A Dialogue with Depression: Heart/Mind Disconnect

By Om Devi

She couldnt stop it. She watched and she begged, and she got frustrated and angry; she demanded and sought support, but she couldnt stop it. She was a witness to the downward spiral, but she was helpless. But if she couldnt stop it, would it be enough to understand it?

In A Dialogue with Depression, author Om Devi shares the journey through her husbands struggle with clinical depression. It is an expression of her discovered wisdom over the years of a deep emotional acknowledgement of the illness that had surrounded her. With biography and through stream of consciousness to express her observations of herself and her husband, Om Devi uses text messages, letters, diagnoses, poems, thoughts, and research to convey and illuminate the lived experience of depression.

Understanding clinical depression can help others have more awareness and compassion for those who suffer from the disease of clinical depression. Although Om Devi couldnt stop it or fix her husband, she learned how to understand and forgive herselfand how to share and listen with love and compassion so that we all can hear and heal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532028915

Om Devi

Om Devi is a published author and artist who lived with her husband’s illness for over thirty-seven years. She shares her initial misunderstandings in A Dialogue with Depression, and she has learned how depression is not something someone else can fix. Although depression ultimately claimed her husband’s life, Devi shares her story in the hope that others can better understand and cope with clinical depression.

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Copyright © 2017 Om Devi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2890-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2892-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2891-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911356

iUniverse rev. date: 09/14/2017

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Trying to Understand … Not Understanding

Psychologist’s Notes and My Comments

Letters to my Husband

Here is a Series of Thoughts Written Down

Text and Phone Communications

Trying to Understand This Illness

Eastern and Western Medical Explanations for Clinical Depression

Improving Communication

The Questions for the Living

Facts, Not Fiction

And This Is Not the End

A Dialogue with Depression

or

Heart/Mind Disconnect

It is unusual that one finds a title first,

but as thoughts flow outward,

feelings are condensed.

Now it is time to make sense of events past, present, and future.

Om Devi copyright 2017

Preface

a dialogue with depression took many years to come into being.

Throughout the years I wrote down many thoughts since I had no one to share my feelings with about my crumbling relationship with my husband. I finally realized I was part of a repetitive story and wanted to change it.

I realized that others might also get some use from these offerings. We are not alone in our sufferings. We need support.

We watch tides rise up on both sides of us. Here in the middle, with hope, perseverance, and determination, we fight to survive until the end. Here we can accept loss and move on or perish mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

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In compassionate memory of a husband

who did.

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Introduction

I grew up in a middle-class family. My mother was always right with no room for discussion. I think this was a cover for insecurity and possibly the beginning of depression. My father was always working and on the road. As it turned out, he also had lady friends on his journeys. After this discovery, years later, my mother was very angry and developed clinical depression.

This was the household I grew up in. I was always trying to make things better for both my parents but never succeeded. After all, I was only a child.

School became important to me, partially as an escape from family. In third grade, I had three amazing teachers who inspired me to become a teacher after I had something to teach. (Yoga and art history were my two gigs.)

In middle school, there was another great teacher who inspired me to write.

In high school, I felt more stifled. Much memorization was needed, and I really had to study to understand why and retain information.

I was determined to succeed in my studies at college. I discovered art history and photography, which became my passions. Photography became my profession.

As a woman was trained in those days, love was far more important than a career, so I got married and moved to be with the man I loved. Because I was in love, my husband’s career came first. I accepted this at some level. I worked in photography