I Do Not Want Anything Anymore. The Value Of Depression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There will never be unrestrained happiness, eternal love, constant joy and pleasure in human life. No matter how much we wish it on birthdays and on New Years. The idea that a person can (and even worse - should) be constantly happy and experience only positive emotions is utopian and unreal. This idea devalues the lives of all ordinary people by its impossibility of realizing it

When they come to me and say: I want to always experience happiness, I say that this is in no way possible.

I am writing this introduction in order to start talking about the topic of normal and natural moments of human life - these are episodes of unhappiness, dislike, joy and displeasure. Episodes of despondency, depression, sadness, despair and hopelessness.

One often wants to leave these episodes and not notice them. You want to get rid of them right away, distract yourself, devalue them and run away.

Such states are unpleasant and that is why they become unimportant and "bad" for our thinking.

I want to write about the value of experiencing depression, about its significance in the life of any person, about the normality and regularity of such states.

What is depression

Life is impossible without ups and downs, since it is impossible to satisfy absolutely all human needs every second, and even in the best possible way.

Once, during a regular philosophical conversation with a friend, he said to me: what if life on earth is hell? The one that everyone fears after death? And well, there is something in this metaphor. After all, we, humans, are essentially created to experience pain and deprivation, to be alive, we need to feel contrasts all the time, to be in ambivalence (contradiction), in order to feel the fullness of joy, we must also feel the fullness of sadness …

The state of depression reflects the state of experiencing suppressed grief, when a person is in despondency for a long time, when he wants to be inactive, when many things in life become unimportant, "all the same" about them, when there is no meaning to further existence, and only gloomy ones are in his head pictures of a gray trivial future. Or maybe not live at all?..

Why does depression come

Once upon a time we were definitely happy. Once upon a time it was definitely good for us, and maybe very good. But now, for some reason, everything has changed. And what made it good for us has ceased. It is precisely falling into the other pole - mental pain, trouble, lack of resources to change something, the experience of helplessness - that creates a situation of depression. When I can't do something right now to return to its former state.

This may be a real situation of the loss of someone from a close or a break in important relationships, a change in social status, or maybe another - the loss of one's own illusions and hopes, when I thought and thought that everything was going according to plan, but somehow it didn’t want to. to be embodied in reality.

The state of depression is always associated with the state of one's own powerlessness, but with the difference that in this case it is not possible to accept powerlessness. As well as notice the other side - your own strength and power.

When we try to get rid of depression …

We deprive ourselves of the opportunity to understand something important about ourselves. We deprive ourselves of the opportunity to accept the side of ourselves that “no matter how it should be in us,” we leave ourselves without a chance to be honest with ourselves.

We are defending ourselves. We are looking for something that can save us from our own truth - either another romantic relationship, or delicious food and buying beautiful things, or work 24 hours a day, or maybe travel and new experiences. “Go somewhere, spread out” - our friends advise us. And we know that everywhere and always we take ourselves with us. And of course, for some time the beauty of the mountains, nature, the sea or the ocean will help us to switch our attention, but … upon our return we will still think about the main thing - that the main meaning that has served us for many years is lost, that that I don't want anything else, that the events of our life have become not so significant. And, for example, something will take place (a meeting, a holiday, a salary) or not - it no longer matters for us as much as it did before.

Will I live tomorrow? What's the difference…

Depression tells us about it. That, perhaps, the importance of something external in our life was overstated. The expectation of being in constant high is exaggerated.

Depression is, first of all, a chance to finally meet with yourself and with the fact that we have so carefully and scrupulously avoided for many years.

Our wise body gives us the opportunity to finally stop fussing and put on a beautiful smile on our face. Stop running, reaching, getting medals and stars for epaulets. Stop expecting eternal happiness. Stop playing and start looking at yourself at last. Into the present myself.

Depression allows you to ask yourself the main question - what is really important for me in this life? What do I really appreciate?

Whose values do I profess? What scenario am I acting out? Am I living my life?

What am I doing - trying to be good to others? I want to win their recognition, another "like" on my photo on the social network? And this "like" will mean that they love me, that I am good, they accept me?.. And once in the same way I wanted so much to get praise from mom and dad! And I brushed my teeth on time, was very obedient, clean and beautiful - I met their expectations, just like now, on this social network - I am trying to meet the expectations of my friends.

Depression gives us a chance to finally ask ourselves the questions that we previously hesitated to ask.

Often it is a protracted depressive life episode (when we have tried a lot of things, but nothing helps) that finally motivates us to come to a psychotherapist and start dealing with ourselves. What is important to me? How do I want to live? How can I cope with the life that I get … How can I Be what I get?

And the psychotherapist in this case is such a guide who holds the hand and illuminates the path with a flashlight. "Let's go and see what's here, and let's wrap up here again." This walk through secret corridors and tunnels of the psyche is fascinating in places, sometimes frightening, often painful, and moments filled with real discoveries. And the most important thing is my guide, he holds my hand and stays with me on the way. It is so good! I'm not alone.

Perhaps in life we would not so much want constant joy and unrestrained happiness as a continuous feeling that someone is holding our hand. Feeling that we are not alone.