Living with Depression
October 8 2004
http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/oct8.html
Dear Eric:
My life seems to be one hurdle after another; once I sort one problem out
another starts. I know this is part of life but it would be nice to have at
least one month without depression and laziness, I really need some motivation.
I just don't understand why everything seems to be a test to see how much I
HANDLE. I do suffer from manic depression, which is hereditary in the family as
my grandmother and my aunty both committed suicide. I am on antidepressants and
have been for quite a while but I just can't seem to get it together.
I have a beautiful little girl who is four years old who I
absolutely love with all my heart. I have had three jobs in the past five
months because most days I just don't want to get out of bed. Most people think
I am this funny, outgoing person but they don’t see the other side, I
believe I truly underneath I am this outgoing person but the depression just
seems to take control of my life. I have the ambition to succeed but when I do
for some reason I create a drama so that I do fail, I don't know if it is
because I don’t think I am worthy of anything good in my life. Being a
Taurus I am very strong-willed and determined, but this depression just has a
hold over me and I am at my wits end, it doesn’t matter how much I try to
overcome it eventually it just creeps back.
Dear Michelle,
As someone who has struggled with depression my entire adult life, I just want
to say that I feel for you, and I know a little about what you're going through.
Manic-depression, or what many experience as extreme swings of mood between
elation, on one side, and deep pain and frustration on the other, is another
story -- from what I understand it's very painful to live on such a roller
coaster ride, and it sounds like you're really struggling. And under these
conditions, anything you have to handle can feel like way too much. I know.
You have asked for help. This is the most important thing a
person who needs help can do. It means you are open to help. Please keep that
door open.
I suggest, before going any further, that you find a place
of compassion for your situation within yourself. This is the point of
stillness that will give you some rest and help you assess things in a calm
way. Struggling is bad enough, but we do have a tendency to judge ourselves for
that struggle. I can tell you're doing some of that because you're mixing two
thoughts that really have nothing to do with one another. The first is the
expression of your pain. The second is the notion that it means something: that
because of that pain, you sometimes feel you're unworthy of anything good in
your life.
Now, I can see how you might have come to this conclusion.
Deep inside every person is the belief in cause and effect, or else we would not
be here. And it must seem that there has to be a reason why your life is the
way it is. I can assure you there is a reason. And I can assure you that it has
nothing to do with your worthiness. But I'm pretty sure it has something to do
with what you were told about your worthiness, and what signals the adults in
your early environment were sending you, based entirely on their own beliefs
about themselves. In other words -- read this 111 times if you have to -- what
people told you, and how they felt about you, had nothing at all to do with you
or who you are. It was about their inner feelings and their own history. Of
course, you took their treatment of you personally, as children always do; this
is what people mean by 'taking it on'. The environment you were raised in,
which by all indications was not so healthy, shaped your reality. But these
people had their issues that existed long before you came along.
Depression is actually a misunderstood word. Most of the
time we think of it as sadness or feeling blue. Actually, there is a great deal
of pent-up anger and grief contained in depression. There is also judgment,
which is really self-judgment that was passed along to us by our elders. There
is usually quite a lot of guilt and shame. And there can be rage at the feeling
of instability that these emotions cause by rocking our emotional boat from
underneath; of never letting us have a moment's peace. I have a theory about
depression, which is that it includes a lot of guilt about having our needs met
and being taken care of, because that guilt was mixed in with our early
experiences of being taken care of. Often, as adults living with such feelings,
the path of least resistance is paralysis.
Depression or any other form of mental anguish are not
merely hereditary. They are transmitted through environmental contact and
through ongoing relationships that stream down the generations. The atmosphere,
beliefs and actions that lead to depression are largely conducted or passed
along in the act of relationship. They are also contained in the genetic code,
just like the color of your eyes. But of the two, my take is that environment
is the more important cause, and most readily available healing factor. In any
event, it is the one we have the most control over now, when it counts.
Environment includes relationships. I would propose that it's going to be
through finding, establishing and developing new patterns of relating that you
make the most headway in going beyond your current state, and getting yourself
to a place where you experience some stability and sanity.
In my personal experience and from what I have witnessed,
the most powerful influence in maintaining depression is perpetuating the
family relationship patterns that created it in the first place. Often, because
depression creates dependency, the (toxic) family 'support' network is the same
thing that is keeping many people sick. Telephone calls can be more than
enough. It can be a very vicious cycle. These same cycles can and almost always
do spread into relationships outside the family, making it seem like the entire
world is a giant conspiracy.
Healing depression involves getting a sense of the complex
emotions you feel inside. The first step is often deciding what is yours and
what belongs to someone else (sometimes called establishing boundaries). In the
midst of inner chaos and sadness, it can be very difficult to sort out the
feelings of others from the feelings of your own heart and soul. The total
fusion of all those voices and identities with yours can create chaos that is
very painful and debilitating.
I can give you an example. For a long time I experienced
feelings of resentment. These did not exactly dominate my character in an
obvious way. But they did have a way of ruining my fun dependably, and
poisoning my relationships. As I became aware of this feeling, it started to
remind me of my biological mother, who was a very angry woman when I was
growing up. Then I started to notice her voice attached to the little resentful
thoughts. It was like I was her when I was feeling them, and as I noticed this,
at first it was painful and a bit shocking; at that time I was in my late 30s.
Then I began, slowly, mind you, really slowly but steadily, to consider how she
perceived the world, as a separate idea from how I perceived the world. I began
to remember little things from my childhood. My mother resents men. My mother
resents that every time there's a shell in the linguini with clam sauce, it
breaks her filling and nobody else's. My mother resents that she's not free
because she has children. My mother resents she's not a singer and actress. My
mother resents my father. My mother resents her father. My mother resents me.
This went on and on for a while until it occurred to me that
she resents everything! And everyone. And every situation. This whole business
of resentment, which I experienced as this deep, nearly silent inner voice
within my own mind that I thought was all my own, was enticing me quite
literally to hate myself. Then I finally realized that this was not me
speaking. It had nothing to do with who I am and how I feel. These feelings
were emotional patterns that had been engrained into my body and feelings from
the outside, by things that were said to me, by what I was told about myself,
and by what I witnessed going on around me.
Slowly, I've been able to sort out the influences of
different early caregivers, including my grandparents. These were not always
negative influences. The people who treated me with kindness, sometimes even
with a moment of kindness (such as a guidance counselor I had one session with
in the third grade, named Peter Viggiano), provided an influence that left a
door open to that type of assistance or role in the future. And nobody's
influence is wholly negative; it's just that in the healing process, we often
need to start with observing the shadow side -- with what comes across as pain
and negativity. In this process, I have slowly been able to find a sense of who
I am in the midst of all these other influences and voices, and choose more
healthy ways of relating to myself and to other people.
I can tell you this -- one thing that's been very helpful
has been learning to accept help without feeling guilt.
Now, you've written to an astrology web page. And I've spent
a lot of time with your charts, but more time considering the words you've
written. I think by now, for those who read this column, my reluctance to
answer pain with astrological interpretation is pretty transparent. This is
just my way of doing things and I work this way, in part, because
interpretation can be wrong, it can be inappropriate, it's usually unnecessary
and generally it's not so helpful when what you need is compassion. It also
takes a heck of a lot of words to explain an idea that leaps out of the chart
in a moment, and the idea can be applied without any of those words.
Healing depression is, in my experience, never a mental
exercise. It is not quite behavioral, but choices do count. It is always deeply
emotional. But there are times when information can help. I can offer these few
ideas from your chart, with a little prayer that they help you.
I can see what look like different threads or currents of
influence coming from your two parents and the two sides of your family; I have
alluded to several of the themes they convey above. Perhaps elaborating these
will give a ray of light. Both sides of the family have their problems, which
you would do well to sort out.
There appears to be one line of influence that was just pure
rage, and its cousin, resentment. I can see this vividly because Mars is parked
exactly on your 4th house cusp, in Pisces. I would call this an inheritance of
anger, but as it's arrived in your psyche, it's the simmering kind of anger
rather than outward eruption. And usually it may well be directed from you back
to you rather than at the world. In Pisces, it can translate directly to the
kind of fear that eats the soul. This is elaborated further by the presence of
Pholus (a centaur planet whose first keywords are 'three generations') and
Lilith (an asteroid who represents the original woman deep within us) in the
4th house. This suggests to me that there is a long tradition in your family of
hatred toward women. This potentially translates (because you are a woman) to
self-hatred, which is another word for guilt. Both Pholus and the involvement
of the 4th house offer big clues that this is a very old problem. (When you
visualize the 4th house cusp, imagine a spiral going down the chart, off the
page, and into the distant past.) The fact that two older women in your family
committed suicide provides some evidence of this hatred. Suicide also suggests
many other problems in the family. Suicide is like a mask for deeper issues and
often functions as a cover-up. You may know some of this story already.
There is another line of influence suggesting that the idea
of emotional balance was simply nonexistent in your childhood, and that this
condition set you reeling at a very young age. This appears to have something
to do with your mother. Follow the logic: Moon (mother, childhood conditions,
emotions, needs) conjunct Uranus (shock, erratic energy) in Libra
(relationships, balance). There is no balance at all in that picture. This is
exactly opposite your 5th house Aries Chiron, suggesting that there is a
neglected child within you who is very angry about all of this. This child
wants experiences! Fun experiences. Instead, all it gets is a wild ride that
seems to lead nowhere. This opposition is the most clear chart image of the
bipolarity you describe. And it can be associated with a lot of anger. You have
to get to know and be friends with the raging child inside you. Or this child
will keep wreaking havoc.
Last interpretation. Someone has dumped the burden of grief
onto you. I sense that you have been scape-goated with grief, that is, blamed
for something, or many things, that had nothing to do with you, and made into
the ritual bearer of these emotions. (I read this into Vesta conjunct the
centaur Hylonome in Cancer on the 7th house cusp. It's as if you're a 'grief
surrogate'.) I would say that the first time you can have the experience of a
relationship (even if it lasts a day) that is not based on you taking on
someone else's sadness and grief will be a big step in your recovery. Even if
you were to merely notice this happening once, that would be a fine step. The
transaction of taking on this grief may be so subtle and so integrated with the
sense of purpose you were given as a child that it feels totally normal.
What is normal is the hardest to see; after all, it's normal
and we're not supposed to notice. As you get better, a lot of totally normal
things are going to change, and seem pretty darned weird.
I'm going to end with a pitch for therapy (particularly if
you're using mood stabilizers), and with an idea about therapy that may be
rather unfamiliar. There's a notion in the world that we go to a therapist to
talk about our problems. There is another idea, proposed in the book A General
Theory of Love, that says that the purpose of therapy is to develop a
relationship with the therapist; from that relationship, we learn to relate in
a different way, and thus relate as a 'different' or more evolved person in
relationship to another (at first, the therapist, then others). A therapeutic
relationship is one that encourages a healthy growth pattern. This experience
or pattern we can take into life with us, and cultivate further. Learning is a
process. Relationships take time to develop. Therapy can take anywhere from a
few sessions to two years to start showing solid results, but the best results
are often experienced in the long run. So it's necessary to be patient and
persist and let learning these skills of patience and persistence be part of
your healing process. But the most important thing is wanting to get better
above all else. There, pain serves as a good motivator.
A couple of other points. You need time outside, in the
sunshine. You also need time to yourself. As a mom, this can be hard to get.
But you simply must have some time on your own. I also suggest you get some
regular help cleaning your house. If you don't know anyone who can help, put up
a sign at the local church or health food store. "Please help me clean,
free." You also need good food. Your body must be properly nourished for
your mind to feel good. This adjustment can go a LONG toward helping the
healing of emotional crisis, particularly in getting the first initial lift;
ask a few people who specialize in this field to confirm. Stuff like flax seed
oil, spirulina, B vitamins (mind food!), and a LOT of water all can benefit a
person immensely.
And it would be truly, truly beneficial if you found one
way, one single way, that you feel good expressing yourself, and that you have
a desire to keep coming back to. It could be painting; it could be writing; it
could be the study of Tarot cards; it could be playing chess; it could be
dancing. But one thing, one space within your day where you really feel
yourself, a space that is totally dedicated to you, would likely do you a world
of good. Perhaps a small world, but it would grow, as worlds often do.
And remember this: every single person who has read this
response is sending you loving vibes right now.
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