Depression

[Ananda]

Dont see it as a lack of light but an abundance of dark!

[Cambo]

Very interesting thing to say, Ananda! I could go places with that, but I'd like to hear you elaborate on it first!

[Avatar]

I had seen your new avatar and title...

I didn't notice the title, but the pic looked like a silver lining to me...

--A

[Shaun das Schaf]

Speaking of new avatars, oooo.... pretty.... red....

ETA: oooo.... sexy.... red....
since some manly men don't take 'pretty' as a compliment

[lorin]

I suspect life just isn't working out the way we'd expected or woulda chosen!
And then there's this nagging fear that it is and is gonna be the case for those we love too!

My mother used to always say things like "ask yourself why you have chosen to be sad" or "ask yourself why you have allowed yourself to be angry at this or that person" It used to drive me NUTS. I would become furious. Especially since she would always say "you choose your destiny" and in the same breath say "I am an alcoholic, I have a disease, I am powerless." My anger at that would sometimes be almost blinding. Years later it still makes me angry (the booze stuff) BUT I have come to believe we do choose our paths. (I still cannot believe I am hearing myself say that ). To say we don't choose our paths makes us all victims, and I for one am not a victim. Let me clarify, we don't chose what happens to us, but we do choose how we respond to what happens to us. That is not to say I chose the right path (Bite your lip here, SD) but we do make choices everyday. I've even gotten to the point where I believe I choose to be happy or sad, that whichever choice I make fills some kind of need in me. I can not believe I am saying this, it's like an out of body experience.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I suspect life just isn't working out the way we'd expected or woulda chosen!
And then there's this nagging fear that it is and is gonna be the case for those we love too!

My mother used to always say things like "ask yourself why you have chosen to be sad" or "ask yourself why you have allowed yourself to be angry at this or that person" It used to drive me NUTS. I would become furious. Especially since she would always say "you chose your destiny" and in the same breath say "I am an alcoholic, I have a disease, I am powerless." My anger at that would sometimes be almost blinding. Years later it still makes me angry (the booze stuff) BUT I have come to believe we do chose our paths. (I still cannot believe I am hearing myself say that ). To say we don't chose our paths makes us all victims, and I for one am not a victim. Let me clarify, we don't chose what happens to us, but we do chose how we respond to what happens to us. That is not to say I chose the right path (Bite your lip here, SD) but we do make choices everyday. I've even gotten to the point where I believe I chose to be happy or sad, that whichever choice I make fills some kind of need in me. I can not believe I am saying this, it's like an out of body experience.

That last sentence made me grin!

And for so much of what you said at the beginning... it's ...a slice of accurate ideas about the way things are, I think... and yet knowing it doesn't always seem to help as much as it "should" help.
And umm yeah, I could sort of imagine the whole blinding anger thing... so much easier for a person to see the "solution" or think she/he sees an "accurate picture" of someone else's problem (or "problem")...

Ananda- I'm thinking what ya said was along the lines of a quip for a de-motivational poster?

SD and peeps- thanks for y'alls concern.

I actually ...have had some really.. good stuff going on the past.. half a day or so.

When I start -really- talking to people again, sometimes I think it's a sign I'm about to come out of it... or maybe that's a catalyst that helps me; I'm not really sure which and probably don't need to know. (It's really pretty terrifying for me to let people "in" to see my weakness.)
I definitely received help from outside me, pulling me up out of this pit this time, though.

[aliantha]

I can see why your mom made you so angry, lorin. Everybody chose their situation but her, huh? Like she couldn't choose *not* to drink?

I've often thought, when you've said stuff like this before, that your mother was parroting what her shrink was telling her without having internalized it. It's like she knew he (or she, but I'm assuming he) was right, but she couldn't let go of her c-y-a victimhood. Of course, telling everyone around her that they chose to behave in ways that (she perceived) hurt her just allowed her to reinforce her belief in herself as a victim.

Linna -- glad you're coming around. It's good to see you at the Watch again.

And Av -- nice new 'do.

[Ananda]

Ananda- I'm thinking what ya said was along the lines of a quip for a de-motivational poster?

No, more along the line of choosing to see abundance and not scarcity as you felt that was your problem and then demonstrated it with a claim for lack of light.

[Linna Heartbooger]

Hmmm, you're probably coming from a very different perspective.

For me, "inner darkness" has resonance with:
Blindness (can't see in the dark)
Confusion about where I'm going
Lies
Rages suppressed & esp. misdirected
Willingness to cause harm to achieve my ends

Not reassuring!

But I figure that you weren't exactly intending to say thaaat... that's where communication gets confused.
So I ask.. what does "darkness" mean to you?

[lorin]

I've often thought, when you've said stuff like this before, that your mother was parroting what her shrink was telling her without having internalized it. It's like she knew he (or she, but I'm assuming he) was right, but she couldn't let go of her c-y-a victimhood. Of course, telling everyone around her that they chose to behave in ways that (she perceived) hurt her just allowed her to reinforce her belief in herself as a victim.

The thing is my mother never went to a therapist. Never. But she was parroting the AA dogma about alcoholism as a disease. To this date I have huge issues with the that aspect of AA. There is a thread by Cail about this somewhere. During her search for something to fill the void of booze she also became involved with something called channeling. Oh, I hated those days (years). She was reading these books by Jane Roberts where she wrote in the spirit of Seth. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Roberts Those years were filled with about two hundred journals which are still stored in the garage unread. After the Seth years, there was the Buddhist years. I think this is where she evolved the discussions of choosing your path. With all the exploration she was never able to choose any path except suicide.

[Linna Heartbooger]

LORIN!

Wow, that's heavy... when I read your words, I think your mother's M.O. is characterized by: "isolation, isolation, isolation."
Edit: (not to say that the paths she ended up seeking in this isolation weren't devastating in and of themselves.)

Always feeling condemned, unable to bring her real self before a real human being..
(but of course, that's my inference.)

..couldn't let go of her c-y-a victimhood.

"c-y-a victimhood"... what a descriptive expression.
Now, that's something I can identify with.
I have incredibly strong impulses to pull "c-y-a" maneuvers in ...an abundance of... the sentences I speak and the actions I take.
(I think I'm receiving the most amazing help finding my way out of that bind... but so much of it isn't because I wisely and intentionally went about seeking it; more like I've been ridiculously lucky.)


Edited: added third line of words...

[Ananda]

Hmmm, you're probably coming from a very different perspective.

For me, "inner darkness" has resonance with:
Blindness (can't see in the dark)
Confusion about where I'm going
Lies
Rages suppressed & esp. misdirected
Willingness to cause harm to achieve my ends

Not reassuring!

But I figure that you weren't exactly intending to say thaaat... that's where communication gets confused.
So I ask.. what does "darkness" mean to you?

I dont think it matterd what it means to me in this case. It just felt self-fulfilling that you came from a scarcity mindset in even your assessment of yourself. I was just saying to look at the positive approach to things instead.

[Linna Heartbooger]

I dont think it matterd what it means to me in this case. It just felt self-fulfilling that you came from a scarcity mindset in even your assessment of yourself. I was just saying to look at the positive approach to things instead.

Ahh, okay... could just be a case where you said something intending to encourage and it just didn't work for me..

The scarcity mindset, though... yeah, that's probably relevant.

I mean... nobody can have everything.
For example, when I go to tutor students in large homes with a super-over-abundance of money... there is going to be a lack of other things... and the parents and the children will be dealing with lots of anxieties that I don't have to.

If various things were easy for me, perhaps I wouldn't be thrust into relationship: asking caring, willing people for help, and then receiving help & finding myself loved.

[Cambo]

Linna, perhaps an abundance of darkness could be seen as a kind of raw material. Something to work and create with. Strictly speaking darkness is just the absence of light. But since our darkness it metaphorical, we can bend those rules a little. As Ananda says, see darkness as a positive presence rather than a soul sucking void. (Not positive in the sense it feels good, you understand, but in the sense that it is *something*)

Darkness as a positive force, no matter how abundant, is finite. Darkness as a void is infinite.

[aliantha]

lorin -- the saddest thing, for me, about your mom's situation is that if she were here today, there are medications that could help her be productive (assuming she took them -- and assuming she reacted better to them than the mom in "Next to Normal"...). She had serious mental problems, and the alcoholism and all the rest were an effort to self-medicate. That generation would *never* have considered going to a "head shrinker"....

Cambo and Linna -- don't forget that God found the raw materials for the heavens and the Earth in a void. An infinite void can contain an infinite amount of raw creative material.

I think there's something to be said for exploring the dark. We have a lot of interrelated dichotomies in Western thought, good/evil and light/dark among them. We're told that God wants us to be good, so we believe that darkness must be bad. But that's kind of ridiculous. As humans, we *all* have darkness in us. Fear of exploring that darkness can make us crazy. Plus there are all those shades of gray along the continuum; following through on the dark thoughts can often lead you to conclude that it's not as bad as you were afraid it was.

[lorin]

lorin -- the saddest thing, for me, about your mom's situation is that if she were here today, there are medications that could help her be productive (assuming she took them -- and assuming she reacted better to them than the mom in "Next to Normal"...). She had serious mental problems, and the alcoholism and all the rest were an effort to self-medicate. That generation would *never* have considered going to a "head shrinker"....

I doubt, no, I know, she would never have taken meds. Her life was just one...don't know what to call it.....set of opposites. Growing up she never allowed preservatives into the house, yet she smoked cigarettes. She decried victimization, yet screamed that she was a victim. She cried that you should take care of your mental health, yet refused help for mental health. She hated that I was heavy, but fed me fried everything. It's like she could not be at peace with the simplest thing. Like she did not deserve to be happy. Last night I was watching Oprah Winfrey's Master Class. Jane Fonda was talking about her mother. She had committed suicide. She also said her mother could not allow herself to be happy. She said she found out 25 years later that her mother had been sexually abused as a child. I have always thought my mother was abused by my grandfather. She used to HATE him, would tell stories that at 5 years old he used to come home drunk with his friends and wake her up and make her dance for them. She never said she was abused but the implication was always there. At the last fest SRD told us that his father had committed suicide and he was a missionary. I wonder how much that influenced his writing.

[aliantha]

It's like she could not be at peace with the simplest thing. Like she did not deserve to be happy.

*ding ding ding*

You could be right about a history of abuse. I've often wondered whether my mom didn't get beaten regularly by her father for some imaginary infraction or other. She certainly tried to teach my brother and me to be victims.

[Linna Heartbooger]

Cambo and Linna -- don't forget that God found the raw materials for the heavens and the Earth in a void. An infinite void can contain an infinite amount of raw creative material.

niiice job coming up with one point that each of us was likely to appreciate from our own POV's... very classy, ali.

We have a lot of interrelated dichotomies in Western thought, good/evil and light/dark among them. We're told that God wants us to be good, so we believe that darkness must be bad.

I think that really does raise the stakes impossibly high sometimes...

Fear of exploring that darkness can make us crazy. Plus there are all those shades of gray along the continuum; following through on the dark thoughts can often lead you to conclude that it's not as bad as you were afraid it was.

Hmm, I think there's a lot of different ways to do that exploring.
I think the Watch has helped give me tools for trying to.. productively laugh at darkness and the fact the world is so messed-up.
Now, I do think self-awareness of my own rage is something very elusive for me, but... a great relief when it happens.

and, of course, the deep stuff that this conversation has shifted to... thanks for sharing, you guys; I'm thinkin' about it, but don't quite know what to say to it.

[lorin]

and, of course, the deep stuff that this conversation has shifted to... thanks for sharing, you guys; I'm thinkin' about it, but don't quite know what to say to it.

I don't think it has shifted, Linna. I hope you don't feel like you've been hijacked. It's all about the light and dark in each of our lives, and what we do with it. Somewhere pages and pages ago we talked about accepting the dark times and learning from them, embracing them. I guess that discussion triggered me to think of my mother.

[aliantha]

Cambo and Linna -- don't forget that God found the raw materials for the heavens and the Earth in a void. An infinite void can contain an infinite amount of raw creative material.

niiice job coming up with one point that each of us was likely to appreciate from our own POV's... very classy, ali.

I do what I can.