Depression: emotional and spiritual meaning

What depression is

Depression is more than a sad day. Medically it is a state of deep sadness, a moral pain, a loss of self-esteem and a slowing of body and mind. It often includes loss of interest, guilt, tiredness, and changes in sleep and appetite. It can follow a birth. A lighter, shorter slump, a day or a few days of discouragement, is not the same thing. A seasonal low mood in autumn and winter, with a strong need to eat and sleep, is its own pattern, tied to less light.

Depression is treatable. Talking therapies, medication when it is needed, and support all have a place. An emotional reading sits beside that care. It does not replace it, and it is not a reason to stop treatment.

The emotional meaning of depression

The source is precise. Depression, in this reading, is self-devaluation and guilt eating you from the inside. Both have to be there. Settle one of them, the devaluation or the guilt, and you are no longer in what the source calls depression. You feel miserable, less than nothing. You may feel guilty for being who you are.

A life lived backwards

You live in the past and struggle to leave it. The present does not exist. The future frightens you. Here and now is impossible. Current life leaves you indifferent. You would rather do nothing.

To avoid frustration, especially sexual frustration, desire itself is cut off. You do not want to take yourself in hand. Depression is often a decisive stage, adolescence is one example, because it forces a questioning. You want a different life at any cost, and you are torn between your ideals and what is real, between who you are and who you want to be.

Territory, air and invasion

The source places the root in territory: the space that feels like yours. People, animals, work, a house, the things that belong to your vital space. The conflict may be the fear of losing one element of that territory, a dispute on your ground, or something already lost that you blame yourself for, words said or acts done.

The phrases it hears are physical. "You are smothering me." "You are pumping the air out of me." "Give me air." There is also the difficulty of knowing what is yours alone and what belongs to others. People living this way are often very permeable. They feel everything around them, sensitivity doubles, and the entourage feels like an invasion. Everything is lived from very close, which spends energy. Even fighting feels pointless, because you would lose. Things get started and not finished. Nothing you do seems good enough. There can be a pull toward self-destruction.

Pressure makes this worse. Emotions are contained and buried. When the pressure is too much, depression sets in, and responsibilities get taken away. The pressure may come from parents, a partner, a boss, or from society: succeed, keep a reputation, look as if the marriage and the family have worked. The bar is set too high. One event pops the cork.

The link with the respiratory system, on this site, is that smothered, airless feeling. The link with the reproductive system is the postnatal reading below, not a claim that depression is a genital disease.

After a birth

Postnatal depression, in the source, can come weeks or even months after the birth. You feel discouraged, afraid you will not manage, and unsure how to get out. The baby may have filled an emptiness for a while. Then you are faced with yourself, with the solitude and the void. You do not believe in your own strength, so you cannot see how you will cope. Painful memories of your own childhood or birth can amplify it.

A shorter slump, and the dark season

The source distinguishes a passing slump: a day to a few days of disgust, weariness and discouragement. It also describes a seasonal depression in autumn and winter, when the days shorten. The need to eat and sleep grows, along with the symptoms of depression. Darkness recalls the dark sides of the personality, and the conflicts where you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. You feel like a victim, powerless. You fold in and stop communicating, even with yourself, so you will not have to question anything or take responsibility.

Children can be depressed too. The source notes that it is harder to see, and that a child who easily feels guilty, who thinks they are the cause of the family's problems or of their parents' couple, is at risk. That is never the child's job to carry.

A gentler way to hold it

The aim is not to blame yourself for being depressed, and not to treat this page as a cure. If you are in danger, get help first. The emotional perspective invites you to look at guilt, devaluation, and the territory that feels lost or invaded.

• Separate the two weights. Ask whether you are devaluing yourself, feeling guilty, or both. The source says both are required for this picture.
• Come back from the past. One present fact, looked at without the old story, is a beginning.
• Mark your space. What is yours, and what have you let others occupy until you cannot breathe?
• Rest before you rebuild. The source asks for good time, rest, and then one project at a time, finished before the next begins.
• You do not need approval to exist. Letting others live, and giving yourself room, is part of the way out it describes.