Thoughts On Depression

Clients sometimes call me regarding their own, or a loved one’s depression. Of course, I am not a medical practitioner and as a matter of course I always recommend that the caller seeks professional advice. However, a psychic reading can sometimes help the customer to unmask what might lie beneath their ‘blues’ from a spiritual perspective.

Lately, one cannot help but notice the media attention that mental health issues are being given here in Europe. Companies here are encouraged, for example, to acknowledge the mental health issues of their staff. The topic also receives much attention in the media, even with the help of celebrities and royalty.

When I was very young, people I knew and cared about experienced mental breakdowns and were taken off to ‘that place.’ That place being an institution of sorts, or a hospital with a dedicated wing for mental health sufferers. My father suffered physical ill health much of his life, partly due to a tropical disease he contracted overseas at the tail end of the Second World War. But he also admitted that much of his illness was of his own doing, due to substance abuse. Yet, towards the end of his life, when he was experiencing intense pain with cancer, he related how, in hindsight, the most painful illness he’d ever experienced was his nervous breakdown in his early forties.

Sometimes I just think depression’s one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it ~ Ned Vizzini

Today, people suffering from mental health issues are being offered lifelines in the form of societies who support the sufferer when they are at a loss as to what to do to alleviate their internal pain, unlike in the past when such deeper lonely suffering was a shameful, secret affair.

Many years ago, I had done my own research when my father told of his own mental torture. I had kept some of my own notes in a journal. Recent focus on mental health issues led me to dig out these ancient notes. These notes in my journal refer to depression of a traceable source in someone’s life, and not depressive illness due to chemical imbalance or personality disorder, which requires specialist medical attention.

If one breaks down the word ‘depression’, there is the prefix de, plus the main word press, plus the suffix, ion.

The prefix de- means the ‘ridding of, undoing of, or reversing of.’ The word press means to ‘urge onwards.’ The suffix -ion means ‘the process of.’ Simply put, when we feel depressed we have basically lost our drive to move forward,  we’ve lost our ‘mojo.’ It can feel like we have a hole in our soul when we go into that dark place.

Depression can set in for those who have looked forward to retirement, only to find themselves wandering around their homes aimlessly, because they feel they no longer have a purpose in life. This doesn’t apply to all retirees, because many taper off their workload gradually, or shift to working part-time. Some even find there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things they didn’t have time for before.

Some students feel an anti-climax when they finally graduate, and the buzz of what they have known for so long, together with so many other students, suddenly comes to a halt. The loss of a job, as well as divorce, is also known to send people into a bout of depression.

It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling ~ J.K. Rowling

In hindsight though, I have heard many people say that the loss they went through, either with their marriage ending, or because of a job loss, has opened up new doors and helped them gain a sense of independence. Perhaps extreme change has even prompted them to start their own business, which would never have happened had things stayed as they were.

Then, of course there is depression after the death of a loved one and we all handle this differently.

Once I read somewhere that depression is ‘anger turned inside out,’ and that anger itself can be temporarily empowering. It is human to have moods of anger and depression, but at times we can get lost in depression, and anger can turn into destructive aggression.

I have been fortunate to only experience small bouts of depression over the years, and when it does set in, it usually passes fairly quickly. I always tell myself that ‘this too shall pass’ and it does. I have a plan for when the blues pass, and try to view these ‘troubled moments’ as an opportunity in which to ponder where negativity has accumulated, and to see that I am being given a chance for it to be acknowledged and released.

Often, I have been a sponge for the negativity of others, and even psychic attack, because I was vulnerable to it at the time. Then, I realize that it’s time to take stock of the positive aspects in my life and to acknowledge my own strengths and achievements. I try not to blame others, or condemn myself… for what is done, is done. I assess the positives in my life and apply the ‘attitude of gratitude’ my Alcoholics Anonymous mentor reminded me of constantly.