Depression and Mindfulness: Making Contact
Depression is the most isolating thing. It seems as though there were an invisible sheet of glass between you and other people. This sheet of glass comes, in fact, between you and the world itself, between you and your own experience. Everything is covered in a kind of fog, everything is wrong, tasteless, dull, not as it should be, an insurmountable task, a deep pointlessness.
Depression is the most isolating thing. It seems that no one has ever felt this way and that no one else could possibly understand. It seems impossible to make contact with anyone, as though there were an invisible sheet of glass between you and other people. This sheet of glass comes, in fact, between you and the world itself, between you and your own experience. Everything is covered in a kind of fog, everything is wrong, tasteless, dull, not as it should be, an insurmountable task, a deep pointlessness.
This is in fact one great generalisation that our minds are making. It’s a cloud, a cloak, which makes everything the same, levels everything out. Makes everything senseless. Faced with such a huge blanket judgement that has been thrown over everything, it is easy to just give up. This is how life is for me because I’m hopeless. Or, this is not me, it’s my disease, but I can’t tackle it alone, and no one can help me because they can’t reach me. Even if they can, the depression will be stronger.
The way I see it, similarly to mindfulness therapies of many kinds and some CBT methods, one way to escape, or fight, such a blanket generalisation, is to try our very best to discern the details. Just a few, at first, the specific character of just a couple of things in the day, which break through the sameness and aren’t interpreted immediately by our brains as “some other pointless thing”. At first there may only be a second’s grace in which to actually, clearly, see someone’s smiling face, or feel a moment of satisfaction after cleaning your teeth, or how much the dog likes it when you stroke him. Not only positive things, just real events, in all their difference and variety, shapes poking out from underneath the blanket of depression. Let’s grab hold of them and be aware of how they feel, smell, sound, taste. Our minds acquire the habit. What we are aware of, grows.
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This article was last reviewed by on Thursday, 1st November 2007. You can leave a response below.
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3rd November 2007
Sorry, but this type of baseless speculation isn’t helpful. You make unsupported generalisations about the mechanisms involved in mindfulness therapies and ’some forms’ of CBT. You claim depression is “one great generalisation”, but it is unclear what this phrase actually means, if anything. Please stick to the facts when talking about a condition that grieviously affects many people, or else make it clear that you aren’t engaging with either evidence based or scientific psychology in any sense.
7th November 2007
idio,
I think that Sara was describing how she feels when she is depressed and how her brain does not differentiate what she sees, hears, tastes, smells and touches. As a result of this, she generalizes all of these to be misery and worthlessnesness. She has noticed that if she is purposefully and consciously “mindful” to each of these sensory experiences, even for a moment, it can help her to fight a small battle and eventually win a major one. She mentioned that some forms of cognitive therapy have helped her to understand this skill. I think she meant to share her experience more than to give advice.