Friday, October 7, 2011
The Magic of Melancholy III: The Power of Melancholy
Much modern "New Age" thinking is based on the idea we create our own reality. Any problems we have are problems which we have made for ourselves: if we are sad, it is because we have chosen that sadness. All we need do is accept that and we can become one of the shiny happy people living in a brave new world.
Taking responsibility for your life is generally more useful and productive than blaming the world for all your problems. But it can also become a dangerous trap. Telling a rape survivor "no one can harm you without your permission," or asking a cancer patient what he did to create that experience is not empowering but profoundly insensitive and hurtful. It is important to take control of your life, yes – but it is also important to recognize the things which are beyond your control.
There is a clinical condition called depression. There is also situational sadness. Grieving over a lost child or an irredeemably broken relationship is not necessarily a sign of self-indulgence, weakness or pathology. Rather, it is a lamentation and a recognition of loss. There may be lessons to be learned from this experience, but right now there is pain. Give yourself permission to feel that pain right now, and don't let yourself feel guilty because some smug, self-righteous guru thinks you should be smiling instead.
And for Goddess' sake, don't be that smug, self-righteous guru. Psychotherapist Julia Ingram has talked about "New Age bullies" -- those who push their beliefs on others in an overbearing, dogmatic manner, even when their advice is well-intentioned. Telling a depressed person to "cheer up" or chiding them for "holding on to negativity" is just another version of "blaming and shaming" the victim. It tells them that their suffering is their fault, and their failure to overcome depression is a sign of their weakness.
You may well have accepted that there are no victims, that everything happens for a reason, that all your problems are just karma working itself out. If that belief works for you, then you should by all means hold onto it. But not everyone else has come to that conclusion. Trying to force those ideas down a suffering person's throat is as rude and reprehensible as pushing any other religious belief or cherished dogma. If you feel tempted to preach, ask yourself "How would I feel if this person started haranguing me about her beliefs?" Then do unto them as you would have them do unto you.
The Power of Melancholy
By turning depression into a medical condition, we have made enormous advances toward curing some of its most pernicious and lethal manifestations. Many people who might otherwise have spent their days in anguish now live productive and fulfilling lives thanks to medication and therapy. But in doing so we have identified depression – and, in many cases, melancholy – with madness, something which is not fit to be part of a polite and rational society. By this standard a gloomy disposition is a sign of a flaw which needs to be medicated, and those who refuse treatment, or who are not responsive to it, are to be treated as "sick."
By contrast, we should consider the historical view of melancholia. They believed melancholia was ruled by Saturn. We've come to see Saturn as "the greater malefic," a planet which brings burdens and troubles whenever it appears in our chart. By contrast, Renaissance astrologer William Lilly believed someone ruled by a well-aspected Saturn was "profound in Imagination, in his Acts severe, in words reserved, in speaking and giving very spare, in labour patient, in arguing or disputing grave, in obtaining the goods of this life studious and solicitous, in all manner of actions austere.
Saturn is the planet of restriction – and melancholics are keenly aware of the restrictions we must deal with in this incarnation. This can cause them to lapse into inactivity and hopelessness. But it can also inspire them to work against and ultimately overcome those restrictions. And as the gatekeeper between the inner and outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto), Saturn can also help us to transcend the limitations of our earthly viewpoint and lead us to the heavenly kingdoms. Because melancholics feel pleasure less intensely than others, they are less likely to be distracted by the things of this world. This makes it easier for them to control the senses and passions and concentrate on intellectual and spiritual affairs.
This, again, is not intended to minimize the very real illness which is clinical depression. There is no "lesson to be learned" from an untreated disease; refusing to get help when you need it is a sign of folly, not strength. Depression is as real as cancer and can be every bit as deadly. If you are currently on antidepressants, don't stop taking them because this article has convinced you that you don't need them. I am not a psychiatrist – and if I were I wouldn't be giving out diagnoses on a blog! These questions should be discussed with your therapist: abrupt cessation of antidepressants can have consequences ranging from depressive episodes to physical withdrawal symptoms.
But if you are one of those people who don't see why everyone is always so damn happy, or who prefers solitude to parties, you may not be as "sick" as some might believe. You may not need cheery slogans or happy pills. Instead of trying to change the way you feel, you might want to accept yourself with all your strengths and weaknesses. I end this with an affirmation which is sure to offend some but which may give you comfort nonetheless: you don't have to cheer up.
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3 comments:
http://www.thechakrahealinginfo.com/the-neuroscience-of-changing-toxic-thinking-patterns/
The Neuroscience of Changing Toxic Thinking Patterns
Great post, though I don't particularly think New Age beliefs are being represented accurately here. As of the past several months, I have been studying New Age fairly closely, and these authors do not advocate blaming, shaming, or forcing one's beliefs on another. In fact, while they do point to the role thoughts can play in health and wellness (or lack thereof), they also stress that this does not mean the person is at fault and cautions against blaming oneself.
Also, the idea of us creating our own reality does sound plausible on at least two levels:
First, from a magical standpoint, many argue that emotions are a form of energy. If so, then this energy is going out, or getting lodged in the body, for good or for ill. Better one mindfully manage one's emotions in the direction of the good, to the extent that they are able to do so.
Second, there is the concept of the "self-fulfilling prophecy" - established by psychological research - in which people have expectations and behave in ways that bring them about. If, then, people can manage their own thoughts and expectations in ways that encourage positive outcomes, so much the better.
As you've rightly pointed out, no one should force their ideas down others' throats. Indeed, there are some out there who probably never have been, and never will be, able to accept any kind of ideas from under the New Age banner.
At the same time, if one can mindfully comb the various New Age sources out there, one can find some practices that have tremendous value for managing one's emotional health and developing into a more spiritual being.
I get so tired of the "New Age bullies". When a person is feeling gloomy, I find the best thing to do is to determine if they wish to open up about how they are feeling, i.e. to "get it out", or if they prefer to sit with it. If they prefer to sit with it, then let them, "feeling blue" in and of itself never killed anyone and, as you suggest, by mulling over the feeling they stand to gain much they might otherwise lose by distracting themselves from it, such as greater insight and resolution of the problem.
What some people don't seem to grasp is that, to use a sports metaphor, even the cheerleaders stop cheering when one of the athletes gets hurt. You don't see cheerleaders, when a player is injured and down, chanting, "Shake it off, shake it off, waaaay off!"
Emotional and psychological harm can be as tangible as physical injury, indeed can be detected by physical examination of chemistry and neurology. The "feel-good zealots", as it were, would do well to remember this. Of course, when they start to feel blue, they never blame themselves, it's always that someone or something is "working against them", "dragging them down", etc...
On the other hand, medical science would do well to remember that well over 99% of the regenerative capacity of the human species comes from internal factors, some of which are insufficiently explored in modern medicine, as indicated by the snide use of the term "placebo effect" as if it meant something worthless, rather than the profound scientific confirmation that our perceptions of reality, and the very form, environment, and relationship context in which healing is attempted, influence our likelihood of healing.
One researcher has even been harassed across numerous countries for his bold proposal that much, if not most, severe sickness, even cancer, can be correlated with psychological trauma, acute or chronic, and can in many cases effectively be treated by dealing with these factors partly or entirely on a non-chemical therapeutic level, much as physical injury is often treated with non-chemical therapy.
If we just doped all people who suffered severe physical injuries rather than rehabilitating them, they'd never get better. Same goes for depression or almost anything else... use medications as an aid if necessary, but outside the most extreme, i.e. untreatable, cases there is no cause for making drugs the primary tool of recovery, since drugs in and of themselves rarely lead lasting and optimal recovery.
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