Breaking Open the Seal

how many times have many of us heard. oh come on just get back on the horse or just suck it up and do your job or things will look better tomorrow get some sleep. i know i have said and heard these sentiments myself. though all of these comments may have true sincerity behind them, many times they are just empty words to a person who is truly suffering. i realize that many times friends and loved ones do not know what to say. there is no phrase or action or magic pill they can give to the person they love. many times the most they can do is watch, wait, or walk away. this is especially the case with an illness as diverse and illusive as depression. Depression can maifest its self physically, or with erratic behavior, or the desire to eat all the time, or the need to starve the body to feel some sort of control. There may be an ebb and flow to a major depressive episode. moods may change one minute to the next. isolation may be all that the sufferer is left with. the regression from a society that cannot understand and becomes afraid of such an insidious mental illness as depression. It is only recently that society especially American society has begun as a whole to scratch the surface of this illness. i believe this is less about sympathy and more about a need to keep the facade of normal life alive. many times it is only after a person commits suicide or homicide on a small or large scale, that the question of why arises. However i believe in a post 9/11 society things are changing to a small degree. because of the confusion and complexity of everyday life i believe more people are reaching out for help. whether they recieve the help they need is questionable. however, many more people are beginning to look consistantly at the psyche of all people in a preemptive manner. what i mean by this is that we are asking difficult questions that were once taboo and becoming slowly willing to take on the difficult journey towards a possible answer. heidi jones

Voice

" A black eyed dog he called at my door. A black eyed dog he called for more. A black eyed dog he knew my name. A black eyed dog he knew my name. A black eyed dog. A black eyed dog. I'm growing old and I wanna go home. I'm growing old andI don't wanna know. I'm growing old and I wanna go home. A black eyed dog he called at my door. A black eyed dog he called for more. Black eyed dog. " Black Eyed Dog music and lyrics by Nick Drake @ 1972 Island Records There was something about Nick Drake's songs that resonated with me. I realized it was depression. I realize that is a somewhat strange observation. Nick Drake's voice and the manner in which he presented his songs was the sound of depression. You hear the agony, the depression, the desparation, and silent suffering not necessarily in his words but in his voice. Nick Drake died at the age of 26. He overdosed on the very medication prescribed for the mental anquish he suffered. some say it was accidental. I don't believe that. I hope he has found rest and peace. hj

Facing the Only Choice

The pain grew and i began to have Suicidal thoughts cut, blood, suffocate, jump, shot by a cop, drown, hang, open wide ! peace ? finality ! it is over!! over? "open your eyes" said a voice "we almost lost you." hj

Hurt music and lyrics by Nine Inch Nails, Covered by Johnny Cash

Walking Through the Dark Wood

This is the third attempt I have made to do an in depth and extremely personal study of depression. I wanted to not only look at memoirs of people who suffer from depression, I also wanted to delve into my own history and struggles with depression. Interestingly enough, I fell into a major depressive episode for the third time in attempting to study this topic. I feel fortuante however because this episode though devistating began early in the semester and with the help of my therapist and yet another cocktail of medication, i am beginning to come out of the fog. I am still shackey. Some of the symptoms are prevalent and even ampliefied on certain days. however, I am also becoming more aware of my surroundings again and beginning to have a growing desire to resume many things in my life that fell by the wayside during this recent bout with depression. I had to bust some moves to catch up and by some miracle finish this semester. I have a check list that I keep close by. I use it as a guide to let me know if an episode of depression is beginning and how severe it is becoming day to day. The other gage I have in my life is my dog Eli. we have been together for ten years now. he knows me better than anyone. it is amazing to me how he can tell just by smell if i'm going down the dark road. if he senses an episode coming on strong he stays very close to me. It is not an intrusive closeness. It's just his way of letting me know he's aware. If i sink further into despair he will bark at varying times of the day to snap me out of the trance. he also gives me something to do. i have to feed him. i have to walk him or at least let him out to pee. That stuborness around taking basic care of Eli trumps my state of mind even if for a moment. now that we are living with people, if i am in dire straits such as weeping uncontrollably or have not moved in hours, he will find someone and bark until they follow him to my room. once he knows someone else has seen me, he settles down on his bed in my room and hangs out with me. Eli is unconditional love and one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given. I rescued him from a shelter. but as the years pass, I think it's the other way arond. back to the list. I developed this list after going through several major bouts of depression. the list includes things like hygene, non communication with others, obsession with one thing in particular, trouble focusing on one thing or task, sleeplessness, extreme attacks of fear and anxiety, the need for white noise ( like having a radio or television on all the time), and eating chocolate obsessively. my therapist explained to me that chocolate has been known to help aleviate some depressive symptoms if eaten in moderation. I know however I am in real trouble when I stop listening to music. I love music. In addition to my dog and my books music is my most prized posession. So when I stop listening to music, I know I have truly fallen into the abyss. I have yet to play a cd. Depression does not slam you all of a sudden like a heart attack. It gradually infuses your psyche and rustles your memory of it. In doing so you begin to relax into it. That is why I have a list. When I am in a depressive episode, sleepingall day and not bathing for a week seems somewhat normal and ok. i'm just tiered and well i'll bathe tomorrow. As things escalate, anxiety and what I call nothingness take up residence. I don't care if I bathe, sleep all day, eat, talk to anyone, or leave my house or my room for any reason for days at a time. the idea of taking a bath, brushing my teeth, answering the phone, or being in a room with just one person can cause such terrible anxiety that I, like many sfferers, is immobolized. I usually curl up into a ball until the anxiety lessens. one coping mechanism for times like these I have developed is telling myself stories. somehow doing so distracts a part of my brain enough until the anxiety passes. All of this is a horrific experience. what is the most horrific for me is the knowing that comes with depressive episodes. That knowing that the sun may come out tomorrow but nothing will change. there will be no light only grey. I will have that morning anxiety attack to look forward to. then the racing thoughts come. the crying happens throughout the day and finally despair to the point of not caring. By not caring I mean unresponsive emotionally to and uninteresed in anything. when I am in that state I can stare at the same movie over and over again and it just does not matter. it does not even register. It's just something to focus my eyes on. not to entertain. It evokes no interest or emotion. Any verbal response to another person will be monotone, quiet, and have a tinge of danger to it. as if to say push me and i will explode. i will spew this horror all over you. it may not change anything but i'll bet you'll think twice the next time you attempt to reach out to me. this is depression. this is the horror so many live with. this is what happens day in and day out until one day hopefully you begin to feel lighter. then another day despite the anxiety you take a bath. Finally you begin to reach out to friends. I am always on medication and seeing a therapist at this point in my life. I feel deeply for those who suffer depression untreated, alone, invisible and silenced. I am very fortunate this time around. I had no job I had to go to. I am living in a safe and loving enviroment. I now have a group of friends who also suffer from depression and can speak the language. It helps a great deal to know you are not the only one who has had these experiences. it is very validating for all of us. There was a time I had none of this. I have no idea how I managed to not only survive but work and interact with poeple because I had too to live. I had some distance from my major group of friends this time around, and somehow that made it easier to initiate communication with them via the web or telephone. Finally I had somewhere in me the knowledge that I had gone through this many times before and come out of it shaken but basically intact. That seed stayed with me somehow and I believe that is why I am coming out of this episode in fairly good shape. Recovery from a major depressive episode is an ebb and flow. Just like the flu you may feel better but you try not to push it because regression can come hard and fast. By this I mean you cannot just jump back into your life. there is no rewind or clean slate. It is a slow methodical and step by step process. I am grateful that I have the help and fortitude to do what is necessary to recover. heidi jones

Carl Jung

"The years of which I have spoken to you when I persued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what has busrt forth from and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification and intergration into life. But the numinous beginning which contained everything was then." C. G. Jung 1957

The Holy Grail

Carl Jung, though flawed like all human beings, is one of my heroes. When I discovered there was a book so personal and with such depth as his Red Book being published, I saved my money and bought it. Before Jung established his methods of looking at the psyche in order to help the sufferer and right after his break from Freud, he fell into personal turmoil. Some say it was a mid-life crisis. I believe it was more than that. Jung suffered visons both curious and frightening. Though having visions was nothing new to Jung, how he dealt with this moment of crisis was. Instead of taking a objective anylitical step backwards, Jung faced what was in front of him. While doing so he not only kept notes, but also drew and painted incredible portraits of what he communed with. He began to develope his fascination for mandalas during this period. Jung worked on and tweeked The Red Book for years and oddly enough he stopped working on it mid-sentence one day and never worked on it again. It took years before this extremely personal piece of work was made availible to the public. Jung let only a few close friends and collegues look at the book and after he died his estate was reluctant to release it to scholars let alone the general public. I am very grateful that changed. For it is the basis for my alternative method of healing. It is the template I hope to continue to follow as my life progresses.

heidi jones here is the url to a great website if you are interested in learning more about the Red Book and veiwing more of it's amazing artwork. www.rmanyc.org/events/load/308