Pessimistic therapy laws #6: Depression as bedrock

Depression exists on a very wide continuum: catatonic, suicidal, absolute void of motivation near one end, dysthymic “blahs” and pastel emotions without passion near the other. Some commonalities across the spectrum are the essence of it: shutting down of one’s feelings; rage or a different form of impacted tension, experienced consciously or not; absence of a sense of meaning. Because of these commonalities (and others), anyone anywhere on the continuum, darker to lighter, may entertain suicidal feeling or contemplation of futility.

It’s too easy to have fake, urged, replacement feelings, so we’d need to become aware of the raw base of ourselves: What do we really feel at our earth’s center? I believe a good learning example is the baby born in trauma, such as delivery by Caesarian section, then placed in an incubator.

This will be the infant robbed of his own energy – being “done to” or “done for” at the template of his life – then forged in shock and submersion of feeling in isolation. This is the burial of the organic “real self” and is therefore depression at the very beginning of life. This child will be asleep in tension for the rest of his days; who can never have any motivation but some primitive impulse to move, shove, get out. He may be aware (though it’s unlikely) of the most deeply buried need to feel his first pain. That would be the “primal scream” that a scattering of people around the globe have experienced in Primal Therapy.

The “law” here is that depression can start at birth (and possibly in the introductory first nine months), and in that state, the person will be without the possibility of motivation. He may run marathons, climb mountains, enslave nations, be a scientist or a therapist or a chef or a lawyer, write poetry, whatever. But it will all be an artificial push: the assumption that he should be a person, the accident of doing things and falling into momentum. At his earth’s core, he is still in the incubator. He can never have meaning. He can never go anywhere.

I’ve known a few people whom this describes. One was a young man who never wanted to get up from his chair. Ever. But look at all the layers of life that can fall upon him or someone like him: nature, music, girlfriend or wife, friends, sex, hot showers, surprises, hot chocolate and coffee. He can be covered by these things, and they may seem to sink in. This is our illusion of life. There was also something about the young man that wanted terminal pandemonium, Earth struck by Planet Melancholia. Or that, at least, felt better than all the happy life going on all around him. (That’s another illusion.)

I mention this law because if it is real, this population will sometimes come to therapy, and we will be dropping layers of things and words on them.

Therapists: Be humble.