As babies, we laughed when we were happy, cried when we were sad, and yelled when we were angry. As children, we had to give up being ourselves as we learned to hide our emotions. We had to learn not to laugh in the wrong places, to look cheerful no matter how sad we were, and to be calm and quiet no matter how frustrated and angry we were. Since our emotions are spontaneous, learning to inhibit them is tremendously difficult, and so we often failed. The phrase ‘being in touch with one’s emotions’ has become a cliché in therapy because all therapists, of whatever persuasion, recognize that for us to live happily and confidently with ourselves we have to recognize, correctly label, accept and appropriately express our emotions, which is a way of living very different from what we were taught as children.
Again, as small girls, we were shown that we had to give up much of that assertive, active part of ourselves so as to become ‘feminine’. We were told that if we were not feminine we would not be loved. As small boys we were shown that we had to give up much of that gentle, nurturing, artistic part of ourselves so as to become ‘masculine’. We were told that if we were not masculine we would be scorned.
All this sacrifice of ourselves would have been intolerable if we could not, in constructing our story, believe that sooner or later we would be rewarded for all our efforts to be good.
Having prepared our story, we then proceeded to live it. We had the plan. We simply tried to follow it.
Our story, as we live it, becomes the structure of our life. If we are lucky, our hopeful story and our actual life remain close together. We plan to marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after, and this is what we do. We plan to be rich and famous, and we achieve this.
So long as our story and our life go along together, we forget that our story is nothing more than some ideas in our head. We take it to be an order of the universe. We believe that there is an order in the universe, one of justice where the good are rewarded and the bad punished. We work hard at being good so as to avoid punishment, and we feel secure in a universal Grand Design of which we and our lives are a part.
If we are lucky, if we are very, very lucky, nothing happens to us to make us question our belief.
Few of us are so lucky. Over time, our story and our life diverge. This might be a gradual divergence, as we slowly discover, perhaps, how unsatisfactory Prince Charmings can be, or how riches and fame do not necessarily lead to happiness, or it might be a sudden divergence, caused by some loss, or death, or failure.
Whichever, once we see the divergence we realize that we have got things wrong. We see that our story is nothing but our imaginings, and that reality is something very different from what we thought it was.
We had gone around thinking that we were an individual in our own right, and we discover that we are not. We find that we are neglected, abused, and treated as an object of no importance.
We had gone around thinking that we had secure and loving relationships, and we discover that we are wrong. The people we love and rely on abandon, desert, reject, and betray us.
We had gone around thinking that other people relied on us, and we discover that they do not. The people we thought needed us show us that they do not need us, and the people we thought regarded us as indispensable show us that they can manage without us.
We had gone around thinking that we had organized a secure life for ourselves, and we discover that we have not. Our security is destroyed and our livelihood and possessions are swept away.
We had gone around thinking that we were succeeding in gaining our goals, and we discover that we have failed. We are shamed, humiliated and thrown into chaos.
We had gone around thinking that we were meeting all our responsibilities, and we find that we have not done what we ought to have done. We are overwhelmed by guilt.
(D 7) We had gone around thinking that we lived in a just world where our goodness would be rewarded, and we discover that no amount of goodness prevents disaster. We therefore feel betrayed, resentful, and terrified.
Such discoveries destroy the structure of our lives. Everything which we thought was solid and secure becomes fragile and ephemeral, even the structure we thought of as our self.
We are consumed by the greatest terror.
What can we do?
5 Constructing Our Prison of Depression
As Pat crouched on the edge of her bed, her heart thudding with fear, one thought kept repeating over and over, ‘I have wasted my life’.
That most precious thing, her life, had slipped from her fingers and had gone, and what lay ahead was nothing but emptiness and futility, a path she had to tread until she died. She cursed herself for being such a fool, for wasting her opportunities, for not acting differently, for not seeing what was happening.
‘I kept thinking next year, later, when this is over, then I’ll do something, I’ll achieve something – I must have thought I was going to live for ever, and now it is too late.’
As she lay on her bed, staring into the darkness, she saw scenes from her life in all the exquisitely painful clarity of memory.
There was Simon, coming towards her across a field. He was wearing a yellow shirt, and her heart leapt up at the sight of him and she was suffused in joy. That was the only time in my life I was happy,’ she thought. ‘I knew it was too good to be true. I was never happy again, and I never will be.’
Even her childhood had been unhappy. She saw herself at five, standing at the front door and holding a picture she had drawn, eager to show it to her father who was coming up the path. But he just pushed past her and went into the study and slammed the door.
She saw herself at seven, bringing her mother a cup of tea, and her mother saying absently, ‘Put it on the table’, and smiling down at the baby on her lap. Pat found herself burning with the same hatred she had felt then for her youngest sister, hatred which turned into bitter, previously unacknowledged. resentment for the sister who had offered no help when their parents were ill. She thought of all the effort she had expended in keeping in friendly contact with her sisters, and how they just took her for granted.
‘They never phone me,’ she thought. ‘I always have to phone them. Well, I’ve had enough. That’s the last they’ll hear from me. They didn’t even come to my wedding. They thought I was marrying beneath me.’
She remembered her wedding, a quiet affair, with her husband pale and shaky from a night’s hard drinking at his bachelor party. ‘All that drinking was supposed to be funny,’ and she remembered cleaning up after him and trying to prevent her son from seeing his father drunk. She remembered how she would tell herself that he was a war hero, and that if she was patient he would soon be all right and that she must try very hard not to upset him. Now she burned with anger and disgust, both for him and for herself, and she thought, ‘I’ll never forgive