This is something that’s been rumbling around in my head for a while. Recently someone asked a question about it and it seems a good time to post on it.
God’s revelation is a two-edged sword, we are told in Hebrews. So it is. Often in our daily human experience, we find ourselves facing one edge without a clue that there is another.
It’s no secret I have chronic clinical depression. It’s just part of the package of what makes me unique. But depression is not what everyone seems to think it is. Most of us are aware only of the back edge. We don’t know much about the other edge.
On top of that, our culture has a very poor grasp on the nature of depression or anything else in the human soul. We are fed lies about what it is what we might do about it. As with most things, the common responses are all wrong. Depression is not feeling bad or sad; it’s not feeling at all. It’s a deprivation of feeling in a sensitive soul. You tend to feel deprived of life itself and wonder why you have to keep on living. Why bother?
We bother because the other edge of that deeply cutting sword might be the power to avoid feeling too much at crucial moments when feelings can hinder. When something rips me hard, there’s always a part of me that stands aloof and uninvolved. The connection between the various parts isn’t broken, but sometimes the various threads of consciousness are distinctly discernible. Some threads want control at the wrong time. When you know you have a mission, there’s a reason to do stuff without any feelings.
I don’t know how to put it into words very well. I wish I could package it up and give it away. Some part of me objectifies depression as just something my flesh experiences and I pull away to let it experience without all of me. Something inside is struggling to be more connected to the Spirit Realm than the Fallen Realm. It tends to disassociate from the part that remains hopelessly broken.
It’s not compartmentalization where I lose contact completely and don’t know what’s going on inside the bad. Boy, do I know what’s going on there! Yet, at the same time, I don’t feel too tightly wrapped up in it any more. It no longer owns me as “me.” It’s the thing I know I’ll leave behind when redemption finally calls me Home.
Hmmmm. Disassociation within. Never really contemplated that. But we do it everyday in response to all the negativities of this world because we expect it and accept it as part of this fallen realm. To apply it to our own negativities would make it easier. The actual doing of that, well…… but practice does make perfect (as though anything could ever be perfect here!). Makes sense tho, Ed.
That business of the two-edged sword helps make sense of the Two Realms. Much of what we dislike in this world is the back edge of something we simply don’t understand. So if we don’t like schizophrenia, or the milder version of compartmentalization of personality, we need to understand that’s the perversion of willful disassociation. It’s reflected in the discussion of the Three Pillars, learning not to trust your own self in the sense of pulling back from your flesh nature.
What a thoughtful and illuminating post Ed. I’ve never been prone to serious depression, just garden variety blues now and then. Even though all my life I’ve had loved ones who’ve gone through it, I’ve never been able to “get” the why’s and wherefore’s. Your explanation is probably going to help me be more understanding. Thank you.
I’m blessed when you are blessed.