You have to face these issues before you begin what is the subject matter of Section Three, The Journey Out of the Prison of Depression.
Here I tell you what the Expert’s Secret is, and what preparations you need to make for the journey. Since at some time when you are depressed you will think of suicide, I have presented my argument that suicide is not a solution. I list some of the things you will need to find on your journey, and, since loneliness is such a problem, I give some suggestions as to how you might leave it behind. Before reaching journey’s end, I show how some people have helped one another and tried out something new.
The key to the prison of depression is the discovery that you are not the bad, worthless, unacceptable person you thought you were, but that you, with all your strengths and weaknesses and peculiarities, are a person you can love and accept wholeheartedly. This discovery sometimes comes like a flash of blinding light, but more frequently it comes slowly, through a process of understanding which we can undertake like a journey, preparing for it beforehand, and then making sure that we visit certain places along the way. As with all such journeys in search of wisdom and understanding, we realize when we reach our goal that what we sought was in our possession all the time.
As you read this book you might at different points exclaim, ‘Aha!’, or think, ‘I wonder how that applies to me?’ It is a good idea to make a note of the Aha! experiences in case you forget. Sometimes, underlining the passages in the book is not enough, especially if you want to comment and the margins are not wide enough. So you might like to use a separate notebook where you can put your Ahas!, as well as do any of the Discovery exercises I suggest as ways of answering the question, ‘I wonder how that applies to me?’
These exercises I have put in Section Four, Discoveries. Whenever in the first three sections it might be useful to do a relevant Discovery exercise I have marked this with the letter D and the number of the exercise.
The Discovery exercises are NOT compulsory, and there are no right answers except those which are right for you.
Occasionally, in the first three sections, I refer to what might be called technical matters, things which you might like to know more about. So, in Section Five, there is a series of Technical Footnotes. You might want to dip into these while reading the main part of the book.
Thus, if you want to know more about the research and arguments about the biology of depression, this is presented in Section Five under ‘Is Depression a Physical Illnees?’ Whether or not to use antidepressant or tranquillizing drugs is discussed in Drags – Friend or Foe?’ Since, try as I might to write only in ordinary, everyday language, I sometimes have to use the jargon of psychiatry and psychology, the glossary, Technical Terms – Keys to the Jargon’, gives the definitions of these words. Whether or not to seek the help of a therapist and, if so, how can you tell if someone is a good therapist are questions which I have attempted to answer in ‘Choosing a Therapist’.
All too often in life we neglect to take proper account of the stuff of our heart, our own inner truth. All too often other people tell us that our own inner truth is wrong, crazy, unacceptable. If you are depressed, perhaps some people have silenced you by saying, That’s not you speaking. It’s your illness’. To be silenced in this way is the utmost cruelty. Jill Tweedie, novelist and journalist, once wrote:
Ex-depressive as I am, with only the occasional lapse, I cannot dismiss the idea that the vision of life seen in depression has the truth in it, the bare-boned skeletal truth, and an intrinsic part of depression is knowing this and being told that it is not so. Reality, however terrible, is bearable if others allow its reality. When they refuse you that, when they skip around you pretending you’ve got it wrong, that’s rock-bottom time.12
Somehow, if we can face ‘the bare-boned, skeletal truth’ we can find the courage to go on with our lives. We can find that courage because, as the ordinary people that we are, we are brave. We know that life is full of uncertainty, not just the uncertainty we all face in terms of nuclear war, or of the destruction of the ecological balance of the planet, or of huge national debts, or of terrorism, or of Aids, but the uncertainties we each face in our own way: ‘Will the firm I work for go bust?’ ‘Will my child get to school safely?’ ‘Is the lump in my groin cancer?’ ‘How will I manage if my husband dies?’ We each have to live with our own uncertainties.
We are brave in the way we keep on going. We get up and go to work, no matter that our work is dull and unrewarding or demanding and stressful. We go on cleaning, cooking and looking after our children, knowing that many of the things we would like for ourselves and our children are not going to come our way. We go on trying to make our children brave by telling them that they are wonderful and that the future is opening up before them full of promise. We try not to tell them that their future might be tough and miserable, even though we fear it may be so. We go on loving one another, even though we know that out of that love will come the terrible pain of separation and loss.
Sometimes we lose our nerve. Sometimes our courage falters, and then we feel great fear. This happens when we lose confidence in ourselves and we find that there is an unacceptable discrepancy between what we thought our life would be and what it actually is.
Such a discovery is made by just about all of us at some point in our lives. When it does, we feel an immense fear which threatens to overwhelm and annihilate us. One way of dealing with this fear is by locking ourselves in the prison of depression. In there we can shut out other disturbances and give ourselves time to think things through and so come to terms with the discrepancy between what our life is and what we want it to be.
For some of us, coming to terms with the discrepancy and building another life is not too difficult, and so our period of depression is brief. However, for others of us the task is much more difficult. So much more has been staked and lost, so much time and effort has been wasted, and so few alternatives for the future are on offer. Most of all, if you have grown up believing that you are bad and unacceptable and that you have to work hard to be good, then in the prison of depression you can doubt that you have the right to change your life and to claim something for yourself. Thus your sojourn in the prison of depression goes on, until you can discover in yourself that sense of intrinsic acceptance and worth with which you were born.
This is not an easy thing to do because you have been told so many confusing things, not just by psychiatrists, but in the past by your parents and teachers, and in the present by people who want you to be the sort of person they want you to be.
Many people, not just psychiatrists, want to believe that depression is a physical illness.
If you are depressed and believe that it is a physical illness you may be holding this belief because it allows you to be irresponsible – no matter what you do, you can say, ‘I cannot help what I do, I am ill’. Or perhaps you believe depression is a physical illness because you are trapped in an impossible situation and being depressed is the only form of escape that you can find. Or perhaps you have been brought up to believe that you must never question what anyone in a position of authority says, and so if psychiatrists, backed by the whole medical profession, say that depression is a physical illness, you believe them without question.
Many people want to believe that depression is a physical illness