My post about mindfulness not resulting in happiness got some interesting responses. One in particular on LinkedIn got me to finally come out about what depression can look like when seen from a different perspective. Since LinkedIn discussions are restricted to group members, below is my reply:

I have been thinking a lot lately about depression since I have spent the last few years in the deepest states of my life. Your comment gets right to the heart of my thoughts when you say, “I don’t know if I can say that mindfulness intensifies depression.” I very much appreciate your bringing it up.

In conversation with others who have pursued a similar path as mine, we have been exploring what depression means and whether we may be cured. We experience the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pains, but not the normal reactions to them that get combined in the normal definitions of depression. We actually feel the “pain” more than we ever have, but act normally because the pain no longer controls our choice of how to act.

I was recently coaching a couple that had taken our Bipolar In Order workshop when the man said he was depressed. The woman asked for a better description, but he had no words to describe his emotions. I was reminded of how my wife Ellen used to ask me for more details when I said it was just dark. It seems that many of us can feel strong emotions, but have no words to describe them.

Life seems like a dream and you have a hard time knowing if it’s real. You become unsure of your ability to function, so you look to someone else to create a structure for you. You are obsessed with past actions and full of remorse for what you have done. Time slows down and speeds up depending on what state you are in. You sometimes get to the point that you think the only way out is suicide. Out of nowhere a freight train runs through destroying everything in its wake. Your defenses seem inadequate to protect you from being taken over by something or someone more powerful than yourself. You are controlled by it no matter how much you avoid it.

The central principle of mindfulness is to look at things without judgment. As applied to depression, this means to just look at the various physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects as if you were just an outside observer. Adherents of mindfulness often speak of this as “The Watcher.” It is a wonderful practice that increases awareness of what is really happening.

Unfortunately, many claim that mindfulness leads to happiness.

Democracy depends on the public staying in tune with current events. However, the volume of news is now so great that no one can remain truly informed about every matter of importance. So although I acknowledge an ethical responsibility to educate myself about our society’s affairs, there will always be limits to my scope of knowledge.

It has recently occurred to me that I should therefore be selective in my reading and viewing. I’ve decided to seek out and absorb only stories of my own choosing, and to concentrate on issues that are within my power to affect. The alternative is to consume news haphazardly, so that what I hear is largely determined by news-reporting organizations.

The latter path is easy and popular. Turn on the television and watch the lead stories. Open the paper (or its website) and read what makes it into print, or what makes it to the front page. The problem with this tactic is that reporting agencies concentrate and perseverate on the most catastrophic news, all of which lies completely outside my control. Over and over the reporters describe an economy in terrible shape. Over and over videos display the oil blight in the Gulf of Mexico. Day after day the media report on our nation’s ruinous, futile wars and our corrupt, precarious stock market. Does it help me, or society, when I absorb this bad news every day?

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I mentioned in an earlier post that we can change the system by getting involved with all of the players. Here is an opportunity to talk with the media and get our stories told. I have been engaged with a reporter from NPR for some time and she is working on a story about hallucinations. She asked if I could help find more people to talk with and I suggested she write a note to readers of this blog. Her message is below:

In an earlier post, I praised Douglas Hofstadter’s vision of consciousness as a product of recursive and resonant self-reflection. The point of that essay was to highlight the profound value of observing one’s inner life: mindfulness brings one to the threshold of the sacred. Without in any way focusing on meditation, Hofstadter captures the essence of contemplative practice.

There are aspects of his philosophy that trouble me, however. In particular, I mentioned in passing that Hofstadter believes a computer could embody a self if it were sufficiently complex and possessed motivational drive.

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The following poem came out of a writing class assignment; we were told to aim for subversion. I write here often about acceptance, and this is my radical, satirical vision of it.

ACCEPTING THE HEART’S HARLOTS

I make this choice:
I luxuriate with my harem of heartaches.

Why not wrap arms around Grief?
She looks so hungry and pitiful with her empty hands,
And she never leaves me.

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Three decades ago, Douglas Hofstadter wrote his immensely popular and Pulitzer Prize earning book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. I never read it, because neither the graphic designs of Escher nor the recursive fugues of Bach resonate with me.

Now, after reading Hofstadter’s 2007 book, I Am a Strange Loop, I see that my narrow attitude deprived me of earlier exposure to the work of a remarkable mind (which makes me wonder how often negative and arbitrary judgments have so limited me). Hofstadter proves himself a creative philosopher, an incisive cognitive scientist, and a sensitive person who thinks deeply about our collective human experience.

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“Stability is not immobility.” – Klemens Von Metternich1 The mainstream meaning of stability in depression, mania, hallucination, and delusion is to be in remission of symptoms for an extended period with the goal of being symptom free forever.2 While I side with those who believe traditional tools including medicine and therapy are valid, I take issue with the goal itself. A stability that has us living a diminished life in fear of a relapse is only the beginning, not the end point, on the path from “disorder” to “in order.” If stability is the goal, we need to redefine what it means and how we measure it.