One of the things I want to be sure to talk about in these spaces is depression. Most of us think of depression as something we feel from time to time, like when we have the blues, and we think it is not important or worth taking steps toward treating. Alternatively, we tend to think that depression is something that only other people get. There is a lot of denial around the levels of depression, which are extremely high in our modern world, for reasons we will understand later. Really, depression is a very, very common phenomenon, and the symptoms might actually astound you.

Depression is actually an umbrella concept, and includes several symptoms. It is diagnosed when a person has 5 or more of the following: feeling sad or empty or tearful, losing interest or pleasure in most of our activities, weight change (either weight gain or weight loss), changes in sleep patterns, such as sleeping much more or much less, feeling paralyzed or, alternatively, more anxious, feeling fatigued, worthless, guilty, having difficulty concentrating, and having recurrent thoughts about suicide. Sometimes people with entrenched depression know that what they are suffering from is called depression. They may even know how to handle it, how to emerge from the grips of the disorder, how to live with it.

But here I want to point out some of the lesser known symptoms of ordinary depression, the so-called dysthymic disorder, which many, many people suffer from. Often, we don’t know when we are depressed in this way, and this is the painful part. There is such a stigma associated with depression that many people are not open to acknowledging that depression might be the problem. We are so hard on ourselves that we view depression as some sort of moral failure, and we beat ourselves up for being depressed in the first place. I believe that many of us have been brought up to view weakness, vulnerability and sensitivity as failures. So when we are hurting, we hurt doubly, because on top of our pain, we have our own harsh judgements about how weak/wrong we are to feel that pain in the first place.

How often do you ask someone how they are, and are told “fine” when you KNOW things are not fine? How often do you treat yourself with harsh retorts, admonishing yourself to “get over it”, or “pull yourself together” rather than feel what you are feeling? I agree that there are times when it is appropriate to not dwell on the negative, or to let go of minor upsets and focus on the positive. I do not dispute that. What I am talking about is the self violence that we perpetrate when we refuse to allow ourselves our own responses to the pains of our lives. For example, the incest survivor who tells herself that it wasn’t so bad, she really is ok, while she lives a desperate and unhappy life. Or the gay man who hides his feelings of inadequacy and shame, caused by the cruelty of childhood schoolmates and rejection by his father, by drinking and seeking male companionship through anonymous sexual contacts on dark streets. Or the bulimic woman who does not acknowledge her depression, but instead compulsively eats and purges whenever she feels confronted, or whenever anger threatens to break through. How much easier it would be if we could simply say, with no judgements, “I hurt.” Even if we could say it only to ourselves, we start to undo the cycle of violence towards ourselves that tells us to get it together. One thing is certain, ALL FEELINGS ARE LEGITIMATE. If you are sad, or hurting, or angry, or despondent...there is a reason for that. You deserve to know that reason, and it is virtually guaranteed that once you begin the exploration, you can expect to feel better. If  you tell yourself, or if someone tells you “You shouldn’t feel that way,” that person is doing you a disservice. The more appropriate response would be, “Why do you think you feel that way,” or “What is going on that you feel that way?”

One explanation of depression is that it is the squelching of feelings. If you are trying to live your life while you have feelings bottled up inside of you, be it anger, sadness, fear, jealousy, grief, WHATEVER, you can expect to be depressed. There is a big difference between depression and sadness..people who start to work through depression and start to feel real sadness say that the sadness, though it hurts, feels good in a funny way. This is because the truth is always liberating, even if it is sad, or even if it hurts.

Depression is also thought of as anger turned inward, and this is often the case. Scratch your depression and you might be amazed at the fact that you are angry. A good experiment to try is the following. The next time you feel depressed. Ask yourself, “If I were angry at someone (not myself), who would it be?” And just let the response arise. There are many reasons why anger gets turned against the self. Most of us were not allowed to express our anger when we were growing up. Few of our parents actually said,” Yes, dear, I see how angry you are! Tell me all about it!!” Right? So we were messaged that anger is NOT ok, and that it would result in love being denied us. Our loved one would usually either retaliate (get angry back at us: as in “I’ll give you something to cry about!”) or collapse (get sick, cry, attempt suicide, in one case I know of). We learned certain things about handling anger, including not to express it directly. Over time, we learned to forget what we were angry about, and we even learned to forget how to feel angry, at all! But guess what, instead we discovered we were depressed.

Work on your anger, assertiveness and power, and you will find yourself less depressed. Sometimes, anger is a symptom of depression. If you are very sensitive, if your feelings are easily hurt, if you lose your temper easily, chances are you have an underlying depression. Depression can be masked by anger, jumpiness, sensitivity, easily hurt feelings; it can be covered over by compulsive activities, addictions to alcohol, drugs, work, food, or any other substance or activity, or other sorts of compensations. The truth is, sometimes it is very hard to acknowledge that we are depressed.

Another explanation of depression is that it is the result of feelings of inadequacy, a deep state of empty depletion. In this case, depression is referred to as an “empty, depleted depression.” Not all depressions are paralyzing, or are characterized by lethargy. Some people become quite worked up, anxious, agitated or upset when they are depressed, and in that case it is called an agitated depression.. It is thought that depressions of this sort are the result of narcissistic depletion, that is, they are caused by deep feelings of inadequacy, failure, being a loser, not good enough, broken, etc. Most survivors of childhood trauma suffer from these deep beliefs. Even without childhood trauma, you might have a deep self-image of this sort. In either case, the beliefs come from childhood experiences which failed to validate us when we were forming our self concepts. For the most part, I am referring to a lack of mirroring, that is, the validation by a parental figure of the child’s subjective experience. We all needed mirroring when we were becoming ourselves, we all needed to see a “gleam in our mother’s or father’s eye” which would communicate to us that we were loved, approved of, that we were OK. We might tell ourselves in our heads that we know they loved us, but if we did not have the gut experience that they thought we were ok, we will feel inadequate somewhere inside. So a failure of mirroring causes depression. And a failure of mirroring in the present also causes depression.

We all need mirroring, throughout all our lives. A woman whose husband does not notice her and does not care what she does with her time will of course be depressed! A person living alone in a new city with no one to talk to about his day may very understandably feel depressed! We are social beings and our inner realities are formed through social interactions. We need others to feel adequate, on a deep inner level! (Until we become enlightened, that is). And social support is one of the best ways to emerge from depression. Find someone to talk to, any one person who is a good listener can help you. Write letters to someone; speak at a 12-step meeting, join a free support group. These are tools for depression management which may make more sense to you now.

Other good ideas are to get exercise, this is because exercise helps generate the bodies own endorphin, which make us feel better. And exercise allows the discharge of anger...there is nothing like punching a bag, or hitting a golf ball, or swinging a bat to get aggressive feelings out of the body. Even digging in the garden allows discharge, or baking bread! Of course, therapy can be very useful, and medications can open up entire new vistas for people with lifelong histories of depression. The new generation of antidepressant medications can afford relief like nothing ever has before. If you suffer from depression, or from any of the symptoms we have talked about in here, if you see yourself on these pages, remember, you do not have to suffer in silence any more.