RE: Psychology Addict # 25 | Depression through the lens of CBT & the case study of Mr. B.
Thank you, Abigail Dante, for another wonderful article in which I see myself as in a mirror. :D
I want to answer your last question, but before I tell you what you think just to tell you that I suffer from depression for a long time. First was the social phobia and then come the depression. :D There are periods in which I don't go out for months, but when I do it, I crash mentally and have panic attacks like friends :D I have tried to heal, I've been to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, but there was no effect. After living with these grim feelings and inner anguish, almost half of my life, I turn to the past and ask myself: why should I avoid them? If I don't have this problems, I would not be the person I am now. I was not going to make the things I do. I would not create music, I would not write stories and plays, I would not be so interested in literature and all kinds of things related to the spiritual. I was going to be a superficial and ordinary man with ordinary work and ordinary life. Depression has created a depth in me, which is my source of inspiration, and to be tortured by this suffering I am giving birth to something of value. That's why I want to dive into the deep with them, not to escape the pain, that is what makes me a meaningful person. I have read an interview with the absurd playwright Eugene Ionesco, who you know, writing a lot of irrational and fantasy stuff. According to him, the psychologists will find some neuroses in him that need to be treated, but that neurosis make Ionesco great. Yes, certain people need to be treated, those who can't take advantage of their depression and crash them completely, but there are cases when the depression is the cure itself. Thank you once again for this article, and I am glad that you will not mention Jung and Freud so much and expanding my psyche in psychology. :D
All the best. :)
Dearest @godflesh, it is always a pleasure reading your writings! Your comment fascinates me in so many levels. But this particular part just made me smile a smile of admiration and respect for you:
It reminded me of an old professor of mine, who used to criticize both BTC and Psychoanalyses. He would raise these very point. He had depression, but very much like yourself, at one point he began to embrace it as something that actually made part of who he was: an insightful, educated man (just like you).
Thank you for writing your personal experience here. I am sure that it's going to open A LOT of closed minds and also inspire those of us who struggle to accept the inevitable, unavoidable difficult feelings that this life present us with!
All the best to you always! :)