Depression feels like a threat, and threats tend to elicit a reaction to either fight or to flee. I have done both, and neither has left me better off in the long run. While some people have but one crippling experience of this sort, for many people depression comes to visit again and again over a lifetime. Recognizing that repeating the same tactics that have failed is not wise, I have chosen to engage with depression as a spirit, and one that might not even intend to cause the harm that it most certainly does.
Our bodies, our spirits, our minds encompass a single self, and depression is a condition that impacts them all, which means that anything we do to address it on any of these levels can help ease the suffering. The unity of the self should be incontrovertible, regardless of how we conceive of its many parts and how they fit together. We use these different words to describe aspects of self, but emotions impact thinking, thinking impacts spirit, and any harm to the self eventually percolates into the body and potentially causes more harm. Whether depression intends harm or is more like an autoimmune disorder, harm results from its presence, and that harm grows over time as emotions and thoughts feed back on themselves and help create a perfect environment for this spirit by raising a dark cone of power from our own energy.
Through mindfulness we can learn to separate the voice of the spirit of depression out from the other voices that participate in the dialogue in our heads, but when it’s especially tough one can lack the ability even to meditate. It is through community that we can find the support necessary to make it through those darkest hours: friends and loved ones to sit with us, gods and spirits to light the way, mental health professionals to guide and assist in our healing journey. Depression invariably leads us away from healing and instead into danger, just as toxoplasmosis will send a rat into the jaws of a hunting cat. It is through community that our runaway thoughts are slowed, our irrational impulses checked, and the negative echo chamber built by the spirit of depression is crumbled. Community includes more than just human beings, but it must include human beings to provide the most benefit.
Community is a critical support system, but in the end we must be fearless in facing this darkness. Finding a way to live with or vanquish the spirit of depression involves accepting what we do not love about ourselves and putting it into perspective. Humans are flawed, but no one reading this book is so broken that they do not deserve love and even happiness. Making peace with our mistakes and imperfections is a terrifying but necessary step on this journey. Some of those steps must be made alone, but the journey itself is one shared by all humanity. That’s the secret, after all. None of us exist in a vacuum. There is always a light to guide you out of the darkness and it is always held by another. Reach for that light.