What’s the Best Way to Get Through Depression?
It’s a very common experience. Those who have to deal with it, just want to get through depression. They just want to feel that there’s something on the other side of it. There’s a variety of approaches to depression, but what is the best way to get through it?
What follows may seem like an unusual perspective, but I would suggest that the way to approach this question most productively is by asking another question, namely, what does the depression have to teach me? Our gut level response to this question may well be, “Nothing! It’s a curse! I just want it to be gone!” That’s a very understandable feeling. Anyone who has had to deal with the burden of depression over time is left with the feeling that it just sucks the life and joy out of experience, and that it’s the very opposite of health and growth.
Ignoring Depression
Sometimes, that life- and joy-suppressing quality leads people to ignore their depression, and to just pretend that it isn’t there. This kind of attempt to get through depression amounts to, “if I just ignore it, maybe it will go away.” Yet often, it doesn’t go away. In fact, it often gets worse.
As Jungian analyst James Hollis reminds us,
When we address why a depression has fallen upon us… or why we repeatedly sabotage ourselves, we have to track the logic of our symptom down to what soul wants from us. Why, in a depression, has [the inner life] withdrawn cooperation from the agenda of the …ego?
The Call to Authenticity
Hollis goes on to emphasize that depression is often calling us to a more authentic life, a life which is a more genuine expression of who and what we really are, and what it is that we genuinely want and need. In this way, depression can often be connected to a major life transition, of the kind that occurs in midlife or at other highly significant milestones in our life journey.
Get Through Depression
If you are struggling with depression, there may be great value in exploring it in the context of a supportive relationship with a /a-midlife-transition. This kind of exploration can help us to be aware of both the conscious and unconscious aspects of depression, and to understand why it has appeared in our lives at a given time, or why we fall into patterns of repeated depression. It can also help us, over time, to understand and connect with the aspects of ourselves that want to come out of the shadows and be lived fully and authentically. This is all part of our ongoing journey towards wholeness.
Wishing you every good thing on your personal journey,