Deep autumn is a classic time of year for the pea soup of depression to hit. In the Pacific Northwest, the rains kick in as the sun becomes a fleeting memory, and all the things we’ve been running from for months begin to creep forward into our consciousness, pushing for triggering and release. If we haven’t “cleaned house” in awhile, these ghosts emerging from the depths of our closets have the ability to overwhelm us - and in so doing we become, like our backyards, heavy and laden with muck, mist and bog, and we find we can’t move as easily.
Most of us know what real depression looks and feels like. Even if we haven’t experienced a depressive period ourselves, we probably each know or have heard about somebody who has, and how they were during it. Depression is rife with a feeling that there is no way to get out from under, that nothing can work. It’s a time where we look at all of life through shit-coloured glasses. There’s no energy to do the things we like to do or have to do. The life force drained out, we vegetate, flatline, feel squashed and compressed. We can’t feel. We indulge in distractions and addictions of various kinds. We are uncomfortably numb.
The central theme of depression, if it could be described in one word, is hopelessness. It’s very uncomfortable for the loved ones of a depressed individual (DI) to be around him or her, and the kneejerk tendency is to help them lift out of it any way possible. They try to distract the DI from what ails them (should that even be evident), point out how so-and-so from Iraq has it worse so buck up, become an ad hoc salesperson for the latest miracle pharmaceutical or toss a few hope ropes in case the DI has the strength or ability to grab one and hoist themselves up.
Realistically, there’s nothing a friend of a DI can do that’s more effective than staying close by while the DI muddles through as best s/he can, ready to lend a helping hand when asked. For the DI, it’s a time to find as many mental judgments about his/her situation that can be found, and then formally release them out loud (e.g. “I release the judgment that I am never going to have the life I want,” etc). Sometimes doing this can trigger the tears, rages or freakouts that can dispel the heavy fog.
Whenever I am depressed, what also helps me find my way through is getting into my body. If I can walk a little, do some deep breathing, yoga, Somatics, anything to help me focus inward – it can enable me to get some sound expression happening, which always helps shift me when nothing is moving. It’s said that the less we do, the less we want to do, a vicious cycle. Inertia begets depression begets more inertia. Distraction and medication can be very short term solutions that in the end reveal themselves as circular train trips returning us to the very station we try to escape.
Hating or pressuring ourselves to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps doesn’t work either, it’s another circumnavigation. Sometimes nothing at all works. The best we can do is sit for awhile in the low vibration of hopelessness with what is happening or not happening, accepting ourselves as best we can for being in this place, trusting on the way to trust that this too shall pass.