Depression – The Terrible D-Word

Depression is a totally overloaded word.

• The Mayo Clinic describes depression as “a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.”
• In her seminal book On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross includes depression as one of the five key stages of grief.
• In her book This Is Your Brain on Depression, Faith Harper describes depression as a biochemical learned helplessness response to stress.
• In her book How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No One Else Can, Amy Scher describes depression as a misalignment or misconnection with self-needs or life fulfillment desires.
• Some people see depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain.
• Some people see depression as an inherited wiring of the brain that gets triggered by trauma or stress.
• Some people see depression as suffering, and as such, is part of the common human condition.
• Some people …

In short, there are many belief frameworks about depression, but as with many things in life, no one right answer. And that is one of the most frustrating and depressing things about depression – nobody knows what it really is and nobody knows how to “fix” it. What we have are lists of symptoms that may indicate that we have clinical depression, as well as a range of treatment options that may or may not “work” for us.

This article is about my own experience with depression, and my own framework for understanding it.

Depression – The Terrible D-Word

The Anxiety/Depression Loop

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

All my life I have been suppressing my emotions. Not dealing with my emotions did not make them disappear or go away. They continued to stick around, combined to create new variants, and became much more intense. Not dealing with emotions simply meant that my conscious brain was checked-out. Whenever a negative emotion bubbled up, there would be a busy signal, a do-not-disturb sign, or even worse, a confirmation that negative emotions are threats or illnesses that needed to be “fixed”.

In earlier normal times, I would be ok, because –

1. I had not yet collected a critical mass of emotional baggage.
2. I did not have a large number of negative emotions coming in at once.
3. I was not in a hyper-sensitive state.

However, during times of great trauma, such as the loss of a loved one, I quickly get into trouble.

1. The unprocessed emotional baggage translates into a bunch of wiring or pathways in my brain that are unhealthy.
2. During times of trauma, stress, or significant change, I am experiencing many intense emotions in a very short period of time.
3. Because of the trauma, I am in a hyper-sensitive state, so I feel the emotions more strongly.

Depression Loop – Not dealing with my emotions did not make them disappear or go away.

All this leads to a high risk of developing the anxiety/depression loop. My anxiety/depression loop looks something like this –

1. I wake up and realize that my loved one is dead and I will no longer experience the joy that I felt with her. I may feel a heaviness in my stomach. I think, “Oh no!, another day of feeling horrible.”
2. I feel fear and depression.
3. I get nauseous, I get gassy, I may get abdominal pain, I have difficulty breathing, I start to freak-out.
4. I think I have tried everything and nothing helps. I will never get better. (There may be other negative, self-defeating thoughts here.)
5. I feel more fear, helplessness, hopelessness, fatigue, depression, etc.
6. Loop to step 3 and repeat.

This loop is self-perpetuating and the more it gets repeated, the more it becomes a pattern of thinking. As my freak-out quotient rises, my body goes into full fight-flight mode (also known as an amygdala hijack). Since this loop is self-perpetuating, I may experience a series of such emergency alerts, to the point that my brain gets stuck in this hyper-aroused state for long periods of time.

As this continues, my brain may try to protect me further by looking for more causes/triggers that threaten my survival. Food, time of day, various activities, smells, mold, location, and more, can all be pattern matched to my current condition, thereby triggering even more amygdala hijacks. I cannot sleep because I am wired all the time, with my body thinking it is constantly under threat. This lack of sleep and stress to my body causes me to be bone-tired all the time, leading to more feelings of tiredness, hopelessness, helplessness, and depression.

When this happened to me last year, it led to a significant narrowing of my life. I stopped talking to friends, developed many food sensitivities, lost my appetite, favorite songs and movies now made me feel sick, and I did less and less until I wasn’t doing anything at all except lie in bed feeling terrible. Faith Harper calls this the depression funnel, others call this the downward spiral of depression, and I call this my very own hell. I started to really hate my life, I rejected different parts of myself (especially the parts that were in pain or having difficulties), and I started to really hate being me. I was then deep in clinical depression territory or what some call the dark night of my soul.

The fun did not end there. Every time I would get a positive emotion, I would think “I feel almost normal but this will not last.” Sure enough, upon thinking this, I started to feel fear and the loop starts again. This is why during the depths of a depression loop, I am unable to feel any happiness or positive emotions. Ultimately, this loop can lead to thoughts of suicide because that is seen as the only way of escape from this never-ending suffering.

Clinical Depression – The dark night of my soul

Recovering from My Depression Loop

Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lie dignity and the spirit of true awakening.
~~[Jack Kornfield]

My first step in recovery lay in the primary cause of my depression loop, which was my rejection of negative emotions. To get out of this endless loop, I needed to start dealing with my emotions, especially with fear and depression. I needed to engage or insert my conscious mind into the process again, so that I could respond to my emotions in a healthy manner rather than rely on automatic subconscious reactions.

Rather than trying to get out of feeling “bad”, I relaxed into it. Here are some of the helpful and true things I said to myself –

• I feel fear and that is ok.
• I feel depressed and that is ok.
• I can have good and bad feelings at the same time and that is ok.
• I can feel depressed, afraid, happy, and excited at the same time, and that is ok.
• I am not perfect, and that is ok. I am good enough.
• Life is not perfect and that is ok.
• I cannot control everything, and that is ok. There are many things that I can control.
• My body needs to grieve the loss of my loved ones, and that is ok. Go ahead and grieve and take as much time as you need.

The key, I found, to dealing with my emotions was to develop effective self-soothing techniques. There are a variety of methods for this including the RAIN method presented by Jack Kornfield and others, as well as the RULER method presented by Marc Brackett. Cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation, somatic therapy, energy therapy, and more are additional tools. We can also get external help with medication and talk therapy. A big part of self-soothing involves building up self-esteem and self-love.

Recovering from My Depression Loop

My new anxiety/depression response looks something like this –

1. I wake up and realize that my loved one is dead and I will no longer experience the joy that I felt with her. I may feel a heaviness in my stomach. I think, “Oh no!, another day of feeling horrible.”
2. I feel fear and depression.
3. I get nauseous, I get gassy, I may get abdominal pain, I have difficulty breathing, I start to freak-out.
4. Because of emotion recognition, I am now aware of what I am feeling (fear and depression), as well as physical symptoms related to those emotions.
5. I think, “Ah, my good friends fear and depression have come to visit and that is ok.” I invite them into my heart and start talking to them, trying to ascertain what they are trying to tell me. What is it that I fear? What is it that I am most depressed about? Why? To keep myself from being overwhelmed, I usually deal with the most present emotion first, which in my case has been fear.
6. Based on what I discover, I may “thought correct” where possible. For example, I remind myself that recognizing and accepting my emotions have already started to help. By leaning into my fear instead of running away from her, I am already more comfortable with certain thoughts and memories. Each time I sit with fear, I get a little bit more comfortable with her, and things get a very little bit easier.
7. Some thoughts are true and beyond my control. For example, my two beloved dogs are dead. No more walking, playing, talking, feeding, loving. This is a fact that I need to work on accepting. I tell myself that they are gone, but that is ok, because I will always have them in my heart, and they continue to teach me new lessons every day.
8. By facing my fear and pain, I am now slowly regaining access to more memories, thoughts, content, activities, and locations. Each time I face a fearful or painful memory, my tolerance for it increases. I may use mindful meditation, tapping, or stroking, to help with soothing of challenging sensations, memories, or thoughts. The more triggers I become comfortable with, the more my life expands.
9. For physical symptoms, I shift my awareness toward that part of my body, breathe into and out of it, and send feelings of loving-kindness to the areas that hurt or are having difficulties. This is to remind me to continue loving all parts of myself, especially those parts that are currently under stress. This is in contrast to previous times where physical sensations would cause thoughts of self-rejection such as I hate my sensitive tummy, why is my tummy hurting, I am so weak, I am such a mess, I am so damaged from childhood that I will never get better, etc. Instead of turning on myself, I now send feelings of loving-kindness.
10. When more emotions get triggered, I simply loop back to step 4.

My single most important lesson learned is this – “Feeling bad” is totally ok.

Previously, I was spending all my energy and brain power trying to escape from “bad” emotions. I wanted the salvation fantasy, the fairytale ending, the magic fix that would bring back only the good feelings and let me live happily ever after. This core belief is simply inconsistent with the realities of life.

By letting myself feel all of my emotions, I no longer need to be at war with myself. I can finally start to relax and let go, little by little, of my iron-need for control.

By letting myself feel all of my emotions, I no longer need to be at war with myself.

What Is Depression?

I have shared the emotions and thoughts that led to my depression, as well as the knowledge and techniques that I have found helpful, yet have still not defined depression. So is depression an emotion, a mood disorder, or a mental illness? Is it part of grief or totally different from grief? Is it a biochemical learned helplessness response to stress or a misconnection with self-needs? Is it due to a chemical imbalance, unhealthy brain wiring, unhealthy thinking habits, part of human suffering, or something else entirely? Which definition is correct?

I think that depression can be all of those things. I felt depressed (the emotion) after losing a loved one. As such, it is part of the grieving process. When I rejected or suppressed my emotions (misconnection with self-needs), I developed the anxiety-depression loop that started to really disrupt my ability to function in life. This caused my depression to become a mood disorder or mental illness.

As part of this loop, my nervous system, immune system, and other body systems became overly stimulated, causing physiological changes as well as chemical imbalances in my mind and body. This loop also resulted in unhealthy habits of thinking and revived old inherited habits (inherited brain wiring). All this caused a lot of unnecessary suffering.

God, grant me the Serenity to Accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.
~~[Serenity Prayer]

Am I fully recovered?

I am still a work-in-progress and will always be so. I will always miss my dogs and memories of them will likely be bitter-sweet for a long time. That is ok. When I think of them now, I let myself feel all the emotions that arise, including depression. More and more often now, I also feel the happiness I shared with them and I am grateful to have access to those memories again.

My tummy is still gassy and sometimes nauseous, but I now eat whatever I want and there is no increase in symptoms. My tummy may continue to be depressed for a while, and that is also ok. Mindfulness breathing and loving awareness helps with these physical symptoms.

I purposefully face new fear triggers regularly, and this has allowed me to reconnect with friends and relatives, often in a deeper and more authentic way. I also enjoy more activities.

Am I fully recovered?

My goal is to to get comfortable with my current self and my current life. My goal is to love myself just as I am, and that is good enough.

At the beginning of my journey, I was always grasping for the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, I relax into the darkness and learn how to dance beautifully within it. In doing so, I am starting to slowly see the light that is within me all along.

Depression – Work in progress