It feels hopeless to live with depression. Others may think it’s not hopeless, but somewhat by definition, a person in the depths of depression feels hopeless. It feels awful, and it feels like it can never end. I’m giving a talk on depression in a couple of weeks, and went over some old notes from …
Appropriately Aknowledging the Abyss
“There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes. Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from …
Not just a cute quip
Age does not protect us from love, But love to some extent protects us from age. Jeanne Moreau It’s for real folks. People who are lonely die sooner. Eeek. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an associate psychology professor at Brigham Young University, found that isolation of lonely people carries a health-risk equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes or …
Counterintuitiveness
Sometimes, following your gut instinct is NOT the way to go. Now I realize that might sound heretical for a therapist to say…so much of the work we do is have people work to discover what is going on inside of them, and to trust that and act on it. Mostly, that is of benefit. …
The Long Scream
Depression is a condition that many who have “not been there” is difficult to understand. Henri Nouwen, writes in one of my favorite books, The Inner Voice of Love, a description of his own depression. It captures feelings and concepts that parallel the descriptions people have described to me. It hit shortly after he began …
Winter-in lots of ways
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Albert Camus, a philosopher, came up with this line. I am quite certain he was never in Winnipeg–and on the surface, the above line is proof of that! 😉 Seriously, I love that line. I came across it as …