One of the most destructive forces to our vitality
and our enthusiasm for life is depression. It saps our energy, it
greys our days and it numbs our feelings. Life becomes a series of
joyless tasks, mechanically performed. We lose our heart, our creativity,
and our desire. Some of us sleep or eat too much, others not at all.
Each day feels heavy, like something we have to endure and nothing
has much meaning.
Depression moves from quietly diminishing our life force to depleting us
completely. People can end up sitting lifelessly in dark rooms for days on
end. They stare out the window with glassy eyes and hope that no one will
come in.
And where does this Grim Reaper come from? How does he manage to do this
much damage without even a fight? Actually, it’s easy for him to move in
because we’ve usually got our eyes closed; we don’t want to attend to a
particular personal problem. For example, John is in a job that he really
doesn’t like but his self-esteem isn’t up to the challenge of making a
move. He endures. He tells concerned people that he needs the financial
security and doesn’t want to disrupt the children. He believes this
himself. Five years later John is depressed and he doesn’t know why. He’s
lost his “aliveness” and his family, friends and workmates all suffer from
this, but nobody suffers as much as John.
This is only one of many roads to depression. We can get there by
repressing our anger or by stuffing our feelings. Depression often comes
from not an unlived dream, but an unattempted dream. It comes from
messages that we took in as children that are simply not true or from
mistakes that we made as adults that remain unforgiven and unforgotten.
And in all this, the important thing to remember is that depression is not
necessarily a permanent fixture. It need not diminish your days nor dim
your aliveness.
If you or someone you care about is suffering from depression, I can help.
Please phone me at 604-538-9796.
