First published in the UK in 2012 by
Leaping Hare Press
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East Sussex BN7 2NS, UK
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Text copyright © Richard Gilpin 2012
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Print ISBN: 978-1-907332-92-0
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78240-029-5
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Dark Times, Dead Ends & Breakdowns
CHAPTER TWO
Finding a Foothold, Clearing a Path
CHAPTER THREE
Fresh Prints on an Old Trail
CHAPTER FOUR
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
CHAPTER FIVE
Signposts for the Way Ahead
Endnotes
Index
Acknowledgements
This book is about just two things: mindfulness and depression. Both are concepts that refer to particular psychological states or processes, but because these states are experiences, neither is particularly easy to encapsulate in language. Such is the nature of the seamless yet transient flow of moments that constitute our existence, we can’t ever fully capture them with words. That’s OK, because to cultivate a mindful path out of depression ultimately means going beyond words and towards the freedom of clear, unelaborated awareness. This is something we must do in our own way; but I hope the pointers in this book might help you along.
JUST AS THE MOST UNASSUMING SITUATIONS hold the potential for wisdom and profound connection, they might equally give rise to ignorance and entanglement. When I think about the concepts of mindfulness and depression, I think of two stories – one historical and one personal – both of which take place in a bathtub.
Do you know the (true) story of Archimedes in the bath? Archimedes, a renowned scholar in ancient Greece, had been asked to determine whether his king’s new gold wreath was made purely of gold or whether some silver had been substituted by a dishonest goldsmith. It was proving an intractable problem, particularly as Archimedes could not reshape, melt down or in any way tamper with the precious crown. Disconcerted, he decided to suspend his mental exertions for the day and take a bath.
As he immersed himself in the water, he noticed that the level in the tub rose as his body descended. In that moment, it dawned on him that this effect was produced by the amount of water displaced by his submerged body. There followed another realization for him: this effect could be used to determine the volume of the gold wreath by submerging it in water! Already knowing its weight, he would then be able to calculate its density, or mass per unit volume, and compare this to the same weight of pure gold coins. If the two results were different, the wreath was not made of pure gold; if they were the same, it was.
Archimedes had found the answer to his problem. Not a bad day’s work after all. The tale goes that, in his excitement, he exclaimed ‘Eureka!’ (‘I’ve found it!’), leapt from the bath and ran naked through the streets.
Putting aside Archimedes’ discovery of how to determine the volume of an object with an irregular shape, not to mention his impulsive streak in public, there is something very interesting about this story. It concerns the moment, or moments, prior to his discovery. Consider that Archimedes had given up his mathematical problem-solving when he took to the water. He wasn’t pondering on precious metals, royal headgear or scientific experiments. In fact, he wasn’t in ‘thinking mode’ at all. He was easing himself into a relaxing tub and absorbed in his sensory experience, just as any of us might be when slipping into a bath after a hard day.
His attention was, in those crucial moments, with his immediate experience in such a way that it allowed him to see clearly, to be fully present to what was occurring: water rising before his eyes. This facilitated a moment of insight – the natural capacity we each have for uncovering truth.
A Hallmark of Mindfulness
You’ve probably had these ‘aha’ moments yourself – a dawning of some knowledge that seems to happen to you and within you. Like those times where you might hear yourself saying something deeply sensible or profound to someone, only to muse afterwards, ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t know I knew that!’ It’s as if you somehow managed to ‘get out of the way’ and allowed something wonderful to emerge. This can happen for any of us when we relax into our present experience and allow space for what is occurring. It is this ‘way of being’ that is one of the hallmarks of mindfulness.
It is this ‘way of being’ that is one of the hallmarks of mindfulness.
One otherwise average day, sitting in a bath, I too had a memorable experience. It conveyed a powerful message about my state of being at the time. It captures nothing of what I know about mindfulness, but much of what I know about depression.
I was home alone, freshly scrubbed in the water, the dim afternoon light permeating the bathroom curtains. The day had been a forgettable blur of tasks, nothing too taxing. Yet I could not shake off a sense of disconsolation. I splashed at the tepid water with my hand, trying to retrieve something tangible from the recent past. My mind began inclining uneasily towards the future, recasting it into ever darker shapes. Half-formed and unanswerable questions like ‘What now?’ and ‘What next?’ began orbiting each other in repetitive cycles. Soon I could no longer discern any interest or potential comfort in the days ahead. Nor any value to the past or present. My mood went into freefall. My body fell as still as the water.
The Face in the Depths
Later, bath long gone cold, a sudden downward motion roused me. It was my head falling forwards, as if unable to bear its own weight. My eyes momentarily focused on their own reflection. I took a long look at my own face. There I was, down under the grey water, behind the dead skin cells and grime of the day, submerged and unreachable, staring back at myself with hollow, loveless eyes.
Who is that cold, hard starer? The part of me that’s dead? The part of me that kills himself? The questions kept coming and my mood kept tumbling. My heart felt as if it was breaking at the edges. Rather than face the day, I faced this starer and he saw me all the way, dragging me further into darkness. All desire to move my life in a fresh direction waned as we battled to a predictable stalemate.
Me and my stale mate indeed. I know him well. Sometimes, for days at a time, we have become frozen in each other’s gaze, stuck in an unwinnable face-off, disconnected from any decent sense of living while the world turns around us. It’s a relationship with my inner world that is as futile as it is familiar and as deadening as it is comfortable. Psychologically speaking, it is a relationship to life that has the gravitational pull of a black hole. It conveys something to me of this thing called depression.
I eventually got out of that bath. And other dead zones like it. As someone who has suffered depression and knows its recurring tendencies, I’m interested in learning the art of getting out of these places with greater ease, even style sometimes. As a practising therapist, who works with people suffering with depression, I’m also interested in what helps each of us loosen ourselves from its unsympathetic grip. The key has to do with acknowledging, even honouring, what we are struggling with and finding ways to be on better terms with it.
That’s what this book is about – the continuing practice of getting out of the cold and ensnaring places of life, with an acceptance that these places do exist and are a part of our lives. It’s also about understanding the relationship between Archimedes’ bath-time experience and mine – and how we can have more of his and less of mine.
Just as there are different ways of taking baths, there are different ways of living lives. Regardless of how dark and downbeat the places you may find yourself, there always exists the potential of another path, one seasoned by the ordinary yet transformative quality of mindfulness. This path has led me out of many cold spots and likely will again. As with walking any path, the skill is in finding it and following it. And it’s the journey, not the destination, that really matters.
Regardless of how dark and downbeat the places you may find yourself, there always exists the potential of another path…
Depression is not one thing. It is a coalescence of states of the body, heart and mind. Our experience of depression is subjective and, therefore, unique. Getting to know our depression – its colours and shades, its textures and tones – is the basis for understanding and resolving it. To create a map of its territory enables us to navigate it more effectively. We can do this with the help of others who have gone before us. For since the dawn of time, human beings have found themselves lost in depression’s trackless wastes and have lived to tell their tales.
Just as all things in this world of form and substance cast a shadow, the experience of living has its dark side. Happiness, joy and love must coexist with sadness, humiliation and aversion. And so it is that depression, with all its shapes and signatures, is just one of the necessary expressions of human existence.
I ONCE QUIZZED A PSYCHOTHERAPIST for a definition of depression and all she said was ‘Rodin’s Thinker’, before lowering her head and resting her chin on the back of one hand to imitate the famous Parisian’s early twentieth-century bronze and marble sculpture. I felt short-changed. I’d been hoping for a sophisticated clinical description that shed light on something I had experienced but had little objective knowledge of. Years later, I came to appreciate her response.
By then, I had come to notice how this bodily posture was modelled everywhere, from classical art pieces like Dürer’s Melencolia I and Van Gogh’s At Eternity’s Gate to government-sponsored posters for ‘depression awareness’ campaigns. More importantly, I had also observed how the real, live, struggling people I knew would appear to physically sag in front of me.
To hold one’s head in one’s hands truly is the embodiment of depression. Try it for yourself and notice how it affects your mood. Notice how the inspiration of breath becomes effortful, how gravity drags on your body. Notice how your mental frame of reference narrows. Consider how your energy would congeal if you stayed like this for any length of time. States of depression are deeply connected to this sense of weight and contraction in the body. They give rise to a kind of stasis as the inner life grinds to a cheerless halt.
Depression literally means ‘being forced downward’. It is, therefore, a state of emotional heaviness and a movement within us, one where our vital energy is painfully compressed. Our very sense of aliveness is suffocated by the internal depths to which we plummet.
Stress results, and the discomfort can take many forms. Emotions of sadness, anxiety, anger, envy, guilt and shame mingle uneasily with notions of helplessness and worthlessness. Despite this apparently rich cocktail of negativity, the dulling of awareness that accompanies depression stifles our capacity to feel, frequently to the point of anhedonia: the inability to experience any pleasure.
She left the room undusted, did not care
To hang a picture, even lay a book
On the small table. All her pain was there –
In absences. The furious window shook
With violent storms she had no power to share.
FROM ‘A DEPRESSION’, COLLECTED POEMS
ELIZABETH JENNINGS1
Thus, it is understandable that motivation dwindles and apathy, disinterest and aversion to activity take over. Withdrawal from normal everyday behaviour, social contact and pastimes that were once enjoyable is commonplace for sufferers. Some people lose their appetite for food, others overeat. Moderation of the most basic human functions can become challenging. Sleeping problems, restlessness, difficulties concentrating and physical health problems often arise.
The depressed mind customarily takes to brooding. Its contents stray and collide in a vacuum of hope. Depression is not one ‘thing’, rather a syndrome of dis-ease with oneself and one’s world. Given that life is continually rubbing up against the future, depression becomes a repeatedly failing attempt to flee our very existence.
THE FIRST TIME I RECALL ‘DEPRESSING’ was in my twenties. I had returned to my native home after a long voyage of (what I had thought was) self-discovery – travelling across continents by bus, bike and mule, and living out all my dreams of adventure in wild places. But I had found my dreams to be wanting. There had been no lasting earthly paradise to be found; there had been no transcendence beyond the unwanted aspects of life, such as loneliness, ageing and working for a living.
One winter’s afternoon, housebound on a wet, Irish hilltop, buried in my own cyclical thinking, I lay face down on my bed and simply couldn’t get up. Feelings of being at odds with the universe and weighed down by an impending future only served to amplify the critical thoughts and rumbling sadness.
A view of myself and my world, both inner and outer, as somehow defective quietly formed at the edges of my mind. That bed became my refuge from a perceived life of futility. Any sense of my physical environment receded as my attention narrowed inwards and downwards, intoxicated by a strange blend of disdain and conceit. I stopped eating and stayed put for two, maybe three days. Sadness enveloped me but no tears came. In order to feel anything, I occasionally punched the walls, breaking the skin on my knuckles just enough to confirm that I was still alive.
The Romantic composer Hector Berlioz articulated his own depression as a terror characterized by ‘the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold in my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying’.2
He also speaks of being tortured by a crushing sense of absence and isolation. Not all depressions deliver such extensive existential pain but his description points towards their commonly immobilizing impact. My own experiences are all linked to a sense of being ‘stuck’, whether that be outwardly, to a bed or a bathtub, or inwardly, to despairing thoughts that deliver nothing but greater blows to my morale.
On that wet, Irish hilltop, as I failed to get to grips with what was happening to me, I felt as though I were balancing on the rim of a vast tank of liquid despair, desperate not to fall in yet unable to break free. All I could do was shuffle around the rim, at times successfully forgetting my situation, only to slip and plunge the moment I paused to consider it. Soon I grew tired of the fruitless circling and began entertaining suicidal fantasies of a fateful collapse and descent to the cold, grey bottom, never to return.
I managed to grant myself a reprieve from such finalities and scrape my way out of that tank, dripping in my own misery, exhausted at the balancing act I felt compelled to perform.
Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
FROM ‘INFERNO’, DIVINE COMEDY
DANTE ALIGHIERI, 1265–13213
This sense of imprisonment reflects the vision of medieval and Renaissance scholars, who considered the depressed person to be ‘a child of Saturn’, a planet traditionally seen as cold and distant and symbolized as a reaper or an old man who presided over the good old days, all now gone.4 When we are ‘in Saturn’, we are fastened to a view of there being no future. Qualities of weight permeate the analogies with this planet, where the past hangs as heavy as lead, its alchemical metal. The poet Emily Dickinson likened depression to the ‘hour of lead’,5 again capturing a sense of its density and dullness.
There is a growing awareness of the prevalence of depression. The World Health Organization predicts that this century it will be the world’s most disabling condition, above cancer and aids. Statistics suggest one in five people will experience depression at some point in their lives. It is also an illness that underscores other mental disorders and can have a devastating impact on physical health, relationships and finances.