Healthiness of Depression

The Healthiness of Depression

The foregoing is a minor example of what those people with the courage to call themselves patients must go through in more, major ways, and often many times, in the process of psychotherapy. The period of intensive psychotherapy is a period of intensive growth, during which the patient may undergo more changes than some people experience in a lifetime. For this growth spurt to occur, a proportionate amount of "the old self' must be given up. It is an inevitable part of successful psychotherapy. In fact, this process of giving up usually begins before the patient has his first appointment with the psychotherapist. Frequently, for instance, the act of deciding to seek psychiatric attention in itself represents a giving up of the self-image "I'm OK." This giving up may be particularly difficult for males in our culture for whom "I'm not OK and I need assistance to understand why I'm not OK and how to become OK" is frequently and sadly equated with "I'm weak, unmasculine and inadequate."

Recently we have been hearing of the "mid-life crisis." Actually, this is but one of many "crises," or critical stages of development, in life, as Erik Erikson taught us thirty years ago. (Erikson delineated eight crises; perhaps there are more.) What makes crises of these transition periods in the life cycle -that is, problematic and painful-is that in successfully working our way through them we must give up cherished notions and old ways of doing and looking at things. 'Many people are either unwilling or unable to suffer the pain of 'l giving up the outgrown which needs to be forsaken. Consequently they cling, often forever, to their old patterns of thinking and behaving, thus failing to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity. Although an entire book could be written about each one, let me simply list, roughly in order of their occurrence, some of the major conditions, desires and attitudes that must be given up in the course of a wholly successful evolving lifetime:

The state of infancy, in which no external demands need be responded to
The fantasy of omnipotence
The desire for total (including sexual) possession of one's parents
The dependency of childhood Distorted images of one's parents
The omnipotentiality of adolescence
The "freedom" of uncommitment
The agility of youth
The sexual attractiveness and/or potency of youth
The fantasy of immortality
Authority over one's children
Various forms of temporal power
The independence of physical health
And ultimately the self and life itself.


Taken from M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Life Lessons 8

The eighth life lesson is Anger. We often let old anger build up until it explodes. Anger is helpful if it is processed properly. Anger propels us to action and forces us to clarify boundaries. Anger is a warning system that something is wrong. It is a signal that something is out of sync with our value system.

Anger is only an emotion; we don’t need to be afraid of it. It is a feeling that we must allow ourselves to experience. We need to get in touch with our feelings of anger, not by thinking about them but by feeling them in our bodies. When we allow ourselves to experience anger then we can channel it productively to healthy expressions.

We are not our anger. Anger is not our identity. You must see yourself as separate from your anger. Don’t allow anger to take over your personality.

When anger is internalized instead of expressed properly it slowly destroys us. Internalized anger is manifested as depression and guilt. Anger cannot be suppressed without it affecting us in some negative way. Depression can be dealt with only when the anger is externalized and dealt with.

Anger is merely a manifestation of fear. It is easier for us to express anger than fear, so we often convert fear into anger. When we explode with anger we may make ourselves feel better temporarily, but we usually make the surface problem worse and don’t solve the underlying issues caused by fear.

We must learn healthy ways to externalize our anger or it will destroy us. Anger will come out sooner or later. The more you suppress your anger the more dangerous it is. The key is not in denying anger or suppressing it but in expressing it in constructive ways and then forgetting it.

God is big enough to handle our anger. Often we become angry with God but we don’t know how to express it. However, if we express our anger in reverential ways, God understands. Many of the psalms are expressions of anger and disappointment to God. Use the psalms as a pattern for letting your anger out in proper ways. When we accept our anger and other people’s anger, then we are able to heal each other. Anger is healed only by patient love.