Depression and the Art of Healing

What does depression feel like? 
Years ago, when I asked my sister, who's suffered depression episodes that sent her to the crisis unit, what depression felt like to her, she answered, It feels like I'm in the pits of hell. To me, it doesn't feel like I'm in the pits of hell, it feels like I am the pits of hell. The grief demon possesses me, I become his prisoner. At some point, destroying myself seems like a way to survive the anguish. In a nutshell, that's my experience of depression.

Now, let's move on. Think about healing.

What does healing look and feel like? How do we achieve it?

Healing is not a process through which we seek validation or approval for our grief. It's not what we do to make ourselves feel better about feeling lousy. It's about attending to the grief and loss we feel ~ embracing it. Never mind if its right or wrong to feel what you feel. Just feel. And have compassion and patience with yourself as you stay present with your feelings.

Pain occurs to alert us to some sort of disequilibrium. It's meant to spur us to seek healing. Healing requires me to change my perspective, to engage. I'm not a shattered glass that requires piecing together. I am a walking wounded, in need of emotional and spiritual debridement. I must debride my wounds, the scar tissue of which, stifles and starves my growth and renewal. Things have happened to me to get me to this point, and so I must happen to things in order to forge ahead into the light.

Healing teaches us why we feel the way we do, and we learn healthy responses to those feelings that help us restore equilibrium. Resisting pain increases its intensity. Think of the skier tumbling down the slope ~ using muscle tension to resist the fall increases the severity of injuries sustained in said fall. Acceptance begins with acceptance of the feelings of grief. That means letting them flow through you ~ finding the resolve to make your cross lighter to carry.

At this point it has nothing to do with who or what gave you this cross, or with any notion of restitution for your suffering. It has only to do with self care ~ what must you do to remain present to your grief without feeling swallowed whole? Don't deny yourself. Be kind to yourself. Don't pity yourself. Feel. Be. Stay. You are your most crucial witness. Do not spread your misery around for self-gratification. Remember debridement ~ we must remove necrotic tissue from the wound, or the limb will eventually die from ischemia. Despair must never triumph! Find grace. Be grace.

Dig underneath. Go gently, but do go deeper. What's there? Where does it belong?

in the wake of death, and life

bleary-eyed, i watched that sherrif in colorado silently pull the steely strength out of himself. he desperately needed it to carry forward. to discharge his duties. i wondered. how do the strong and steely dispel their fear, grief and despair? he thought he hid it, i guess. thought that he swallowed it, right before he froze the grief on his face in a twisted contortion. but i could feel it. oozing thru the photons that sprayed from the flat screened beacon in this lair's living room. oozing. trickling. a gentle deluge. silent. unseen.

i felt it. raining down on me. and i let it. i thought of the girl he killed. 16. it made me think of my own. the one i gave up. 17 he will turn in 3 weeks. somewhere. he's lost to me. loss. i know that pain. but not really. these parents must also feel the outrage of innocence. i could not, only outrage at myself. and ... it reminded me that losing a loved one to death is not necessarily the most painful way to lose someone. what of the survivors? the ones who were 'sexually traumatized?' i think of connie francis, that 60s songstress who survived a brutal rape and basically lost herself in its traumatic aftermath. she lives, but her soul and her essence do not. and i wonder ... what of the survivors?

and then i see the mind ripping grief pressed into the lines of terri irwin's face. her steely, square jaw seemed to melt right there, before barbara walters, as she spoke of the moment she found out about steve's death. and the sobs. gutteral. primordial. soul eviscerating. as she spoke of her children. she wanted to suspend that moment when she knew. and her children did not yet. bindy, skipping. contented, like any well adjusted child. unware that her world is about to crash, with her in it. it chills me thinking of this. of this moment right before death touches you. for the first time. surreal.

image originally uploaded by melanosis