Last month Erica was away for a week.\u00a0 On the Tuesday when I would have seen her, I woke up depressed.\u00a0 It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve been depressed in a long time.\u00a0 It gave me a chance to differentiate \u201cdepressed\u201d from other similar states.\u00a0 When I\u2019m depressed I feel without hope, that there\u2019s nothing I can do to change things, and that I\u2019m held down by a weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cApathy\u201d is something I began to pay attention to when someone told me that a baby gets apathetic when left alone too long.\u00a0 I feel without motive and without energy.\u00a0 I need someone from outside to get me moving again.<\/p>\n
\u201cExhaustion\u201d is something I have ignored most of my life.\u00a0 My parents would say things like \u201cHow can you be tired?\u00a0 You haven\u2019t done anything.\u201d\u00a0 So I would tell myself I\u2019m lazy and cowardly, and push myself way beyond what I could reasonably do.\u00a0 It\u2019s still hard for me to take care of myself when I\u2019m tired.\u00a0 The first time I got a hint that I habitually go past what is reasonable or healthy was in a yoga class at Kripalu.\u00a0 They told us to get into a posture, to push or stretch until we could feel our muscles straining, and then to back off a little and breathe.\u00a0 They talked about the “zone of tolerance\u201d as the space between relaxing and pushing too hard.\u00a0 It was the first time that I realized that I habitually push too hard.\u00a0 Learning to back off has been a long and interesting challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespair\u201d is when I feel that nothing I can do will make any difference.\u00a0 Unlike apathy, I still care about whatever is happening that I want to change.\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel heavy or complete lack of energy, and despair can certainly be a drain on energy.\u00a0 But mostly despair is when the difficulty is too big, or something I\u2019ve tried to change many times.\u00a0 Sometimes what I\u2019m trying to change is my own state of mind \u2014 trying to change depression does not work, can even make it worse.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s a tendency to judge myself for \u201cnot really wanting to change\u201d or \u201cholding on to depression.\u201d\u00a0 I think those two judgements are a pernicious result of a culture that teaches us to blame people for their difficulties.\u00a0 Sometimes what I want to change is something going on in the world, like the degradation of the environment.\u00a0 I do everything I can.\u00a0 My car is a hybrid, a Prius, and I drive more slowly than most people do.\u00a0 Currently I am getting over 60 miles per gallon.\u00a0 I recycle as much of my waste as I can, sorting out plastic, metal, glass, paper, putting vegetable matter in a compost pile.\u00a0 I live at the top of the watershed, and my well gets 25 gallons per minute, but I use as little water as I can.\u00a0 I have a wood stove, and backup propane heat, and I keep the thermostats in the low sixties.\u00a0 I also have a solar panel that generates electricity, and solar hot water.\u00a0 That\u2019s about as much as I can do without more help from the community.\u00a0 What I can do makes such a tiny dent in the problem that I\u2019m sometimes tempted to quit making the effort.\u00a0 But I keep doing it as a kind of prayer.<\/p>\n
“Grief” feels like a softening, it flows instead of being stuck. \u00a0Grief is the act of letting go. \u00a0When I started to let myself grieve<\/a>, I didn’t get depressed. \u00a0Grief can be hard to get to. \u00a0Often I’m not able to feel it until I start to tell someone else about what I feel or why I’m sad\/depressed\/discouraged etc…<\/p>\n Typing up from a month ago, I find the seed of that post:<\/p>\n I used the word \u201chopeless\u201d and Karen produced her usual rejoinder \u201cThat\u2019s a thought not a feeling.\u201d\u00a0 I said yes it is a feeling.\u00a0 She asked \u201cWhere do you feel it in your body?\u201d\u00a0 like my ribcage is full of concrete, I\u2019m being weighed down, held down.\u00a0 Apathy, tiredness, depression and grief.\u00a0 Apathy is having no motivation, tiredness is having motivation but no energy.\u00a0 Depression is having no motivation, no energy, and being held down, weighted down.\u00a0 It is hard and stuck.\u00a0 Grief is a softening into a process, grief moves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month Erica was away for a week.\u00a0 On the Tuesday when I would have seen her, I woke up depressed.\u00a0 It\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve been depressed in a long time.\u00a0 It gave me a chance to differentiate \u201cdepressed\u201d … Continue reading