English Depression Thoughts

"Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat — it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a better sense of balance"

"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth"

"In the nineteenth century, ... official Western medicine recognized drapetomania , the tendency of slaves to run away from their owners, as a disease. ... With hindsight, drapetomania is easily dismissed as a harmful fabrication of fictitious disease, in a culture violating human rights. Less easy is it to recognize harmful fabrications of our own era for what they are."

"Analysis requires a lot of uninterrupted thought, and depression coordinates many changes in the body to help people analyze their problems without getting distracted. "Depression is creating a situation and believing you can't get out of it."

"More serious depression, or depression that is quickly getting worse, should be treated with medication. Antidepressants are not “uppers” and they have no effect on normal mood. They restore brain chemistry to normal"

"The soul uses everything to further its own making. … States which disrupt the smooth flow (complacency) of life are exactly what propel the soul to do its work: make soul, increase consciousness of itself. Our greatest disappointments and painful experiences—if we can make meaning out of them—can lead us toward becoming more of who we are"

"My profession of psychiatry still views depression purely as an illness. Insurance limitations have pushed many psychiatrists away from talk therapy and toward the more efficient prescription pad. So “there’s a lot of institutional and scientific investment in the exclusively disease model of depression. I’m basically telling colleagues they’re medicating people when they shouldn’t be. That’s not going to be welcome news"

"What, therefore, is the cause of your condition? What lies at the root of your malaise (as the Latins call it)? What leads to your sense of physical ill and to the gloom and depression with which you greet the world? Just the glamour of preoccupation— an intense preoccupation with yourself. If I should call this attitude " self-pity ," will you accept it and use your intelligent mind to reason yourself out of your impasse? p. 493"

"If you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream"

"Desolate—Life is so dreary and desolate— Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan— Holding and having its brief exultation— Making its lonesome and low lamentation— Fighting its terrible conflicts alone"

"The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance , enjoyment , and enthusiasm . Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness . You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance , enjoyment , or enthusiasm , look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others"

"I am cross and depressed, and people bore me with their excessive attentions. I can't breathe, I can't work; I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am surrounded. There are a whole lot of ladies, 70 to 80 year-old lords, but no young folk: they are all out shooting. One can't get out of doors because it has been raining and blowing for several days"