The Secret to Surviving Depression

Hi  thanks for your comments, I found your ideas interesting and read  your post twice. I would have to disagree, isnt that what a good website is all about? Agree to disagree, but i respect your  opinion.  For me, the only Evil Monsters in my life were the people who took away my Childhood, took advantage of my innocence. The others who couldnt parent, well , they were a product of their own upbringings and mental issues and I cant say they were monsters.   Nope. There are definite psysiological changes in the brain of somebody whose prone to depession - one of the less known ones is the inner lining over the brain is thinner, there are loads of other ones. DNA, alot of Cortisol due to stress, Propensity to Depression due to background, A wonky sertonin/Noradrenaline/Dopamine deficit - certainly nothing that has to be endured. the world endure conjures up martrydrom for me, I can put up with it but not endure it. See the difference?  I do everything I can to recognise what causes a bout, when I need to pull the breaks on, walk away from Toxic people etc., Ive learnt  my limitations, I think an Evil monster in the Brain is kinda harking back to the way I was brought up to feel about my sexuality, and i aint gonna there again !!   Nope, I suffer a partyly DNA [family tree full of Depressives] and I am prone to Anxiety, Im a happy, fairly normal woman who suffers bad bouts of Depression, the antidepressants help take the awful edge off the blackness. so does attaining self worth, getting/learning to blot out old scripts 'youre useless' etc and to love myself, see myself as worthy of a happy life.  I shall leave the demons to the monster Comics and stick with the scientists. Your input has been valuable and made me think, Thanks

Good take.  When Christ walked the earth, he healed people of diseases because it was against the will of God.  I can't think of a more loaded word for depression than "evil."  As a third-generationi bipolar I with a bipolar I daughter presently suffering a mixed state, all I know is to endure when the disease gets bad.  And the disease seems independent of circumstances.  Nature is simply flawed.  In Christian philosophy this is due to a native imperfection--call it the Devil if you must, but I used the Devil a bit as a metaphor.

Until you accept something (your sexuality, for instance) you cannot get a handle on it.  Endurance is not martyrdom; martyrdom ends in death.  Survival gives birth to life, and I rejoice in freedom from depression (or mania) for as long as it lasts.  Thank God for modern medications!

Thine,

Craig

Think of evil as a metaphor--depression is certainly not a good, and a value judgment is not invalidated by science determining an error in our DNA.  Endurance I meant only for the period of depression.  My last one lasted two years and ended in ECT, which only made me worse.  Finally a combination of medications saved me.  I would call that a "good."

CE

Thanks for clarifying, Craig.  I don't think depression is only caused by a flaw in our DNA, though.  Maybe there are some where it's a purely chemical imbalance that we are born with, but I do think that trauma plays a big role in the depression of many people and a lot of times, the trauma that occurred could be considered evil and that evil distorted the brain chemistry.  I suppose you could say that even in those cases, the brain had a predisposition to be affected by trauma in that way but then maybe we could call Type I diabetes an evil?  I don't mean to be splitting hairs and I truly do get the analogy, guess I just got kind of creeped out thinking about maybe there being an evil monster in my brain!

Thanks Craig for your well written reply. Im a practising Christian and totally agree that Jesus would have healed Bipolar1,Anxiety, any type of Mental Anguish. Its difficult via email sometimes without going into 'epistles' to get your meaning across. I guess the word endure, conjures up, for me, great suffering, which, in truth I do. I do suffer a great deal [much of it hidden] with Anxiety and Depression. A gentleman who writes Haiku Religous Poetry said to me that Depression was the greatest Sin because it was a total lack of faith in gods Redemption and it was the sin of Despair.  For my part, Evil to me is the lack of love,lack of God. When I am depressed, I am thrown into despair, I am being 100% honest when I say I dont have a choice in this one. Ive tried each and every type of Therapy.There's no payback [as Dr.Phil and Louise Hay and her ilk would say] for me since I dont have family supports who spoil me and living alone, depression is worse. I can say, hand on heart, that I do everything to control and keep my Depression at a manageable level. but like you say, that many years and then ECT gives  you a kind of Doctorate in the subject. I would say I have a constant low grade depression, I am happy too, if that makes sense? The dark depressions come and over them, I have no control. I have cried out to God. Asked him to heal me, to  heal anything in me thats causing them, ie sin being what separates us, and isnt the worst depression state that feeling of being cut off, completely from all love and compassion and feeling. A living Death. I believe that scientists have concentrated on the physical aspects of it. Thats what they do, the spiritual cant be evaluated by machines. I do realise that its to do with Soul and Spirit and have said so before here on the Site.

I thank God for Medication for it enables me to live a reasonably normal life, even if Im thought a 'loser' my my relatives and more or less ignored due to my lack of a job and money situation.  I underwent a v serious operation approx 8years ago. I remember all the love and attention in the hospital, I said to the Nurse in charge, that i would have gone thru that operation 3 times over, rather than suffer another bout of Black hopeless depression. I am bipolar 2. So I dont get any rest really, Im rarely on an OK road, Im either agitated/energised or Im depressed or anxious. Sometimes I may get a week or two at most when I 'Forget' I have this condition. I endure my Arthritis pain which is dreadful and droining and constant. Now the Depression, somehow, for a reason I cant now explain, Eduring it doesnt sit well for me, so I have to think this one out. Many thanks for your interesting post Craig.

Dear Rose,

My heart goes out to you as a "double depressive"--we bipolars at least experience highs from our disease, though depressive episodes outnumber them 3:1.  When I recommend endurance and acceptance, think of them as the starting blocks.  Hope comes as we gradually embrace temporary recovery, and when the black dog bites again we can remember that we healed before and can again, though the heart becomes scarred.  Here's a poem about depression that might contribute to the discussion of the experience:

Demon Melancholy

His cold breath steams up my neck
like dry ice.  I never see him approach.

He comes from darkness
where eyes forget they are eyes,

where speech has no conclusion
and touch is without resistance,

where music turns to noise
and selves are emptied of history

and personality like milk bottles
below the ninth circle of hell.

I hear his wild dogs carol
in the burning church of my mind.

Pass the offering plate--
Is that a medicine vial, a gun?

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,
the light has gone away.


(published in Brownflower and Ygdrasil, also available in my new book, "Unexpected Light," from Diminuendo Press:  http://www.cechaffin.com/light.html

The book has many poems about manic-depression, but few are as graphic as the one above.  I'm sure those afflicted will find more comfort in my poetic approach to the subject.

Thine,

Craig Erick

Dear Craig, thanks for that wonderful  poem, wow. it says it all doesnt it !

Hope things going well for you. Im on the lighter end of the Spectrum of Bip. which means, that i get dreadful black Dog Depressions but only get agitated and angry and sort of anxious, i dont get those wonderful highs /elations.

Take care and thanks again