Call depression what it really is… in memory of Robin Williams, RIP http://wp.me/p5nnb-bij

[GiaK]

We are all reeling from the death of Robin Williams. Suicide shocks. Always. I feel as though a tsunami gestalt process has begun as a result of this particular human being given his social position. I wish it didn’t come to us this way.
 

I want to bow deeply in honor to this funny man and thank him for his time of service on this earth. Thank you Robin Williams.
 

I also am posting a few thoughts that have arisen today and some information about suicide so that we might learn to be profoundly present to the pain of others…that we might learn to support those living with suicidal feelings….

 

From a Facebook status update:
 

Call depression what it really is: Despair, loneliness, helplessness, melancholy, pain, anguish, discouragement, misery, sorrow, wretchedness, shame…

 

The term depression obfuscates and distances…it’s meaningless

 

 

My husband read that and shared this:
 

this is what William Styron wrote about the word “

depression

“:

 

“for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”  (from

Vanity Fair, Darkness Visible

)

 

 

 

Here William Styron further expresses his experience:

 

 

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this caldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.  – from 

Darkness Visible

 

 

William Styron also speculates in that piece that his depression was made far more virulent by the psychiatric drugs he was prescribed for sleep. Benzodiazepines are, indeed, notorious for creating dark hell zones.
 

To actually use descriptive terms makes it real. It makes it human. Depression is a clinical term that does nothing but distance us from the pain of others.

 

MORE OF THIS POST HERE: http://wp.me/p5nnb-bij

[Barbarannamated]

Carolynn Myss has an interesting write up on her Facebook page.... speaks about spiritual crises and many other factors. She does mention "chemical" factors, just FYI.

[GiaK]

it's a rather rambling piece I think she tossed together but THIS is exactly what I think the problem is...it's got many different facets one can use to look at it, but it's kind of the baseline in my mind...or in how I experience what is happening to us as a species in general...I agree:

 

Suffice to say that many of the sufferings of the mind are not just a product of one's personal life but of not realizing the full extent of one's own energetic nature. 

[Barbarannamated]

I didn't mean to muddle your piece with hers, Gia. My apologies.

[GiaK]

no problem...I appreciated that line...it's resonant with how I view a lot of my own experience. thank you

[Lilu]

Of course, Alto, thinks depression is a mood.  

 

Go tell Robin William's family that.

 

Or any other family who's lost a loved one to suicide.

 

Or a person who has tried everything to cure their depression, but is still unable to.

[Altostrata]

Lilu, no one cannot assume Robin Williams killed himself because of depression.

 

Unless, of course, you think you can read his mind as you think you can do mine.