In addition to struggling with not knowing how to help you through your experience, the depression affects the relationship that you once had with those closest to you. Gone is their easy going, light-hearted friend, sister, spouse, or daughter. They want things back to the way they once were.

Take a breath and find the perspective that this is your experience and one that you must find your way through. Those friends and family closest to you must, by necessity, sometimes sit on the backburner while you navigate your journey.

Call on those loved ones when you need them most and also rely on your own inner wisdom to know when time alone is needed.

My perspective is that depression is an important process of letting go of old beliefs and perceptions and emerging into the world with new inner truths and wisdom. Do what you can to keep the process moving forward. Your feelings of not understanding why you are depressed and your feelings of guilt are understandable and typical. What you may not see yet until well after you have emerged from your depression is the importance your experience held in terms of liberation and sorting out your authentic self from outgrown beliefs.

As I run across more personal, candid accounts of depression, I will add them to this article. If you, or anyone reading this journal entry, had a quote to add, please offer it in the comments section or email it to me and I will place it in the body of the main article.

Also, I ready your biography on http://positivelypresent.typepad.com/about.html and salute you for taking your own joy and evolotion into your own hands. One of my favorite expressions is that it is “never too late to live a happy childhood.” And it’s never to late to create a fulfilling today.

Sending best wishes and joy,
Annette

How brave you are to endure the descents into your own bouts of spiritual depression. You met your demons face-to-face and brought them back into the light of your divine self. My heart is filled with love for you and with you.

Thank you for sharing your heartfelt review of William Styron’s book “Darkness Visible.” http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Visible-Madness-William-Styron/dp/0679736395

for anyone lost in their own dark night of the soul, Styron’s account can be like a security blanket when there is very little else to hold on to.

Thank you for sharing your insights on depression. You offer great support to those dealing with clinical depression. I have empathy for the challenges you have faced in your lifetime, respect for your courage to move forward with integrity, and love for your willingness to extend a helping hand to others who are suffering as you have.

I would like to add a broader perspective that depression can come in various forms ranging from situational depression resulting from a response to a stressful event to a severe psychological condition like manic-depressive illness. Some causes have to do with physiology, internal chemical imbalance, or genetics. While other types of depression stem from engaging in low energy life choices, such as drug or alcohol abuse. Different types of depression benefit from differing modalities of management, including pharmaceutical treatment.

In this blog Divine Self! I speak openly about spiritual depression. Spiritual depression is not a disease and therefore there is no cure. It is a journey, a torturous journey, when we go beyond the old definitions of who we thought ourselves to be. Yet this is the experience of our changing consciousness. It is the unraveling, the coming apart of our old belief structures and definitions of God, Life, and Self.

During spiritual depression parts of you are not knowing what is happening. Can you survive? Do you even want to? How difficult and how deep do things have to become before something new kicks in? It’s a complex transition period to go through. It’s not easy. The journey itself is a self-earned rite of passage to reclaim your sovereignty. To take back the authority and self-reliance you have given to others.

Thank you Mary Ann for adding to the depth of our discussion on depression and offering your perspectives. I wish you blessings and love, Annette

“We are moved yet not depressed by his account: with him, we feel uplifted by a sense of catharis and can at last begin to fathom depression’s dark reality.” ___Edward Morris

I could not express how I felt any better then Edwar Morris.

William Styron also wrote “Sophie’s Choice” which I also enjoyed…….made into a movie……wonderful.

What so few people understand, even to this day, is that depression is a MEDICAL DISEASE, not a crisis of the soul (although it can feel that way). In the same way Type II diabetics cannot absorb their own insulin, a clinically depressed person cannot absorb the seratonin created by their own brain. This disease can be FATAL.

I wrote a piece about it all on Open Salon in April. I really hope I can spread some factual info about this most misunderstood illness.

http://www.open.salon.com/blog/mary_ann_farley/2009/04/21/understanding_suicide

Mary Ann Farley