Depression can be seen as a wake up call to get you to heal your life. The symptoms can be seen as stages that guide you toward a personal transformation.
In the first stage, the withdrawal that characterizes depression is reframed as necessary to effect a reorientation. When you realize something has to change, you need to figure out where to go. The retreat from the real world allows for this process of changing directions. The dread and existential angst of depression is reframed as an important search for meaning that will provide a direction for you to follow.
As you try to move forward you will confront obstacles within yourself. Depression forces you to let go of parts of yourself and your trivial pursuits. As you let go of central aspects of your identity, you move into reclaiming your grief, and as you grieve, these new losses evoke earlier losses. As the grief washes away rigid patterns of defense that may have become your habitual way of being in the world, you must learn to embrace emptiness to clear the way for something new to enter.
As you move into a new way of being, the feeling of not caring what other people think permits you to expand your sense of what is allowable. Not caring allows you to experiment with new ways of being in the world without regard for others’ expectations. Thus, the feeling of being indifferent to other people’s evaluations of you marks the turning of the work of depression from an internal shift to making changes in the outer world.
The inevitable failures and rejections that follow as a person’s comfortable world responds to changes are endured through the humility of depression which frees the person from the need to have approval from the environment. As the person’s life is rebuilt and old plans fall away, he gains a sense of the mysterious and appreciation for not-knowing or controlling the future.
You can learn more about listening to your depression symptoms in Dr. Lara Honos-Webb’s book, Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life.
Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is author of The Gift of ADHD: How to Transform Your Child's Problems into Strengths, the forthcoming Listening to Depression: How Understanding Your Pain Can Heal Your Life. Visit her website at <a href="http://www.visionarysoul.com">www.visionarysoul.com.</a><br>
Lara's blog: <a href="http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/listening_to_depression"> Listening to Depression
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