Posted by dj on July 23, 2000, at 18:04:05
In reply to Re: Undoing Depression » dj, posted by Angela5 on July 23, 2000, at 16:53:56
>... the concept of "stuffing feelings" confuses me, or at least it does in the way that he explains it/I interpret it.
>
> I always thought that it was almost the opposite - that depressives tend to feel many >things more deeply than most people.I believe that in many ways folks with depressive tendencies are highly sensitive and sometimes attempt to deny their sensitivities in the various ways that O'Connor outlines in the book.
That is what "stuffing feelings is all about" - attempting to deny them and mis-directing or mis-interpreting them...
> In my experience, it seems like I lost the ability to feel positive feelings while retaining the ability to feel all kinds of painful ones. I don't feel numbed, I feel sad, angry, frustrated, >resentful, afraid...
If we clamp down on or ignore those feelings excessively, rather than finding ways to effectively work through the causes we then go into numbness, which and ADs can have that effect as well, though they can also help thaw numbness, which has progressed to a dangerous point...> I don't know, maybe I'm overlooking, misinterpreting, or not recognizing something. You seem to have a pretty good grasp on these concepts, so I was hoping that you could help me to better understand how these things may >interrelate.
Angela,
Hopefully those brief explanations may have been of some help.
Here's a bit more of an explanation which may help from the following site, where you can find more information and the full article:
http://www.pdseminars.com/PD_Publishing/shen20.html#depression"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."
Sante!dj
poster:dj
thread:40944
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000717/msgs/41262.html