Dancing with Depression

My first memory of depression is from the fifth grade. As if I had walked into a thick cloud bank, things that used to feel clear were now obscured. Joy receded into the background and sadness closed in around me. My back ached and my heart was heavy as lead. Nothing was right with the world. Sometimes, I even wanted to die. I was only eleven years old, but I felt a pain that was ancient. Now I know it was called “depression.”

The literal meaning of the word “depression” is “to press down.” It’s a disease as old as time. The ancient Mesopotamians, Babylonians, Greeks, and many other cultures were aware of it and called it black bile, melancholia, and acedia among other other attempted names for the unnameable. Often, depression was associated with the underworld and with dark, heavy spirits who would literally sit upon the sufferer’s chest. It was known then and remains true now that depression is an untouchable space, a dim cavern into which the victim descends and becomes enveloped, visible to others but unable to relate.

Have you been to this cavern? Do you know someone who has? What if I told you it was a magical place, a womb of the Earth, a chrysalis, a good witch’s cauldron, a subduction zone churning out diamonds? Before you scoff, know this: it’s not a journey I recommend. It’s a journey that steals lives, that abducts good souls, and turns bodies to stone, that demolishes relationships and takes no prisoners. If you are there, have been there, or know somebody who is, nothing I say here should give you the impression that I glorify this place. Mental health treatment and social support are good, valid, and sometimes necessary; don’t turn them away for a spiritual ideal.

However, if you find yourself there, if someone you know has disappeared behind the shroud and no surface cure provides relief, consider that humans have traversed this terrain since time immemorial. Something visceral lives there, not like the squishy, transient viscera of the human abdomen but like the hot, molten viscera of the Earth, something meant to scald, melt down, and re-form. We are pulled to that place at different times and for different reasons, and there is no formula for navigation or survival other than this: go down.

Go unapologetically down to the heart of the matter and look the great void straight in its faceless face. As with any mythic journey, you must declare yourself a warrior in search of your one true name and tether yourself to life in this way. The cauldron will swirl, the tectonic plates will compress, the viscous chemical bath of the chrysalis will dissolve you to nothing, and the harder you strive for “normal,” the more you will be pulled unbearably apart by forces far beyond your human scope of control.

Our western, industrialized civilization is obsessed with cheerfulness, with productivity, with surface-level competence. When depression takes hold, the whole of society says “no,” says you’re failing, says you’re breaking the mold and you’re breaking yourself. Worse yet, folks might tell you you’re that dreaded word, “weak.” Those are the people who live in terror of their own true selves; do not listen to them. They know nothing of the strength it takes to endure the Great Nothing. Do not turn towards their false cheerfulness.

Cheerfulness is not the same as joy. If you are lucky enough to strike a vein of pure joy in the depths of your cavern, mine it for all it’s worth. That is what you were there to find. Do not turn back. You had to dig deep to source that gold, and it will sustain you in a way which faking a smile cannot touch. You cannot fake your way out of depression; you must touch truth, or nothing at all.

Here are some reasons the fates may pull you, or someone you love, down to the depths:

• There has been personal trauma, and it has lodged somewhere deep in the psyche and the body in a way that can no longer be ignored. The body-mind system can no longer go on coping in the way it has in the past. The only way out is through, and the only way through is down. In this case, the “gold” is integration; find a competent trauma therapist and work your way through, gaining wisdom and wholeness along the way. If you try to clamber your way out of the cave without acknowledging what it’s trying to heal, you will inevitably be pulled back down later. But don’t try to resolve this on your own. Seek qualified help. When you emerge, you will be a light unto others, but there’s no rush. Take the time you need for comprehensive healing.
• There has been ancestral trauma, and all of the ancestors right down to your DNA are calling you to finally take heed. You and they literally cannot move forward until this pain is addressed. They have pulled you into the underworld to confront the disarray. Often, this calls for community healing as well as personal process. Working towards social change, or working with a practitioner of ancestral medicine, might be called for. You are, quite literally, not alone on this journey.
• There has been physical injury or illness which have so impacted the nervous system that the body calls for restoration before going back about the activities of daily life. This is your body’s call for survival, for healing, for re-orientation, for rest. Give it rest. Give it profound, gentle bodywork, acupuncture, herbal medicine (with the guidance of a practitioner; this is not the time to self-diagnose), essential nutrients. If your injury or illness is invisible, or seems small on the surface, or is so old you don’t remember it (your body does), this may seem incongruent, or look like nothing to others. But your body knows, and your body knows how to heal if you give it the right conditions for healing. I would include biochemical imbalances in the brain (which is never just the brain alone) as a physical injury or illness; your biological system is ready for a shift.
• You have unprocessed grief. This is distinct from trauma, though they can be intertwined. It can be personal grief, ancestral grief, or climate grief. The only way out of grief is to grieve. (I recommend Martín Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust as a doorway into this process.)
• You have a purpose or calling in life which can no longer be ignored. Whatever you need to do to align with this, do so. Your life depends on it.
• You are receiving a spiritual calling. You can hold much more power, energy, and life force than you currently do. You are able to be a channel to help others. Playing small or not believing in realms beyond physical, consensus reality no longer suits you. You are being pulled down to be transformed. You can agree to the quest or go down with a fight, but either way you are being called. In this case, you must do work on all the levels; heal your trauma, care for your body and mind, tend to your ancestors, align with your calling, and learn practical skills for spiritual healing and sharing your gifts. The deepest forces of nature require that you be true to who you are.

Often an individual’s process is a mix of several of these, and maybe more besides. I never said it was simple but, in call cases, I content that depression is a call to truth. It’s a non-negotiable systemic re-balancing. You can ignore it for a time, creating artificial balance the same way you can get through an exhausted day on ten cups of coffee, but you’ll be pulled back down soon enough if you don’t get to the root.

Take medication if it gives you your life back. Skillfully administered psychiatric medications are a powerful intervention for a biochemical imbalance, and they save lives. But medication is not a “cheerfulness pill.” It’s not there to gloss over doing the work, whatever that work is for you. For some, re-balancing the chemistry of the brain is the work. Treat it as a sacred task and one of science’s incredible gifts.

If someone had caught my childhood depression earlier, I might have been on medication. I might have spent most of my developmental years medicated. For some, this is the right path. Personally, I’m grateful that it was not mine.

I had to struggle. I had to read Whitman and Nabokov and Brontë and develop my soul. I had to learn to dance and discover the anger and trauma suppressed in my emotional body, keeping my joy from bursting forth. I had to receive countless hours of bodywork and holistic medical care, unraveling the physical injuries and illnesses demanding all of my life force. I had to engage in depth psychotherapy and rigorous meditation. I had to acknowledge my spiritual callings and commit to cultivating my gifts.

I don’t know when it happened, but after all of this “work,” I woke up one day and realized I was happy. I was free to be happy. The depression cycled in an out over the years, coming less often and staying for less time, until one day I realized that it wasn’t gone, it was simply my friend

Instead of knocking me out and taking me under, depression now taps me on the shoulder and says, “Hey, there’s something a little out of balance over here, can you take a look? Can you take a nap today, eat that vegetable, tend to that friendship, write this article, re-align with your passion, acknowledge this pain, go deeper into that grief?” and I listen, and say, “Thanks, friend, I will,” and I do. I’ve learned not to escape the pressing down, but to dance with it. I believe that so, too, can you.