Depression – a different outlook

Can we look at depression from a different angle? Different from the conventional negative view?

It can be viewed as a moment of growth? ‘Growth?’ some might ask with their frowning eyebrows.

Imagine the winter. Everything seems dying, lifeless. Yet, there is a lot going on inside. For instance, if you try to dig up the soil during winter, you can feel the heat just beneath the surface. There is so much life under the apparent lifelessness. In fact, we see the beautiful manifestation of that life in all kinds of shapes and colours in the spring.

One can go through stages of lifelessness for a countless number of reasons, but so much is going on deep down. Depression is that moment of silence, moment of apparent lifelessness. Maybe it is nature’s way of protecting your rich life within from the apparent cold without. So it is not a time to despair, but a time to pause and to reflect so as to let the spring of your life spring.

Different from nature that rotates its seasons automatically, for us human beings who go through different seasons the movement from our psychological winter to the spring of life may not be automatic. You may need someone to offer the possibility of witnessing what it is like to be in the potentially dark and cold winter of your own being. You may need someone to facilitate that process of knowing all the richness life beneath your feelings of lethargy, disinterest and indifference.

That lifelessness experienced in many ways is saying something. It is our bodies and minds way of communicating something to us. Depression is the sign of your own being’s longing for greater life. It is a way of our being saying to us, I am so tired of all this (this ‘this’ can point to a myriad of complex facets of life), I want something better in life. So once again, it is not a negative force, but a longing for something more positive, something greater.

There is no one theory that can explain away the root cause of all forms of depression. All the same, even though every human existence is unique and the complex contexts that leads an individual to a depressive state, there might be common threads across different human experiences. In fact, sometimes, it is unprocessed losses that lead certain individuals to depression. Other times, unawareness or the inability to express certain strong emotions such as anger that turns inward that leads to depression. These are only few examples of how our living, if it can be compared to a pipe through which energy of life flows, can be clogged up by unprocessed emotions experienced in our past and in our day-to-day living. Our bodies work incessantly to optimize our health, to remove systematically the unwanted. Our minds too have its own ways of protecting us but taking a conscious choice of being in touch with its subtle ways of working that can at times get clogged up so as to cleanse it can be a way to lead more energetic life.

Psychological counselling is definitely a safe, confidential and professional space for you to explore the meaning of winter of your life, if you are going through it yourself. You will be amazed to experience the richness life that is beneath your experience of apparent lifelessness.

Do you find yourself tired of hurting and feeling that you have been robed from the joy in life? Perhaps the restless mind that keeps you awake connects you to a darkness that is visible only to you.

Anyone who has been affected by depression had experienced the debilitating anxiety, enormous personal dissatisfaction and an empty feeling of despair that can lead to a state of total hopelessness. If you are looking for counselling, contact us in confidence.