possible for any human being to “lose their way”, but it is equally possible for any human being to “find their way”. Recovery is a path that each of us follows as we engage more openly and more courageously with the life we have been given. Recovery involves one step at a time, and it always begins with the place you are in right now.
Depression is not a power in our lives. We ourselves are the power in our lives. When we forget that and when we believe that we are worthless and helpless, we lose sight of where we are going. By rediscovering the power in ourselves, we rediscover the will to live life in a more meaningful way and we learn to love ourselves again in a deeper way.
I imagine that listening to that young man on the radio gave many people hope that they could also come through depression rather than have to spend their lives battling with it. His journey through depression had made him more aware of places in himself that needed to heal and in paying attention to that he discovered a freedom to be more fully himself.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie)