While listening to a rerun of Tuesday's Prom and attempting to make a company form look elegant using nothing but Excel, I have been pondering feelings.
We take it for granted, but moods can be very mixed and complex. In my current circumstances, I am aware of a background guilt that I feel OK, of feeling bad that I feel good, of awareness of sadness overlaid with the knowledge that it isn't the most important thing. That's quite a muddle of positive and negative, and I wouldn't mind betting that many people know exactly what I mean.
One very firm anchor in my emotional life is the memory of what it is like to be truly depressed. I can recall being unable to do anything but lie in bed and leak tears, and I would probably have been unable to move even for a fire that threatened the house. During emotional times, that remains the benchmark, and almost any mood becomes bearable by comparison. Anything, in the ordinary way, is susceptible to action, and the feelings trail along behind the thoughts, which are pulled by a program of things to do.
What I have learned is that circumstances and emotions are only loosely connected. If, as I have experienced, it is possible to feel utterly miserable without ever finding a single thing to point to that could justify the black depths, then it must be possible to maintain a positive mood in dark hours. And it is, at least as far as I have tested the theorem. It's a shocking realisation that something (in my case, I strongly suspect some food component) can reach into one's head, into what is considered the self, and alter the dials, but that, crudely, is what happens in both depression and mania. The upside is that one can learn to nudge those dials a little oneself.
Dragging in a brethren connection, it is striking that religion doesn't seem to help much in such cases. I remember one brother who used to say with monotonous regularity, often to someone with a wife who had severe depression, that it wasn't christian to stay depressed. Then his own son was struck down by the same thing, and he was gracious enough to admit that he had been wrong, and that the official brethren doctrine that depression is a health issue was actually correct. As such, for brethren, it requires treatment, not priestly care. Religious faith, like anything else, can become a hollow shell acknowledged in the mind but unfelt beneath that, when undermined by depression.
Just to be clear, I am not feeling anything like that now, and nor have I for some time. And that proves beyond all doubt that difficult times and difficult moods do NOT have to go together.
Anyone who wants the soundtrack to this post can find it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2007/promsbroadcast/radio.
5 comments:
It would be interesting to compare the incidence of depression in EB with that of the general population. It sounds as if Cousin Roger has enlightened the EB leadership on the subject.
The subgect of your post is my professional stock in trade. As with all areas of the mind and soul mood and it's disorder is extremely complex but we humans as always struggle towards making it understandable.In practice the line between what we might call clinical depression and exisential angst is difficult to draw.I'm sure that for many people religious faith actually is a powerful part of the armamentarium against depression but I also think it wise of the brethren to acknowledge the biological component.Thanks for the music site; you illustrate beautifully the link between music and mood as well.
In my study back in 1993 the incidence of depression in my sample of just over 200 former brethren was higher than in the general population - that was a UK sample. Also higher was anxiety and a few other things.
That was a while ago of course and my sample may well have been biased. I should really repeat the study with a much larger sample. I would also like to look at the incidence of PTSD among former brethren.
For some while I've been concerned about older Brethren women who may be truly bereft, and stranded in a kind of domestic emptiness, once their (many) children have left home.
I met one such woman yesterday at the 'Sacred' exhibition at the British Library (ends September 23rd). She seemed surprised that I identified her as Brethren, but we chatted and she agreed to let me buy her a cup of coffee in the café. She told me that she was enjoying filling her days by visiting Museums and Art Galleries. At the Library's exhibition she had been amazed at the New Testament papyri. She commented that she had never thought about them before, and she asked lots of questions about the early manuscripts.
As an aside, I met a very excited, large EB family in London's Science Museum last month. Perhaps this take-up of opportunites to get out and about a bit more will help to ease low spirits within the fellowship.
I hasten to say that my comments are based on my own experience and observations, and are not professional in the least.
I can't say I'm at all surprised that there is a higher incidence of depression among ex-brethren. What would be particularly interesting would be to compare that with the rates among those who stay, and to try and tease out the cause and effect. Are they more likely to get depressed because of the life before or after leaving, or are the depressed elements more likely to leave?
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