Impatient with depression {Dark night of the soul (12)}

When I am depressed, the same sentiments as many depressed people echo in my head:

“Please don’t try to cheer me up. You are invalidating a very real emotional experience of mine. It is mine to own, not yours to deny or take away or solve or fix. My personal failures depress me, and your prompts to cheer up – no matter how subtle or disguised with gentleness – are veiled confirmation that I am failing, that my state is a ‘bad’ or a ‘wrong’ that I must escape. Your impatience with my depression is fueling my own impatience with my depression. And that’s depressing.”

I have not enjoyed, cherished, or savored my lowest moments. Yet, efforts to abate them all failed. The state was all mine, and nothing would remove it. Nor would anyone else. All my attempts and all the efforts of others to remove the state were evidence that it could not be. Something deeper with great power signaled that I could not make life as I wished, but that life would now instead show *me* what is to be wished for. That is the enforced dark night of the soul.

“Neil, if you insist on clinging to the identities that you’ve falsely assumed to give you power, and you continue to insist that only something external can rescue you, then those falsities will be exposed as powerlessness. Your true power is there in the darkness. Wander within it until you stumble upon the foundation of your real power…”

Here are excerpts of a wonderfully different way to express the deep-rest of the depressed, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-healing-work-of-community-and-service-2023-05-24/

“…the hard parts of my life are not failure. They are evidence…”

“Womanist theologian and pastor Dr. Monica Coleman writes openly about her experience…:
…I had to detach myself emotionally from everything just to keep from crying all the time… It took all my energy to get up and get dressed and be there and not cry through the day…
Revelation did not come to me in thunderbolts. God was just there… In the knitting. God was in my uniform rows of stitches. God was also in the dropped stitch that created an imperfection.… Whether it feels like it or not…God is making something new. Something beautiful…
I was knitting God into the hat and scarf. No. God was knitting me. With therapists, medication, …and a name for my condition… God was knitting me back together…
I don’t want to be reduced to my symptoms and diagnosis… I am learning the difference between captivity and rest, between an illness and a condition. There’s nothing wrong with me. After all, this is the only me I’ve ever known. But sometimes I need to slow down, check to see if I’m okay; look at the emotional heap of yarn in my lap, undo a few rows, and try again. I need to know that the things I drop, the things I can’t do the way I want, the hard parts of my life are not failure. They are evidence that I’m human.”
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And the deep, deep gift of being human is not to be discovered in shallow places.

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Neil D. 2023-05-29
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What is “Dark night of the Soul?” Almost always misused and misunderstood. See Dark Night of the Soul (0) – Resources & Recommendations

The only constant is change

What is “a river”? Course changing constantly, yet it remains that river. Levels rise and fall, flow speeds and slows. Tiny pebbles moved we call sediment. Large immovable stones we call its bed. Yet we wouldn’t say “the river” is its bed. “The” river is its soul. Bed, flow, ups and downs.

Neither happiness nor health nor this moment are sustainable. If you hope for any one of those, they may come, but not because of your hope: You do not hope for sadness, but that too will come again. What is constant among these changes? You. You are the river. Changing and constant, all at once. Put your hope in your self. Put your belief in your self. You are enormous.

A famous Frenchman is rumored to have quipped:

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

So, see…

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2023-04-21 Neil D.

Dark night of the soul (11) – “You will be OK.” Even your ego.

[2.5 minute read]

“You will be OK.”
“You are a good person.”

I believe these two expressions to be the very best things trusted love ones can say in the midst of suffering grief.

“It gets better.”
“You will get stronger.”

I believe these may be the worst. Things get better, until they get worse again. And they will. So hearers beat themselves up even more, and feel weaker – not stronger. Such well-meaning encouragement gets resented, then habitually rejected as hollow lies.

I suggest encouragement be left at, “You are a good person,” because even that is an obviously questionable generalization. I don’t believe an honest person believes they are good all the time, in all ways – especially in the midst of suffering grief. The truth sets you free, not belief in impossibilities – the opposite of truth.

Now, to turn to, “You will be OK…”

You can be OK even through the next adversity. You can be OK even knowing that sometimes you are not so good.

It is ego which longs to see your flawed humanity as better, stronger, more independent. You certainly will NOT be OK if you continue to hear only your ego. Grief and suffering – if you do not run from them or deny them – lead to hearing your full self more fully, don’t they?

You are immersed in a dark night of the soul because the monkey-chatter of your ego voice has proved insufficient for the full you.

Denial is fueled by ego chatter. When your fuller being burns out that fuel, the world seems dark. Ego-talk recedes from your attention, so the full you is freer to hear gentler whispers from your soul. That is what makes the dark night, OF your soul.

“You will be OK,” because the full you is always OK. You will be OK only as you come to believe that you are so much more than your ego. Quite ironically, even your ego can then be OK, knowing it is an unthreatened dimension of your fully being human.

Anxiety stems from the undeniable powerlessness of your ego – which cannot control the world. Your ego cannot even control the full you, nor must it – quite a relief to your limited ego.

You will be OK, as you come to believe you are. Whether better or stronger in one moment, or worse and weaker in another, you are enormous. Full. Complete. That doesn’t vary.
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Neil D. 2023-04-17

What is “Dark night of the Soul?” Almost always misused and misunderstood. See Dark Night of the Soul (0) – Resources & Recommendations

To my subscribers, the most viewed article is…

Thank you for your interest in FeelWithNeil. Very much. It began in late 2019, it’s now April 2023, and 3,900 visitors have viewed 8,970 pages.

The #1 viewed article (viewed more than twice as many times as #2):
“Brené Brown & Richard Rohr on Power” from August 14, 2021.

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Neil D. 2023-04-09

Einstein mis-quote on solving problems and levels of consciousness, thinking, awareness

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
[NOT Albert Einstein]

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“…a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”
[Albert Einstein, May 25, 1946, The New York Times]

The first quote is thrown around, but he never wrote it. It’s a paraphrase of the second, actual quote, from a very intriguing context about his fear of nuclear annihilation, “ATOMIC EDUCATION URGED BY EINSTEIN; Scientist in Plea for $200,000 to Promote New Type of Essential Thinking.” (https://www.nytimes.com/1946/05/25/archives/atomic-education-urged-by-einstein-scientist-in-plea-for-200000-to.html). The paraphrased sentence is:

“We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”

For more wonderful quotes misattributed to Einstein: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Albert_Einstein#Unsourced_and_dubious/overly_modern_sources

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Neil D. 2023-03-29

“I’m not perfect, but…”

Has not your greatest suffering emerged from your greatest relating-ships? Your closest acquaintances?

When you share your exhaustion, frustrations, and suffering with them, and all they can offer is simple fixes, simple quips or platitudes… You weren’t looking for answers, so it insults you. To be trivialized (or worse, dismissed or rejected) by our closest loved ones is easily the most painful.

Now, reflect on that, and reflect that – meaning, isn’t that the same for them?

Can you not bear the possibility that you have been the deepest source of suffering for your loved ones? Does that not seem preposterous to you?

“Well, no, Neil, I’m not perfect, but…”

That implies you are more perfect than your loved ones; might I ask, if they are so inferior, so imperfect, why are [were] they your loved ones?

Good night, loved ones 🙂

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Neil D. 2023-03-23