Welcome to the Human Race” an Interview with Parker J. Palmer on the topic of depression edit

Welcome to the Human Race” an Interview with Parker J. Palmer on the topic of depression edit

http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/depression-welcome-to-the-human-race-parker-j-palmer/

“depression” is isolating 

to a greater extent 

than I imagined 

 could be survivable

[The] experience ultimately reconnected me with the human community in a deeper, wider, and richer way.

🐚at the most basic level, our culture  defines depression 

as something shame-ful. This angers me because it leads to a situation where millions of people are suffering not only from 

depression, but live in an aura 

of shame about it, as if it 

were evidence

 of some sort 

of personal

 weakness 

or character flaw. 🐚

The good news is that

recently there has been a more open discussion about depression, which is a sign that we’re moving beyond the taboo state of affairs in which people who experience it are shamed.

Another way we need

 to redefine depression

has to do with the way

 it has become “medicalized,” which obscures the spiritual dimension of some forms of depression. 

I do not reject medical approaches, especially w/respect 

to elements of depression 

that are tied to genetic makeup & brain chemistry. I'm not against

antidepressants categorically—in fact, I’ve personally been helped by them. In the short 

term, they put a floor under my emotional life so I could gain some clarity as to what was happening within me. My objection has more to do with the fact that

 many psychiatrists do not 

 engage in talk

in talk therapy 

to help people 

make meaning of the experience, but simply prescribe drugs as the sole course of treatment. 

This tendency we have to want to reduce depression to a biological mechanism seems to me misguided and ultimately harmful.🐚

 🐚redefining depression from something taboo to something that we should be

exploring together in open 

vulnerable ways; from

 something that’s purely

  biological to something that has dimensions of spiritual/psychological mystery to it; and from something that’s essentially meaningless to something that can be meaningful🐚

🐚depression is not so much like being lost in the dark as it is like becoming the dark.🐚

🐚In the depths of depression you have no capacity to step back out of the darkness, or move a bit away from it, and say, “Oh, look at what’s happening to me. What’s this all about?” When you become the dark rather than being lost in it, you don’t have a self that is other than the darkness. Therefore, you can’t get perspective and try to make meaning of it.🐚

https://youtu.be/zSAJ0l4OBHM

🐚Depression is absolutely exhausting when you’re in the depths of it... 

people who commit 

suicide often, to put

 it simply, need the rest. 🐚

🐚every time, it was a very lonely journey. In each case I had some help from the medical side,  from the talk-therapy side, & from one or two understanding friends who knew how to be present to me in that experience.🐚                                  

🐚many friends and acquaintances didn’t know how to be present to me. They were scared of me, I believe—they didn’t want to come near me, as if I had a contagious disease. 

🐚So when people say to me, “I have this friend or relative who’s depressed—what should I do?” I usually respond, “Well, I can’t prescribe in detail, but I can tell you this:do everything in your power to let them know you’re not afraid of them. 🐚

🐚when you’ve totally lost your sense of self, what you say to yourself is something like this: “I guess I’ve defrauded one more person. If they ever understood that I’m really not a good guy, and that all that stuff I’ve written and said is meaningless, of absolutely no utility now, they would reject me and cast me into the outer darkness.”🐚

Similarly, people came to me and said, 🐚“But, Parker, it’s such a beautiful day outside! Why don’t you go out and soak up some sunshine and smell the flowers.” 🐚


🐚this kind of counsel is ultimately more depressing than encouraging. I knew intellectually that it was a beautiful day, & I knew intellectually that those flowers smell perfumed and lovely to other people, but I didn’t have an ounce of capacity in my own body to really experience 

that beauty or loveliness.

So the encouragement to get  outdoors & see how lovely it is turned out a prompt of my own incapacity.🐚

  🦀🐚A couple of things happened that allowed me to make meaning of the experience. One is that I found myself[to be]a more compassionate person. When you suffer, if you hold it in the right way, in a supple and open heart, you become much more empathetic toward the suffering of others.🐚

🐚you become less afraid of other people’s suffering. You’re more willing to be present to it in a faithful, abiding way because you’re no longer treating it as a sort of contagious disease that you too might catch. You’ve been hollowed out by your own suffering, which makes space inside you for the suffering of other people. You’re better able to offer an empathetic presence to them.🐚

In this way, 🐚you start to develop a sense of community which, in an odd way, begins to normalize the problem.🐚

🐚 Empathy born of suffering says to you, “We’re all in this together, and this is part of 

the human experience.” 

having had the experience of depression three times and emerging on the other    side, it’s very clear to me     that the most important         words I say to someone   with almost any form of          suffering—after I’ve listened to them deeply, after I’ve attended to them profoundly—are, “Welcome to the human race!”🐚

🐚No matter how terrifying   their experience, there’s    nothing in me that wants 

to say, “I can’t bear to hear this!” / “How could you ever let such a thing happen?"/ “Now you’ve taken yourself 

to the margins of the human community.” On the contrary, what I want to say is:“Welcome to the Human     race. Now you enter the company of those       who have experienced some of the deepest     things a human being can experience.” So        you start to make meaning of it, it seems to     me, by realizing that this incredibly isolating experience, “depression”—and it’s isolating to a greater extent than I imagined survivable—ultimately reconnects you with the human    community in a deeper, wider, richer way.🐚

🐚surviving depression             can make you more courageous. After each of my depressions, I noticed      that my capacity to put     myself in challenging or     intimidating situations had grown. 🐚

  🦀🐚I would have been operating out of a lot of fear and ego defensiveness. But once you’ve survived depression, you can say to yourself, “What could be more daunting than that? I               survived depression, so the challenge in           front of me right now doesn’t seem all                      that fearsome.” 🐚

🐚when I’m not threatened I’m more likely to speak from a soulful place,   

 not an ego-defensive place—& my message is more likely to be well received, even if it is critical. 🐚

🐚depression becomes an experience against which other things just don’t look so bad. And since we have frequent experiences of facing into things that look pretty tough, that’s a real      asset, something of real meaning.🐚

🐚sharing the experience as openly as I know how to with others. But before doing this, it’s important that a person’s experience of depression, 

of becoming the darkness, be well integrated into his or her self-image &    self-understanding. If   there is any residue of     shame or a sense of being personally flawed, then the experience may not be ready to be shared, and it could in fact be unhelpful or dangerous to do so🐚

🐚 it took me ten years to feel that it was well integrated enough that I could begin to write and speak about it. Only then did I have the ability to say, “Yes, I am all of the above. I am my darkness and I am my light.🦀

 I am a guy who spent months cowering in a       corner with the shades pulled down, as well         as a guy who can get on stage in front of        several thousand physicians and deliver some challenging messages. I am all of that, and I don’t need to hide any of it.” It’s my way of saying to myself, “Welcome to the human race! We humans are a very mixed bag—and, Parker, that includes you!” As soon as I was able honestly to say that to myself, I was ready to share my experience in ways that can be healing, therapeutic, and encouraging for others.🐚