I think that too often, depression is lumped into a single category. Perhaps the things listed are valid during mild or moderate depression, especially that which stems from situational influences. At those times, rumination and reflection may indeed be a gift.

However, I think the author does not adequately address severe depressions, where those same ruminations may instead be about suicide. Severe depression is a different animal. Once the climb upwards is underway and the depression can be viewed as moderate or mild, the introspective qualities of depression may become helpful. However, the severely depressed person simply doesn’t fall into this category.

I think that romanticising depression is a dangerous game.

The idea is that humans have evolved to see life through rose-colored lenses. Humans are the only species with full consciousness of our mortality, & this unrealistic optimism allows us to cope with, or even ignore, the reality of death & invevitable loss. Non-depressives tend to believe they control their destinies, even control them completely.

People with active depression, on the other hand, lose that optimistic blanket & see the reality that life is (almost) totally out of our hands. The idea is that society needs this view, or it will charge headlong into rash actions based on that blanket of unrealistic optimism (the assumption, for example, that nukes could’ve ended Communism without destroying everything else on Earth).

The common reaction to depressive pessimism is to insist that we humans can indeed do anything, see what we want to see, etc. As comforting as this is to believe — & as necessary as it is to the sense of indivual value that helps keep us procreating — it isn’t true. The people who see that truth (& suffer from seeing it) act as a brake on optimistic stupidity.

That’s a big theory of the evolutionary value of depression, anyway.

The book explores the ways in which depression can be a gift that comes from an inner wisdom that is either telling you things you need to hear or influencing you in a way you need.

Depression can call you to your best life. Trying to suppress or squelch it can make things worse and keep you stuck.

Marie