Here is one good way to 'work your way out of a depression'....Rage and/or cry your way out of it. Depression is a 'hanging on bite'. Rage and grief can both help to cut the umbilical cord of depression. Strong, passionate emotions (abreaction, catharsis from the oldest Freudian days) can 'close or finish an unclosed or unfinished gestalt' and help you to 'cut loose a hanging on resentment bite'... (See Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy...)
Depression is based on a mellowed, watered-down, sometimes medicated complex of hotter, stronger, driving emotions that are pushing, pushing from the bottom of the depression to be strongly heard and given significant airplay...
Depression is the presenting set of symptoms for stronger, more forceful emotions that are lurking in the 'shadows of our personality' below.
Depression is a 'compromise formation' that both hides, and alludes to, stronger underlying emotions such as rage, guilt, hate, anxiety, and/or grief...
If you do not feel comfortable with dealing with what could rise from below, it would obviously be in your best interest, and perhaps those around you, to face this potential dragon in the company of a qualified therapist...
Other lesser alternatives include: reading, writing, music, poetry, hitting a pillow, hitting a punching bag...preferably not hitting your husband or wife's automobile windshield with a golf club...and having to explain yourself later...
One more decent alternative using a combination of Kierkgaardian, Satchel Paige, and DGB advice:
Don't look back, life needs to be lived forward. Embrace the present and the future. Get caught up in the past and you may find ghosts and goblins and skeletons and antagonists all will start to catch you.
"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition,
there are still untapped possibilities within us and new
beauty waiting to be born." -- Dr. Dale Turner
Here is a bad 'cure' to depression, generally with side effects and no long term solutions.
Take a 'happy pill'.
-- dgb, Dec. 27th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
