Depression Doesn't Always Have to Be Depressing

By James R. Holmes

Depression Doesn’t Always Have to Be Depressing is based primarily on the experiences Dr. James R. Holmes, PhD, shared with clients in the 45 years he served as therapist and coach for courageous people who have struggled with being depressed. It is also based on a framework of concepts known as Descriptive Psychology developed by Peter Ossorio and his colleagues. Descriptive Psychology helped him make sense out of how and why a person becomes depressed. He came to understand that, within the context of their lives, all depressed persons have good reasons to become depressed.

Therefore, this book will help you make sense out of why you become depressed. It will help you understand how your actions and feelings, or more often the lack of them, make sense when you are depressed. It will also help you make the kinds of changes you need to make in order to find your way out of that pit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483508818

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

Why Another Book on Depression?

I have written this book for three reasons:

1. Previous books on depression do not provide a clear or coherent description of what depression is and what to do about it. To help remedy that, I show you a clear and concise way to understand why you get depressed, as well as provide you with tools that can increase your personal power in dealing with being depressed. Although it is hard to believe, you eventually will probably stop being depressed on your own—whether or not you receive any sort of medical or psychological treatment. On the other hand, when you are in the pit of depression you may not be able to function very well, and your life can be hell. Because you don’t want to stay there any longer than necessary, making use of these concepts and tools can help you find your way out much more quickly.

This book is based primarily on the experiences I’ve shared with clients in the more than 45 years I’ve served as therapist and coach with courageous people like you who have struggled with being depressed. It is also based on a framework of concepts known as Descriptive Psychology (Ossorio, 2006) developed by Peter Ossorio and his colleagues. Descriptive Psychology helped me make sense out of how and why a person becomes depressed. In the context of that person’s life, I could see that he had good reason to become depressed, and I realized that, if I were in the same situation, I might well have been just as depressed.

In fact, I have discovered that many people are depressed but do not recognize it. Also, even when they know they are depressed, most people have little understanding of how or why they became depressed. Usually, they are told, and tend to believe, they are either weak or irrational or there is something wrong with their brain. In general, when I showed my clients how it made sense for them to be depressed, and when I shared with them a new way of understanding what is involved in dealing with depression, they usually became less depressed and began to move toward changing their place in the world. As I began to show them how they made sense and how courageous and effective they had been in dealing with their lives, they began to view themselves and their lives with greater respect. They would often say things like, I make so much sense when you describe me and my life. For the first time ever, my whole life starts to make sense!

2. The second reason for writing this book is that, in recent years, I have observed that more and more depressed people are being coerced into too great a reliance on antidepressant drugs. Many mental health professionals have come to believe that medication is the primary, if not the only, treatment for depression. People suffering from depression often do not understand why they are depressed and may, as a result, feel helpless and desperate in the face of the overwhelming and paralyzing effects of being depressed. Understandably, most people in this situation will accept any help that seems to offer relief, especially when so many drug company advertisements and mental health professionals tell them that medication is the best means to deal with being depressed. I plan, through this book, to show you a more coherent way to understand and deal with what is involved in depression.

3. Finally, this book is an attempt to add to the understanding and competence of both clients and their therapists in finding a way out of the hopelessness and despair of depression. There may be times when you run into roadblocks or obstacles that you cannot seem to get through or overcome. At such times, you will want to consult with a coach or a psychotherapist who will agree to share what you have learned in this book. The concepts and tools you and your therapist discover here can help you find your path out of what seems like a bottomless pit.

The Bottomless Pit

When you are severely depressed, it is like you are in a black hole with no light, a place where you cannot care about much and cannot do much of anything.

I open my eyes and think, God, why did I have to wake up? It would be better if I never woke up again! I can’t face another day. Everything around me is an empty void. There is nothing I care about. My whole life is empty and hopeless. Even when the sun is out, everything around me is gloomy and dull gray. It is like there is a huge weight holding me down. Even the thought of getting out of bed is overwhelming. I feel like I am in a black, bottomless pit, and there is no way out.

I am a worthless pile of crap. I cannot stand myself. My whole life is one disappointment or failure after another. I don’t fit in anywhere. There is no place for me in the world. Nothing matters, and I cannot find a reason to do anything. It seems like it will never go away. I can’t remember a time when it was different.

As the day wears on, I realize I have been staring out the window for hours, not feeling much, not thinking about much. Everything is pointless and hopeless.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking there is only one way out of this pit. I think of my car as a way to end it. I look at the rafters in the garage and think of tying a rope to one and stepping off a ladder. I think of cutting myself. At least that will stop the pain for a while. I wonder if the pills in the bathroom will work. I try to stop these thoughts, but they don’t go away. I don’t want to die. I just want the black despair to go away. I feel so hopeless. Even if I feel better for a while, I know it will come back again. I can’t go on like this....

If you have ever been depressed, you know what it is like to be in this kind of bottomless pit. The gloom and despair you feel hides any potential way out. When you are severely depressed, your life sucks and you may start to consider suicide. You probably do not really want to die, but it seems impossible and intolerable to go on with your life as it is. If you could find a way to change it, you would. If you could find a way out, you would not be depressed. As it is now, a dark cloud just seems to come over you, and you feel unable to make it go away. It seems like you are in an impossible place, and you are overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness.

I have written this book to serve as your personal guide in finding your individual path out of the bottomless pit of depression. However, this is not a typical how-to book that provides a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. Being depressed is not that kind of problem. There is no single solution that everyone can use in dealing with being depressed. Getting out of a depressed state is a matter of finding your individual path in your own time.

Your reasons for being depressed are unique to you. You start at a different place from every other person. Your circumstances and history are unique, and the dramatic patterns in your life are different from the patterns that make up the lives of other people. As a result, the changes you make and the path you take are likely to be quite different from the paths that others take. Because each person’s path is uncertain, there is no way to predict the specific kinds of problems you will encounter along the way. Consequently, there is no way to draw a map for all to follow and no way to provide specific step-by-step techniques for finding your way out of what seems like a bottomless pit. Finding your way out is not just a matter of changing your behavior or changing how you think about your feelings. It is more a matter of changing your place in the dramas that make up your life and of developing a new and more viable place for yourself in the drama that you live for the rest of your life.

In addition, when others suggest there is, or should be, a quick solution or a simple set of techniques you can use to stop being depressed, they, in essence, trivialize what is going on in your life when you are in a depressed state. While in that state, you often deal with questions about whether your life has meaning and is worth living. At times, you may even struggle to find a reason to keep on living for a few more days or even a few hours. You may not be able to imagine your life being anything more than a living hell. When your life sucks, it often seems things have always been that way for you, and it doesn’t look like they will ever change.

You may well have found yourself being depressed about being depressed. In fact, one of the worst things people describe about being depressed is that depression itself is depressing. If you are in a place where nothing seems to matter, a place where you see yourself as being worthless, you cannot enjoy much of anything. Would that not make you even more depressed and contribute to a downward spiral of becoming more and more depressed? It is, in fact, depressing as hell to be depressed, to feel that things will never change. Even talking about being depressed can be pretty depressing. Living through it, however, is a real downer.

All of this makes it very difficult for you to find a reason to keep on trying. You may not want to die, but you often cannot imagine going on living with the way things are in your life. Even if you think of suicide, you cannot imagine killing yourself either—because you think it is a mortal sin or because you do not want to hurt or to abandon your children, parents, spouse, or others who depend on you. These are not trivial or easily resolved dilemmas. Therefore, to be told that all you need to do is take a pill or change how you think is degrading and insulting.

What you need to know, whether you can see it now or not, is that it has taken great courage and strength on your part to survive the trauma and to continue living your life. For example, if your father and/or mother have sexually or physically abused you, you probably have spent many years living on the outside, looking in on a world where you did not seem to fit. It has taken great courage to find a reason to go on living in that kind of world.

The question, of course, is this: How do you continue to deal with a world in which these kinds of traumatic things happen? After all, although you may find ways to outgrow them, there are some losses that you do not just get over. I do not mean to suggest in any way that the task is hopeless. You can, and you will, find your way out of depression. But, I want to let you know that getting over being depressed is not just a matter of finding a general recipe or following a few simple steps. Your way out of depression takes more than that, and it starts with an understanding of why, in your circumstances, it makes sense to be depressed.

You Make Sense

You are a person, and as such, you make sense, and what you do makes sense.

You might doubt this description of you and your actions because you are thinking: Well I don’t think I make much sense when I am depressed and cannot do anything but stare at the wall.

You probably would not be reading this book if you understood what is going on with you and felt satisfied with what you were doing about it. In this book, my job will be to show you how you make sense and how it makes sense for you to be depressed. More to the point, it will be my job to show you what you can do about being depressed and what you can do to make it less likely that you will become depressed in the future.

Most current theories of depression basically claim that you become depressed either because you have unconscious motivational conflicts (Freud, 1917/1958) or because you engage in irrational thinking (Beck, Rush & Emery, 1987). Over the past 40 years, many mental health professionals have also come to believe that you become depressed because of one or more types of imbalances in your brain chemistry (Kirsch, I., 2010). In general, then, depression is explained as being the result of irrational motives, irrational thoughts, or defects in your brain. In this book, I provide an alternative to the theories of depression that say you are depressed because of such irrational behaviors or because of chemical imbalances that require medication for the rest of your life.

As you read further, you will learn that, while you can make mistakes in how you think about things, and while you may not always understand your reasons for doing what you do, your reasons for becoming depressed make sense. You will also learn that both what you do and do not do when you are depressed make sense as understandable reactions to your circumstances. Most importantly, you will learn a lot about how to find your way out of that black hole of depression.

Summary: Introduction

More specifically, I have written this book to:

Help you understand and make sense out of why you become depressed.

Illustrate how your actions and feelings, or the lack of them, make sense when you are depressed.

Help you understand why it is so difficult to stop being depressed and why you can repeatedly fall back into the pit of despair.

Illustrate how it makes sense for you to become depressed even when there is no observable change in your life or even when good things happen.

Help you make the kinds of changes you will need to make in order to find your way out of that pit.

CHAPTER ONE

Why Do I Get Depressed?

The best way to start to answer the question of why you get depressed is to begin with an easily understandable example of severe depression. It involves a terrible tragedy that a young man shared with me some years ago. Steve (*see note on copyright page) came to see me because his family insisted that he see someone. His brother had to almost carry him into the office. He looked as if he could barely move. Steve had suffered a terrible loss two months earlier when his wife and only child were killed in an auto accident during a shopping trip to purchase his Christmas present. His story and the losses he described seemed overwhelming even to me. At first, I felt helpless and at a loss for what to say or do. His personal drama provides a clear-cut and easily understood example of depression. Fortunately, most of us will probably not experience this kind of terrible loss, but if anyone ever had a reason to be depressed, it was Steve.

When Steve’s wife and child died, he suffered a sudden, massive, and unexpected loss. All of the possible things he dreamed of and could have done in the future with his wife and child were gone. All of the joy and hope for both the present and the future went out of his life. In the instant that he learned of their deaths, his world was altered forever.

Steve said, When Joan and Betsy were killed, my whole life was over. There was, and still is, little if any reason for me to go on living. Nothing matters, and there is no reason to do anything. I do not have the energy to get out of bed. For the last two months, I haven’t changed clothes unless somebody’s made me get up. At night, I sleep very little. I am terrified of what happens when I sleep. I wake up and forget for a minute that they are gone and think that it must all have been a nightmare. Then, I realize that there is no one lying next to me and the nightmare" is real. It is like I have to relive losing them over and over again.

I just want to shut it out and do nothing but crawl into a hole to avoid the horror and the utter despair of life without them. On most days, I just sit and stare at the walls. There is nothing left that matters and no reason to do anything…

You can easily see that Steve had every reason to see his world as a void. It would be hard to imagine how anyone would not be depressed in Steve’s situation. I am sure that just the thought of such a loss would be as overwhelming for you as it was for me. In talking with Steve, I often wondered how I could possibly be helpful to him.

Because his losses are so obvious, Steve provides us with an easily understandable and full-blown case of depression. Although we are not surprised at Steve’s reactions, it may be less obvious as to exactly how the loss of relationships like those he lost are related to becoming depressed. The following questions may help us understand:

Can we clearly state what it was about Steve’s loss that resulted in his becoming depressed?

What sort of logical connection is there between losing a relationship and becoming depressed?

Why do we become depressed as a result of some losses and not others?

Relationships Provide You With Reasons and Opportunities to Do Things

Taking a closer look at what changed for Steve when he lost his wife and child will help us begin to answer the questions we have just raised. Clearly, Steve lost the two most important relationships in his life. Therefore, one place to look for the answers is to explore the part that relationships play in our lives. Your relationship to a person is your place or position with regard to that person. In your everyday life, much of what you do and many of the reasons for doing what you do are expressions of your relationships. Your relationships may include a spouse, a child, a good friend, a person you dislike, a trusty dog, a reliable car, an ex-wife, a church, your God, an enemy, and so forth. These relationships provide you with the reasons and opportunities for doing the things that you do.

For example, if a good friend you haven’t seen in a year comes to town, you may have both opportunities and reasons to do a number of things. You may plan a special dinner, have a party, stay up way past your bedtime catching up with each other, and spend as much time as you can with your friend. The fact that the person is a good friend, as well as the fact that the friend has come to town, gives you reasons and opportunities to do things with your friend. The things you do with your friend are ways to express your friendship.

Ordinarily, your relationships with your spouse and children make up a major part of your life. You might have a job whether or not you have a spouse or a child. However, once you are a husband and a father, much of the meaning and significance you find in going to work is due to the fact you love your family and want to provide for them. In fact, if you have loved ones such as a wife and daughter or a husband and son, a major part of the reason for doing all, or most, of the things you do is that you love them and want to care for them.

Going to the grocery store, cooking dinner, mowing the grass, planning a vacation, renting a movie, and coming home at night are all things you do that have a special significance for you because they are expressions of your relationships to those you love. Why else would you cook every night of the week, go to boring PTA meetings, teach teenagers to drive, or clean a bathroom that other people left in a mess? If you suddenly lost those relationships, your life would become empty. There would be little left that meant anything to you. All of the things that you normally do would mean much less to you, and you would have a hard time caring about any of them. In other words, your relationships provide you with reasons and opportunities for doing the things you do. In principle and in fact, if you had no relationships to anyone or anything, you would have no reason to do anything. You would quit living in any meaningful way.

Your Status Includes All of Your Relationships

In losing his family, Steve suffered a sudden, massive, and unexpected loss of status that was not his fault, and there was nothing he could do about the loss. Not only had Steve lost the current possibilities with his wife and daughter, he had also lost all of the future possibilities that he might have had to do things with them and for them. He had lost the possibility of having other children with his wife, of watching his daughter grow up, of going on vacations, and of pursuing future dreams with his family. Because his relationships made up a major part of Steve’s world, they provided the most important reasons for what he did in his life. Losing those relationships meant that he had lost a major part of his place or status. His life and his status, defined as his position in the world, was drastically different from what it had been before the accident. In a very real way, he had lost