The Courage to Be Yourself: A Woman's Guide to Emotional Strength and Self-Esteem by Sue Patton Thoele

Author:Sue Patton Thoele
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781609253585
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Published: 2001-05-01T03:00:00+00:00

DEPRESSION

Depression is the classic disease of women. Change two letters and instead of depression you have expression. If we don't express what we're feeling—what's bugging us—in a constructive, healing manner, very often the result is depression: the way women weep without tears.

Depression is like a fog that settles over us, limiting our ability to see what we're really feeling. Often when we're depressed there's something we need to do about a particular situation, and we're afraid to do it.

Some kinds of depression are normal. When we experience a loss, a setback, or a shattered dream, it would be unnatural not to feel a bit depressed. But most depression, and certainly chronic depression (unless due to a chemical imbalance), is a sign that we have turned our unwanted feelings against ourselves and are avoiding something. Often, that “something” is anger.

In the psychology trade, there's an old cliche: depression is inverted anger. That's more or less true, but depression can also be inverted anything else. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up it was not okay for me to express anger. In our family, we denied that anger existed. I felt it, in myself and coming from my parents and sister, but we did not acknowledge it. We kept it locked out of sight, where it got bigger and bigger.

I remember giving in to anger once as a teenager and swore within hearing distance of my mother. Looking back, I feel it was reasonable anger and worthy of a good shout and a swear word or two. But the punishment for expressing my anger in that way was being forbidden to attend a dance that I had looked forward to. Also, Mother didn't speak to me for the rest of the day. So I learned to invert my anger to avoid rejection and punishment.

In order to save ourselves from the purgatory of disconnection we may have learned that:

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