The sad place

I used to have clinical depression.

I was not “having a case of the Mondays” or “feeling down.” I was depressed. This depression manifested itself as extreme isolation, crying, eating disorders, cutting, and being borderline suicidal–a lot of “I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up.”

I didn’t want to end my life so much as I wanted the pain to end, though I did not have words for it at that time. I bounced around on a bunch of different anti-depressants though I honestly can’t say that I felt they “worked.” I didn’t feel particularly happy. In books such as Johan Hari’s Lost Connections, it’s documented that there is a huge population of people who feel no difference after taking anti-depressants. I believe that I was one of those people.

But in a weird way, that became my path to healing (this is the part of the post where I emphatically state that in no way am I advocating for anyone who reads this to stop taking doctor prescribed anti-depressants. You should talk to your doctor. I’m just saying what my experience was).

It became my path to healing because I look back now and think that much of my depression centered around feeling powerless. I felt stuck, powerless, afraid, and I didn’t have any tools for working through that, so it felt hopeless—like I’d just be in this space, forever. I was in a lot of places where I didn’t want to be, I had all of this creative energy. I couldn’t seem to find my right people. I felt misunderstood. I knew that all of those feelings and circumstances seemed true for me, but I didn’t know what was going to change any of that.

It was when I learned how to change those things—to start being where I wanted to be, using my creative energy, putting effort forth to find my right people, and then trusting that I would be understood—that something shifted.

The process was slow, and I went through big chunks of it without guidance. (Especially this last part, I do not recommend. It is extremely dangerous to try to go it alone when you’re walking through clinical depression, and I’m so grateful that at the end of the day I was lucky enough to make it through the alone parts, safely.)

The power piece has been so important. It seems to me that depression is, at its essence, a feeling of being pressed down, unable to get up, unable to effect change in one’s life. In my case, stuff kept happening and I just didn’t know how to respond, didn’t feel powerful in terms of my own ability or capacity to change it. My only response was either getting sad or angry, which cost me friends and my health. So then I would get even more depressed. I knew I wanted to shift something, wanted that connection, yet didn’t know how to go about getting it.

Knowing how to go about getting the things that you want, is huge. The sad place is often the seemingly powerless place.

The “powerless” part is the illusion, though. The sadness tells us that we are powerless and reinforces it by how we feel, and when we believe what the sadness (the fear) tells us about how this is it, it won’t change, it won’t ever be different, we dig ourselves in deeper.

This of course isn’t intentional, even if we are our own locus of control. In the depths of sadness, I remember feeling very challenged and very triggered when anyone suggested that I take responsibility for any part of my life. It was only because I truly didn’t feel I had any other options, that I finally tried the one that I was most resistant to: taking action, no matter how small, to improve things and seeing where in fact I did have choices and therefore did have an iota of power over my life.

Being With What We Feel: The Sad Place

Being with the truth of what I felt in that sad place was part of the work. When I was encouraged—and felt so triggered—to take responsibility for my life I initially took it as if someone was saying that I should pretend that I wasn’t sad. That wasn’t true. They weren’t saying that (in my triggered state, I just assumed this is what they meant).

They were encouraging me to be with what I felt—the sadness—but consciously and while being aware of the power I still had to change it. One of the best books I’ve ever read on the subject is Cheri Huber’s The Depression Book. It’s all about being with what we feel, acknowledging it without shaming ourselves out of feeling it, courageously navigating those waters, learning what it has to tell us.

What would your sadness tell you, if you gave it a voice?

I know that my sadness all those years would have said how lonely it felt, how isolated it was to be a Do-er (someone who does lots of stuff), and how the thrill of finishing a project did not even remotely compare to the stress and sadness and exhaustion of doing more and more, and how disappointing it was that recognition for a job well done did not translate into connection with other people.

So, then. Again: What would your sadness tell you, if you gave it a voice?

We’re often afraid to go into our sadness because it can seem like this bottomless hole that we won’t get out of. This is something that I talk about in The Courageous Living Program . How do we bravely step into something that blocks us (not releasing emotions is a block), while simultaneously feeling like there is no way around the block?

It takes getting help, getting support for what you face. Acknowledging that you deserve to live life bigger. Willingness to navigate some scary spaces.

It also takes compassion. Compassion for the sadness you feel (rather than shoulds or guilt). Compassion for yourself if you realize that you’re just not ready to go there, yet. That’s okay. It’s okay to not be ready.

How do I get started?

This is a good question to ask. How does one get started when they’re feeling this down at the bottom of something? First and foremost, make sure you’ve got a solid mental health professional in your corner.

Then? Well, I can’t say for sure what you need to do. But here’s my personal answer, which you can extrapolate to yourself as needed:

Move.

Move one thing.

Move a paperweight or a book, then a pencil and then a piece of paper. There’s something about movement that either brings on the feelings or expels them.

Balance that out with this: don’t move (intentionally). Sit with the sadness and watch it and listen to it but without doing what sadness tells you to do; have a conversation with it.

Sometimes I sit on my zafu and stare at a wall and resolve not to move until something has shifted. Sometimes I’ll bring with me a clarifying question, a question like “What does my sadness want to tell me?” and then maybe the answer will reveal itself and some tender place in my heart will unlock and I’ll bow my body and cry into my knees a bit, but that’s real and when I’m done crying, I blow my nose and have that nice, cleaned-out feeling.

Those are just two options that I choose.

There’s such a huge range to explore with the topic of sadness.

One area that is difficult is knowing when it’s “serious” versus when it’s not. I think people tend to err more on the side of “Oh, it’s not serious” and then they don’t get help. And if that’s you, I encourage you to reach out, professionally or otherwise, and start talking to people.

Own your sadness. Claim it. Give it a voice. It might transform from there.

Simply having permission to be what it is without the admonishment to “Get happy!” is a powerful thing.

What does your sadness tell you?