Working With Clinical Depression (part 2)
Questions to Answer: What is your depression narrative? Do some writing about the story of your depression. How do you judge yourself for being depressed? Do you blame yourself, or do you project blame onto others, or both? How we internally react to our depression is also crucial. As a depression patient myself, I notice that I typically get reactive to my depressed moods. At the slightest hint of a depressed mood, I will typically tighten up and armor up. I think that depression means I am weak, that I cannot handle my life and my responsibilities – so I hate it. But my reactivity and hate (instead of helping) only fuels my depression, making it deeper and tougher to work with. Because this is true, working with depression is typically counter-intuitive. In essence, fighting depression doesn"t work. Depression will not be intimated or scared away. Getting mad at yourself and the world because you are depressed only deepens and strengthens the depression. This has the net effec...