Mind Moves:Over the past few weeks I have been with friends and loved ones who have confided in me that they were feeling very depressed.
Easy to say it was perhaps the company they were in (and there were indeed moments when I considered this). But, in fact, their state of mind reflected different stresses in each of their lives, which had been bearing down on them for some time and which were now pushing them into a lonely despair.
I don't feel I am much help to close friends when they are in great pain. I seem to lose whatever objectivity is needed to bring understanding and solutions to the conundrums they face. But I was touched very deeply by their openness with me.
And I have been reflecting ever since on what might be helpful to myself or anyone else when depression hits. Because I believe it is unavoidable for humans to experience depression at times, that it is part of our condition. If I have learned anything about people it is that we are all a great deal more fragile than we might ever admit. And that we are also a lot more resilient than we realise.
Depression is what we experience when we can no longer feel any goodness or vitality in our lives. I lose touch with the meaning and purpose my life holds and I feel an oppressive weight that immobilises my capacity to act. I become stuck, like a fly to flypaper, and any thing I do can require a huge effort or will.
It may seem easier to remain still as every effort I make produces pain in my body. My spirit feels exhausted and it becomes very tempting to give up and to allow myself sink deeper and deeper into despair.
This experience is so at odds with how I believe I should feel that I start to attack myself for being "weak" and "pathetic". Self-blame can turn a sense of sorrow and defeat into a bitter feeling of resentment towards myself and towards the world. I blame myself for being basically bad, I blame my family for not giving me enough love, I blame friends for letting me down, I blame God for the way my life has turned out.
Initially, I hear myself saying these things and I realise that my thoughts are nothing more than an inner rant. They are my protest against fate for the way I feel. They represent a furious attempt to try to pull myself out of the blackness that is closing in on me. The irony is that as I indulge these negative ruminations, I dig myself deeper into the very hole from which I am trying desperately to get free.
There are two key elements in our experience of depression that we need to be aware of if we are to begin to work with the experience effectively: A sadness that stems from something unresolved in our lives and a belief that we are basically weak or bad to feel this way.
When we become convinced that our depression is proof that we have brought this pain upon ourselves, it becomes very hard to open ourselves to our pain and to appreciate what these feelings may be trying to tell us about our lives. So we turn away from our pain. We try to shut out our feelings in any way we can until we feel "comfortably numb". And that's when depression really sets in.
The very first action required to help us to begin to draw ourselves back from the edge of depression is, I believe, to forgive yourself for feeling the way you do. When you find yourself suddenly feeling exhausted and down, it doesn't really matter what it is that has provoked this crisis.
What's important is that you find a way of relating to your mood with some degree of kindness. It's not your fault you feel this way. Try not to take it so personally.
Forgiveness begins a process of taking care of yourself and fighting your way back. It allows you to turn towards your pain rather than run from it. Compassion for yourself allows the feelings within your body to unfreeze rather than congeal into resentment and despair.
It can be helpful to say something to yourself like "My depression is part of me, but it's not all of me." It is a part of you that is trying to communicate in the only way it knows how. A part of you that needs care and attention.
You can run from it, but it will just keep coming back. Or you can listen to what it is trying to tell you about what needs healing in your life and begin to free yourself from whatever has been stopping you from living your life fully.
I have only begun to address this conundrum, I know, so perhaps in my next column we can consider some more practical strategies for pulling yourself back from the edge.
Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong - the national centre for youth mental health ( www.headstrong.ie).