egly@hplred.HP.COM (Diana Egly) (01/16/90)
A voice replies from under a pile of coats... As I speak, I disentangle myself from the nest where I've obviously been napping... Ah.... The healing powers of sleep are not to be disregarded... Taldin, I'm glad that you've talked about your way of looking at and considering suicidal feelings. We need to be reminded that different ways work for different people -- to be able to respond more fully to human diversity. Perhaps we also should talk about our different experiences of depression -- because different people do experience differently. I'm glad that logic has worked for some people here at Callahans in overcoming their suicidal feelings. I'm glad that doing the illogical -- setting suicide as a goal to be considered -- works for you. It sounds like for you the crux of the matter is in the question "does the good that I can do outweigh my feelings of worthlessness?" Now, I rarely have feelings of worthlessness when I'm depressed. I can't recall (nor find in my journals) an instance of having a lack of self-esteem as a factor in my considerations of suicide. So for me, your question boils down to "Does the good I am able to do -- am likely to do if I continue living -- outweigh or compensate for the pain and anguish that I am currently feeling?" Usually the answer to that is yes -- the good that I beleive that I can do is more significant than my personal pain. But, for me, when my depression deepens and the anguish becomes more intense, this ceases to be a useful way of looking at the situation. Because I've learned that the pain can become bad enough that I will do almost anything to make it stop -- including suicide. When that happens, a better question to look at is whether the anguish is related to whatever my current set of problems are or whether it's not. To what degree the anguish I feel results from being depressed. This is not a question that we normally ask. Normally we think of depression as being a response to our problems and we are encouraged to do this. We look for a cause for our depression. But life is never so simple as we would make it. Depression can and does happen when there is no discernable environmental cause for it. Or so it has been for me. The pity of it all is that when I am depressed, when I am feeling this kind of anguish, I look for environmental causes. In so doing, I forget to ask myself just how much contribution the environmental causes are making to the depression. I forget to compare and contrast my current depression with previous experiences of depression and with other forms of depression. I forget that looking at the depression itself may be the most important thing I can do -- that the suicidal feelings, the pain and anguish, the current set of problems and difficulties, the memories of past pain and distress, can be mere distractions, symptoms rather than causes. And I forget that they will subside -- will mysteriously vanish into thin air -- once the depression is under control (in those cases where the depression is not situational.) When I forget these things, it often helps to be reminded. Now this is likely a different experience of depression that many of you have had. That's part of the marvel of being human -- so many differences, so many ways of being. May we learn to be gentle with each other and with ourselves. Diana egly@hplabs.hp.com