“The usually accepted judgmental contrast between self-love and object-love, and their portrayal as opposites, springs from naive and uncritical usage in our everyday language. Yet, a little reflection soon shows how inconceivable it is really to love others (not merely to need them), if one cannot love oneself as one really is. And how could a person do that if, from the very beginning, he has had no chance to experience his true feelings and to learn to know himself?
For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved? So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamored of an idealized, comforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self, whom they now have to face and to whom they are delivered up, helpless, as to a threatening stranger.” The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.
What is depression? Web search lists symptoms, diseases, origins and treatments. How can you treat something you don’t understand?
Words we use define our worlds.
According to Dictionary.com, depression is a noun.
1. a depressed or sunken place or part;
2. an area lower than the surrounding surface.
Depress is a verb (used with object)
1. to make sad or gloomy; lower in spirits; deject; dispirit.Synonyms: sadden, discourage, dishearten
2. to lower in force, vigor, activity, etc.; weaken; make dull.
3. to lower in amount or value.Synonyms: cheapen, devalue
4. to put into a lower position.to depress the muzzle of a gun.Antonyms: elevate, raise
5. to press down.
Antonym: Elevate. Promote. Lift up.
What is wrong with sadness? Feeling discouraged and disheartened? Why is that seen with negative light? What if depression is a way of life that we all go through. The other side of happiness and euphoria. The yin to the yang?
Until I heard Tim Ferris talked about his depression, I didn’t know I suffered through something similar.
When I enter the state of depression, my front door doesn’t open for days and weeks. Trying to fill the void, unwilling to feel. Running out of fresh produce. Ransacking the cupboard for sustenance, consuming cans and dry food. Living as if I am surviving a nuclear fall out. Hiding behind my bunker, I grow myself getting heavier, duller and disconnected.
Yet I am very much connected to the work. Showing up and delivering, with no visible degredation. Smiles and jokes all around, I show up and earn my pay. You’d never ‘say’ I’m depressed.
Because state of depression is relative and personal.
I was in a state of depression the majority of my life until I started therapy.
This is a sketch of the past. A large canvas with no clear structures.
Once, I was prescribed yaz, birth control to smooth my cycle. The same nurse practioner who asked me to fill out a questionnaire to test for depression. One month on the medication, I lost my will to live and contemplated suicide. Finding myself in my room, wondering why I crouch so low. A spontaneous thought entered my mind. Stop taking Yaz. Is it possible to say this state of depression saved my life? The life of oppression and lack of will to experience the world?
As soon as I stopped, I felt better and full of life. I suspect she was sold the drug by the industrious drug sales reps, with playful ads of energetic women bouncing around. The effect on me, the opposite. The medical system that was supposed to support me put me in harm’s way. Pursuing profits and number of sales instead of the wellness of the clients they serve.
There are different ranges and circumferences of depression. Knowing what I know now, I had been in the depressed state all my life. Even before I was born.
In utero, I could feel the host not having enough. So, I took little. Shortest of my family. The most sensitive. The most celebrated for my academic talents and pursuits.
In still frames, a little girl in scowl, looking up distrustingly into the world. Always wearing pants with bowl haircut. Older sister is wearing skirts and dresses. Only to find out later that they wished I had been a boy, so they dressed me like one since birth.
Even now, until recently through self-awareness, I crouch in all my photos. Trying to make myself small. Afraid to take up space. Subconsciously feeling guilty for my very own existence. Feeling responsible for people feeling inadequate around me. Threatened my intelligence, creativity and unabashed courage to be me.
Failing to do a good job of a fetus, infant and child.
In the Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate helps to explain the two options of a child.
1. My caregiver is lacking. He or she or they cannot take care of me. I am in danger. I am unsafe.
2. The world is a safe place. I am well taken care of. There must be something wrong with me. I must be better. I must do better. I must not be a nuisance. I don’t want to attract attention on to myself. Let me hide and be out of everyone’s way.
With option 2, we survive. With option 1, we die. How can a child remove himself from the unsafe place? How can we blame a child for fighting to survive, an animal instinct to preserve himself?
What choice did I have, but to take less than I needed. To keep the host alive. Without the hostess, the fetus dies. A symbiosis of survival. The hostess, in constant stress of an unavailable husband. Tyrant mother-in-law. Living a life opposed by her family. Nevermind her own trauma and gaps she did not have the tools to deal with.
I was told to believe that the world around me is unsafe. Instead of becoming combative and vigilant, I did the opposite. It was too much to bear, and I numbed myself to see no harm. Ignore it. Pretend it away. Entering the wild imaginations of my creations.
Getting hit. Getting pummeled. Washed away by the waves. Because I refused to take off my blinders. Used to the shiny veneers I created for myself. But that is not the only reason why. My mother used to dress us up like princesses. It’s not just her. The symptom of the country oppressed. To not be Korean. To not speak Korean. To not wear Korean. Lands taken away. Treated less than. Grinning and bearing to survive, with no dignity.
And so, how you look and how you are perceived is not a luxury. A necessity.
Therefore, is it any surprise that I don’t go outside until I am dressed and look a certain way. Looking perfect for no one. Denying myself the joy of being outdoors, feeling the wind on my face because I am not dressed nicely enough.
Where was I? These rambling memories of recollection, which now I can make sense of.
I used to need to sleep more than 11 hours daily. Until I started therapy and the tiredness started to lift. My left arm shook.
I was in a state of depression – a permafrost that thawed and froze with the rising sun and coming of night.
Until I could apply a simile to my personal experience.
There are four rail lights on the ceiling of the rented apartment’s kitchen. It was never bright and I got used to its darkness. One light went out, and another. Until I was left with two lights out of four. I got used to not seeing, not knowing where the blunt end of the kitchen knife bisecting carrots, sweet potatoes and cucumbers.
Then the bathroom light went, and I thought it would be poetic to have candle lights.
Until one day, I decided to replace the kitchen lights. Shocked with the end results. Is this how it’s supposed to be?
Then the bathroom light was replaced. Out the candle, in the person who could use the bathroom.
This is how the frog boils to death. Feeling the temperature rise little by little. Getting comfortable with the familiar, even finding comfort in the discomfort that it’s gotten familiar with. Until it is too hot, too lethargic, and too comfortable. Forgetting that it is never too late. To leap out of that pot, onto a steady and solid surface.
Like the light. We turn them off. Someone turns them off. We forget that we have the power to turn on the light. Replace the bulb. Open up the curtains. Open the blinds. Get out of bed. Open my eyes.
Get dressed. Open the front door. Walk down the street. It’s not just bliss. There is trash everywhere. Homeless man walks across, baring his bottom as he crosses the road. Uneven surface. Loud construction noise nearby.
It is still better out here than inside. With people. Together, we go far. Alone, I go fast. Nowhere really, spinning in circles.
Depression is not an illness. Depression is a state of being.
Being depressed means you are trying to depress the urge to let your true self out. Let the light in. The more you depress, the more resistance you’ll feel. Have you ever tried to depress a beach ball onto water? It will bounce and fly away out of reach.
The state of depression is a phase of reckoning of our truest selves. Until we become friends with ourselves, the self that tries to emerge is unfamiliar and pudgy. Like an infant that looks like a mashed potato until shape takes hold of its face. Its body.
We have to let ourselves out. Into the light. That is what depression means. Open the door. Let go of the shackles on our ankles. Sit up. Get up. Walk out the prison of our own creation that once kept us safe, but now it is nothing but a prison where we are the warden, visitor and prisoner.
We do not need prisons in dungeons to stay safe. We do not need castles high up in the sky.
What if depression is a state of inertness wanting to awaken? What if I told you that someone like me. Someone you would never imagine to be depressed suffers from depression more often than I’d like to admit. That I have been depressed my entire life. Repressing the true self?
What if I told you that someone trying to commit suicide was not trying to end his life? What if it was an effort to let go of the past, the false self that has been living a lie of our creations? What if I told you it is an effort to get better? To end the pain? The suffering that seems to have no end? An attempt to feel better? To escape the body when we should be doing the exact opposite?
Maybe people are not trying to kill themselves and throwing away their precious lives. Maybe people are trying to quiten their mind.
Go into the body. Feel what we refuse to feel. To connect with the body. The heart. The gut. To let the wild monkey of our minds rest. Rest, monkey mind. You’ve been kept busy creating stories to make sense of the world that never did when we were children. To keep us safe. To stop us from going mad. To keep our minds intact instead of losing it completely.Think what you want. Create lies and safety nets of your imaginations. I won’t ask you to rest. Because you won’t listen. How can I fault you for doing your job? To think. To make sense of the unfathomable worlds. To have barrage of self-loathing and self-judgmentatl thoughts you’ve become an expert processing. There is no resistance. Just radical acceptance and appreciation of what you do.
Come back to reality of your existence. Feel it in your heart. Feel it in your guts. Hold my hand. Until the body says yes. Until you can feel your own hands connect with your heart. Moving without the mind’s commands. Because body functions without the mind. We breathe without thought. We digest without thought. We love without thought.