Demonic Possession as a Metaphore for Depression

[jamesq]

how can depression present itself as anger if depression is an inherently passive state and anger is an inherently aggressive state?

Depression isn't a passive state. It's a state where nothing gets accomplished, but the common idea of depression as inert slumping isn't accurate, and I suspect leads to a lot of depression not getting picked up as soon as it might.

This is an amateur's description I'm about to produce, but here we go. Depression drains the sufferer's energy - but only the energy to do good things. The energy for bad things, like attacking oneself, deploring the damnable state of the world, hating something, and fighting, is inexhaustible. Much greater than a well person's energy for those things: put a well person and a depressive in a fight, and usually the depressive will win, because the well person will eventually drop out of sheer fatigue. This is why I compared it to demonic possession: there's something very powerful inside the sufferer, but its only power is to do evil.

Hence, a depressive might not have the energy to, say, do the weekly shopping trip - but he or she does have the energy to spend three hours arguing that they shouldn't have to do it.

Depressives can also cling fiercely to ideas that are making them unhappy. It isn't done on purpose - it really does seem to be the illness acting through them, and many people experience the depression as an active alter ego that hates the sufferer and bears little resemblance to them, so it's important to emphasise here that I don't mean people stay depressed on purpose. It's more that the depression fights for life, and to live, it needs the sufferer to be unhappy.

As a result, there can be a lot of energetic resistance to a positive thought. Tell a depressive that people really do like them, or they're not a worthless person, or they've achieved many fine things in their life, or that if they'd just do X it might improve their situation, and you're likely to see a dazzling display of inventive and energetic refutation. No positive thought can survive in the depressive acid bath for more than a few days. Depression has endless stamina, and it dedicates that stamina to destroying its victim by convincing him or her to reject the very possibility of a positive outcome to anyone.

Personally, I think the word 'depression' is a bad name for the condition, because clinical depression does not resemble the kind of 'depressed' feeling people say they have when they're feeling dismayed or tired. A depressed friend of mine suggested the term 'savage discontent', which is much more accurate.

If you look at what a severely depressed person gets done in a day, you might assume they're listless and passive, because they probably won't have got much done. But that's from an auditor's perspective. From an interpersonal perspective, they get a lot done: it's just that it's a lot of damage.

This perception of depression as listlessness is something I had before I encountered the disease in people I knew, and I think it does a lot of harm. It's my view that, depression being as common as it is, the ability to recognize the symptoms ought to be included on school curriculum. It's like teaching children to swim: you try to prepare them so that, should there be an evil day, they'll survive. And frankly, people are far more likely to run into depression than they are to wind up on a sinking ship or falling into a lake. Misinformation about depression and other mental illnesses is something that education really ought to be tackling.

(From a Slactivist post on mental illness. The above was written by Praline, aka Kit Whitfield. She writes stuff. Go buy it.)

I bring this up because I've been doing it a lot recently. I am aware of it when I'm given a chance to step away and think about it. Arguing with me at the time though will just make me dig my heels in and fight tooth and nail. I don't mean to be an ass, it's mostly reflex.

*** FYI: Not feeling depressed at all right now - just thinking through some bad habits ***

Comments

[thekillerb69.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say thanks, this is something that many people face on a daily basis either with themselves or with those around them and I have never seen it written out so eloquently. It's so easy to just pretend it isn't there and pawn those thoughts off as something else but it is a very real, very difficult and very debilitating thing.

On the up side however once it is recognized for what it is, it's a lot easier to do what it takes to regain control of your life. Be strong, I know it's in you! I know this because I found it in myself.