Understanding Depression
"Sadness is not depression," although every
depressed person feels sad. Sadness is the feeling of
being depleted and experiencing loss. Depression is a
much deeper, much older feeling, but because it is
actually a pattern of avoiding feelings, it is a
complicated emotional state involving [a wide range
of emotions.]
Depressed people feel hurt because they've been
hurt and because holding in feelings is hurtful.
Depressed people are angry because old hurt becomes
anger.
Depressed people are anxious because they fear they
will lose control of their repressed anger and hurt
someone.
Because they have redirected their anger inward,
depressed people feel guilty and worthless. While we
all suffer blows to our self-esteem from time to time,
depressed people have allowed their guilt to erode the
very foundations of their goodness at all and have
difficulty finding any meaning in life.
The Range of Depressive Feelings
Depression ranges from being sullen to moody, gloomy,
defeated, woeful, melancholic, suffering, afflicted,
miserable, tormented, tortured, hopeless, or despondent,
to feeling despairing and condemned and suicidal.
What Causes Depression?
There doesn't seem to be just one cause of depression.
There are numerous and varied causes that are manifested
in each individual in their own unique ways. Some of
the major factors involved include:
- Brain Chemistry
- Family History of Depression
- Alcoholism
- Losing your Parents or being neglected by them
- Low Self-Confidence
- Relationship Problems with a loved one
- Lack of Friends or Family
- Recent Stressful or Traumatic Events
The Dynamcis of Depression
The dynamics of depression are straightforward:
- 1. A person is hurt but internalizes the hurt
instead of expressing it.
- 2. The hurt turns into anger.
- 3. Anger unexpressed is directed inward as guilt.
- 4. The energy used in rerouting the anger inward
and confining it in emotional debt uses up
emotional reserves. This depletion of energy
is called depression.
The more firmly established this pattern of concealing
emotions becomes, the deeper and longer-lasting the
depression.
Setting the Stage For Depression
Usually acute depressions are the product of emotional
overload from one or a series of distinct losses. It's
important to realize that it is a rare person who goes
through life without accumulating feelings in emotional
debt that can lead to depression.
When you consider that stress is the pressure of an
unexpressed feeling, you realize how many feelings are
being shunted into emotional debt every day of your life.
You suffer unresolved concerns over your self-esteem,
your relationships, your children, your work, and your
parents."
"...While expressing your feelings openly in the present
does relieve some stress, many feelings still manage to
build up over the years. It is this accumulation of non-
descript minor old hurts from many sources, the disappointment
of your private life and the world around you that, combined
with the loss of energy and self-esteem of aging, makes you
sensitive to suffering depression. Theh accumulation of
feelings in emotional debt is psychological aging
and why you tend not to get rigid and irritable when you get
older.
Acute Depression
You can become suddenly -- or acutely -- depressed after
suffering a brief series of losses that overwhelm your capacity
to feel openly. Your defenses were designed to cover your
emotions until you're ready to process them, allowing them out
a little at a time as you're ready to deal with them. Unfortunately,
when the sheer volume of the losses exceeds your ability to
manage your pain, most of your painful feelings are shunted into
emotional debt.
Now you are confronted with an emotional overload that
creates unfamiliar feelings of vulnerability. You try un-
successfully to cover, but instead you become irritable and
snap at people. You're preoccupied, negative, brooding, and
find little joy in the world around you. People have difficulty
making contact with you..."
As the events that contributed to your hurts are resolved,
acute depression usually resolves. Mostly it is mild to moderate
and is a simple matter of getting on with the business of
identifying your losses and mourning them.
Chronic Depression
The most seriously depressed people not only accumulate
the daily insults that everyone suffers but also have a long
history of holding in important feelings of loss whenever
they occur. Their low self-esteem has prevented them from
coming forward with their hurt and anger when it was fresh,
so they've been swallowing these feelings for years. They
come to fear facing any of their feelings at all.
While some present loss or injury often precipitates a
depression, solving the present difficulty does not solve
the real problem for these people. When people have been
depressed for years and have not sought help, the sources
of their hurt and anger often lie so deeply buried that
they often seem inaccessible. Such people are mistakenly
labeled as having endogenous depression, meaning that the
depression comes entirely from within, from no discernible
source. In truth most of these so-called inner depressions
are a collection of reactive depressions whose cause has
been forgotten. The original depression and cause of low
self-esteem have gone untreated for so long that they have
been compounded by subsequent insults.
Unfortunately, this search for the sources of the
original depression is often sadly neglected in therapy
today, and symptoms are treated instead.
The Symptoms of Severe Depression
The anger repressed by depressed people causes night-
mares, which eventually interrupt their sleep pattern.
They get up early, lose sleep, and feel more fatigued.
They also avoid sleep to escape the nightmares. Some
depressed people sleep all the time but never feel
rested or refreshed. Since their energy is already being
consumed by redirecting anger inward, the loss of sleep
futher taxes their strength.
As their energy is drained, less is available to
invest in the outside world, so their attention becomes
focused increasingly inward. The world then gives them
little in response. They cannot be bothered playing with
their children, so they feel like bad parents. They
can't pay attention to the movie tey have been taken to,
so they feel even more depressed by comparison to others.
They cannot enjoy a good day; they feel that there is
something wrong with them, and turn inward even more,
wishing it would rain to fit their mood or that there
would be an earthquake to swallow them up."
"...Suicidal thinking surfaces as a form of mental
self-punishment. Such thoughts sometimes become pre-
occupying as a way to escape the pain. At such times,
when financial reverses hit hard, the loss of a spouse
in the twilight years leaves them feeling abandoned,
or the pain and hopelessness of chronic illness dis-
heartens them, severely depressed people can become
motivated to act on the thought, but often they lack
the energy to carry it off.
Suicidal thinking is part of the guilt process,
and often just expressing the feelings behind it
relieves the pressure spawning it.
Souce: "Emotionally Free" -- Letting Go of the
Past to Live in the Moment
By David Visott, M.D.
August 17/01 Dental Phobia
This page is © 1996-2016 A.J. Mahari & was last up-dated January 2, 2016
