"Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that survives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory...Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you apalled." - Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
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Which came first - negative thought or depression? Should the depressed get rid of the thought, change perceptions, or treat the depression chemically to energize the process OR should the negative or depressed thoughts be acknowledged as just thoughts and allowed to drift by...noted but not bought? OR should one spend weeks or months in talk therapy or years in analysis? OR just learn to live in melancholic "dys"harmony? Who really knows? The data indicate...is not a "one size fits all" solution. Perhaps there is no real solution.
What puzzles me is how an usually optimistic outlook becomes derailed. I remember a children's story about a young train engine who finds a way to jump the track and run amok in the fields and is reprimanded by his elders when evidence of his departure from the expected norm is found on his wheels - the telltale grass. Now that was a random thought! I don't believe that feeling depressed is comparable at all. All I know for sure is that I'm there more often than not lately and I prefer to be back on track.
So what am I doing? Reading, reading, reading, seeking help, and doing my best to "fake it 'til I make it". I'm sleeping too much or too little, eating too much or not at all, exercising too little or too much, making plans with friends and canceling plans when my body acts up, trying to make sense of a senseless time. Will keep you posted on how this mind train is running - on or off the track. After writing this paragraph, I know why that random thought occurred - I'm "running amok"!
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