Some Rights Reserved by fdecomite at Flickr In a previous post I started thinking aloud if my stance toward depression could change from hostility toward an invader to the acceptance of a primal force in my make-up, something that was giving me a message I was imperfectly grasping. I’ve found a remarkable book that helps […]
Fighting Depression
Depression and Suicide – Back from the Edge
WARNING – THIS POST HAS POSSIBLE TRIGGERS. After a tough week with a lot of down time lost to pain of various sorts – as much mental as physical – I’ve been trying to draw on lessons friends have been sharing with me. They have been describing a deeper sense of who they are through […]
Lincoln’s Adaptation to Depression
In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln, then a state legislator in Illinois, wrote to his law partner about securing a post for a physician who was then treating him for a nervous disorder called hypochondriasis, or hypo for short, a condition we would call major depression. “I have, within the last few days, been making a […]
Dreams, Depression & Spirituality – 2
Some Rights Reserved by Elena Acin at Flickr Insightful comments by Stephany and Jane are helping me get to another stage in dealing with depression. In a previous post I started wondering if there might be a very different way of imagining and experiencing this illness. Could there be a way of adapting that started […]
Depression and Imagination
I’ve been looking back at the way I’ve thought about depression and my stance toward dealing with it, and I’ve started to wonder: Could I imagine and adopt in my life a different approach to this illness? What starts me on this track is my encounter with the experiences of so many other thoughtful fellow-sufferers […]
Recovery and the Big Book
I started thinking about the value of writing stories to deal with depression when I read Alcoholics Anonymous, the book that named the growing self-help movement in 1939. For me, it was not the method the book describes but the stories that first hit home so deeply. A psychiatrist I was seeing at the time […]
