Musings From The Heart
An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 98 April 7, 2012
Feeling Down And Unhappy
Depression Part 2
When a person feels depression they feel
down and unhappy, like I felt yesterday and wrote about in part 1. When a
person feels this way chronically, we say that they are chronically
depressed. In medicine and psychology,
depression is considered a recognizable illness, and a depressed person is
“suffering”, and needs care. I say that
depression is completely normal, and simply a very clever defensive mechanism
for children. I would never discount
that a depressed person suffers or needs care, but I would like to add an
unusual ray of hope for people suffering from depression: You are very, very well, and you should be
proud of yourself for having a very sound and successful defense system, and
for surviving your life to this place and time! Congratulations and touché to
all persons suffering from “depression”.
Now the second unusual ray of hope for the “depressed”: Yes, you may be called “sick”, and yes you have an “ill-ness”, and
yes you may need psycho-emotional therapy, but you are closer than you think to
a happy life without depression. Ironically, you are closer to healing tears than
virtually any other sufferer, once you truly choose to work towards
deactivating the defense of depression.
A person suffering from depression, like all
of us, is coping with insurmountable psychological an emotional trauma and
deprivation and unfulfilled needs from the womb and birth and early
childhood. Some survivors of womb abuse
and birth abuse and child abuse (which is all of us), become over achievers, some
go into blocking and denial, others become counter culture rebels or
evangelists or believers or practitioners of this or that, others become criminals,
others go insane or commit suicide, or go off to war, or become drunks and
addicts or gamblers or insatiable “holics” of one kind or another. Most of us cope by living unfulfilled lives
of drinking and promiscuity, and self denigration and self loathing, and live
quiet lives of banality or mediocrity and self limitation. The person suffering from chronic depression
is the most obvious of sufferers, and in theory the easiest to reach and help,
if the defense of feeling depressed can be “unlocked” and reversed.
The
person suffering from depression clearly feels down and unhappy, and clearly
can benefit from deep mourning and deep grieving, and learning to feel tears
and rage and all other emotions “stuck” in depression, which is the only way
for any and all people to heal. The feeling of “depression” is the correct and natural and healing feeling
of feeling down and hurt and traumatized and deprived and abused and damaged
and disappointed and neglected and unloved and feeling powerlessness and
hopelessness is part of the need to grieve and cry, or have a healing and
cathartic feeling. But on the way to
“have” the feeling, on the way to the actual processing of the pain, this
necessary path to healing gets “stuck”.
In fact the depressed person is using the process of grieving and
mourning ironically in reverse as a defense, instead of as the healing
process. The depressed person is a
chronic and professional mourner and griever and moper and stuck and feeling down
sufferer, so that they don’t actually feel, and also to elicit a kind of
negative attention from others.
A depressed person is, as we say in English, is
“caught between a rock and a hard place”,
or in Spanish, “between the sword and the wall”. And this “caught” and “stuck” feeling is the
“fetish” of the depressed person, not unlike gambling for some, porn for
others, over achieving or others, and a myriad of other “negative pleasures”
that function to keep our feelings at bay. Chronic depression is like a kind of
chronic masturbation, a constant “down-ness” in a constant self martyrdom, as a
method to elicit self pity and pity from others, but never feel or heal or
progress towards healing. Depression is
simply a very effective defense system, designed to successfully protect the
child from imminent threat, while also appease very sick parents. Chronically
depressed persons have the hardest time of all to recognize and admit
catastrophic womb abuse, virtually deadly births, and severe emotional and
psychological child abuse at the hands of their own parents. Very sick parents, usually both, and very
sick childhood environments cause chronically depressed children that grow up
to be chronically depressed adults. The
person’s own pain is the rock, and the awful parents, who’s sick deeds have not
been faced, are the hard place. The
depressed person and their formidable trauma are the wall, and the sick parents,
who have not been recognized as soul murderers, are the sword.
Once the chronically depressed person
recognizes that they are victims of severe emotional and psychological abuse
and deprivation and can direct this in internal mourning and grieving at the
cause, the parents or care givers, the next step is to methodically and
painstakingly learn how to grieve and mourn and feel these catastrophic
feelings properly, which is the only method of emotional and psychological
healing for any person. To do this the chronically depressed person may not
follow the path of “feeling down” or “feeling hopeless” or “feeling sad” like most deep feeling healers on their
way into their pain, but instead find the entry or release in extreme emotions
or breakdowns, or behaviors that counter the upside down, defensive norm. Chronically depressed persons need very
trustworthy and close support from a care giver and unconditional support to
rail and rant and do “other” than what was acceptable in the very toxic
parental home of the depressed person.
Tears are medicine for the heart, and so is feeling
properly felt rage and feelings of shame and guilt and hopelessness and
powerlessness, and any emotions that lead to release and catharsis, and the
processing of emotional and psychological pain.
With a depressed person it is time to pull the plug on the stuck Jacuzzi
that won’t stop filling up with more and more empty pain, and nowhere to go
with it, and get that formidable whirlpool going again. Depressed people are normally powerful and
vociferous and head strong children, very intelligent spirits that have been
cut off from below and amputated from above, until they no longer can move in
any way except to be visibly suffering so that the sick parent is satisfied
with the spirit destruction. When a chronically
depressed person feels safe and supported enough to let go and express and
interact again, the catharsis and diffusion of “stuckness” can be spectacular,
or impressive to say the least, and this is a vulnerability and fear for the
depressed person to be caught in such emotionality, and so requires very tender
and long term support.
For all of us survivors of womb and birth and
child abuse, (and that is all of us without exception), we can now recognize
that the war is over, our parents and their environments can no longer get to
us, and we can now recognize that our parents have failed us and hurt us very
deeply, and we can begin to feel the pain of what happened to us, in the care
of a safe and trustworthy care giver. We
can now let the tears fall, and the outrage burst out, and we can heal
ourselves. We are not “sick” to need
medication, and we are not “sick” to have to listen to what some other person
believes about us or our lives, we simply need to learn to cry and rage and
express and feel again, and we will come home to the child that we were all
along, and the child we were meant to be.
All hurt children, (and that is all of us),
have a very loving and hopeful and powerful, beautiful inner child inside of us
who is waiting for us to come to their rescue. For depressed persons
especially, it is time to surrender to what happened, and to get that voice
audible again. “I am depressed because
it is how I survived hell”. And “I will
now brave letting all hell and heaven burst forth out of me in my own strong
or loud or sweet and valuable voice,
however beautiful or ugly it comes out, because I want to return to being me
again”. And then we must all, especially
chronically depressed persons, get on with our true mourning and grieving, and
in effect stop suffering by processing our real pain. We need to all come home to our real inner
children waiting for us, especially depressed persons, who’s inner child has
served then so perfectly and faithfully.
See you
tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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