Humiliation - the final insult
I have to admit I have been a little reluctant to write this final installment of my humiliation trilogy because I still feel pretty embarrassed about it. Many things I write about in this blog I have already struggled with and resolved in my heart or mind and can relate with little personal discomfort. Not so this final section on humiliation. It's not that it is such a big deal, or that my soul is still broken up over it, it's simply one of those humiliating circumstances that I remain embarrassed about even on reflection. I think there is a certain dignity or pride in a person that when circumstances advance in a particular direction it is only natural to feel humiliated even on reflection. So, with some trepidation, here goes.
I often wonder what people think happens to depressed persons when they are in one of their lows. I still wonder sometimes myself what happens to others facing depression even though I have lived many of the awful experiences that becomes the lot of the clinically depressed. I can't speak for anybody but myself in this blog but depression's effect on my life is not totally unique. When in depths of a major depressive episode, or when having a serious relapse, I personally lose all interest in, and motivation towards, my life and can not get out of bed. In those moments when I'm not quite at my lowest I might get to the toilet toilet or the loungeroom. If I have competing instincts flare up, like thirst or hunger, and they become less bearable than the state of depression I am in I find I get a motivational kick and I am able to address these appetites with a quick trip to the kitchen or pantry. But almost immediately afterwards, when the thirst or hunger is appeased, I am thrown back in the state demotivation and am all the more exhausted by the recently taken journey. And getting out of the house, even to the letterbox, isn't a remote consideration at these times.
Thankfully for me these extreme depths of depression last only a few days at a time now but I can still remember when it would last for weeks on end. Even now I can languish somewhere near the bottom for weeks at a time (just as I did in September and October) but I only tend to rest in the lower depths for three or four days at most. These last few days were not quite at the depths I am talking about here but it was still quite low.
Humiliation in these depths is personal. It has little to do with the illness or the soul (although these have their small place in it). It has more to do with human dignity and hygeine. Being stuck in one room of the house for most of a day, or for an entire week, is awful. In my September-October relapse I made it out of the house three times in two weeks (at the beginning and the end of the depths I had sunk in). I showered only three times in that period and felt clammy and sweaty for almost the entire time. A big day for me in that time, one that I could almost feel proud of given the state I was in, was spending time in the loungeroom as well as the bedroom and perhaps fixing my lunch before the drive to eat grew so much it compelled me to act against my underlying feelings. But it didn't extend to leaving the house or jumping in the shower - that was just too much activity to contemplate.
Being so helpless in my health that I conduct my life based on the most pressing drive or instinct - like an animal - is degrading. As a human I am capable of much more and need much more to be satisfied with my life than the bestial qualities the predominate when I am in the depths. As part of the humiliation I face in my depression this is the final insult as I can not reason away the shame I face because of it. This humiliation goes to the core of being human and I cannot avoid its sting.
An excercise for you:
I often wonder what people think happens to depressed persons when they are in one of their lows. I still wonder sometimes myself what happens to others facing depression even though I have lived many of the awful experiences that becomes the lot of the clinically depressed. I can't speak for anybody but myself in this blog but depression's effect on my life is not totally unique. When in depths of a major depressive episode, or when having a serious relapse, I personally lose all interest in, and motivation towards, my life and can not get out of bed. In those moments when I'm not quite at my lowest I might get to the toilet toilet or the loungeroom. If I have competing instincts flare up, like thirst or hunger, and they become less bearable than the state of depression I am in I find I get a motivational kick and I am able to address these appetites with a quick trip to the kitchen or pantry. But almost immediately afterwards, when the thirst or hunger is appeased, I am thrown back in the state demotivation and am all the more exhausted by the recently taken journey. And getting out of the house, even to the letterbox, isn't a remote consideration at these times.
Thankfully for me these extreme depths of depression last only a few days at a time now but I can still remember when it would last for weeks on end. Even now I can languish somewhere near the bottom for weeks at a time (just as I did in September and October) but I only tend to rest in the lower depths for three or four days at most. These last few days were not quite at the depths I am talking about here but it was still quite low.
Humiliation in these depths is personal. It has little to do with the illness or the soul (although these have their small place in it). It has more to do with human dignity and hygeine. Being stuck in one room of the house for most of a day, or for an entire week, is awful. In my September-October relapse I made it out of the house three times in two weeks (at the beginning and the end of the depths I had sunk in). I showered only three times in that period and felt clammy and sweaty for almost the entire time. A big day for me in that time, one that I could almost feel proud of given the state I was in, was spending time in the loungeroom as well as the bedroom and perhaps fixing my lunch before the drive to eat grew so much it compelled me to act against my underlying feelings. But it didn't extend to leaving the house or jumping in the shower - that was just too much activity to contemplate.
Being so helpless in my health that I conduct my life based on the most pressing drive or instinct - like an animal - is degrading. As a human I am capable of much more and need much more to be satisfied with my life than the bestial qualities the predominate when I am in the depths. As part of the humiliation I face in my depression this is the final insult as I can not reason away the shame I face because of it. This humiliation goes to the core of being human and I cannot avoid its sting.
An excercise for you:
- IMAGINE, lying helpless on your bed, waiting for thirst or hunger or the need to relieve yourself to outweigh the the need to lie uselessly on your bed. And the new drive comes, it builds, and you wait until you can bear it less than the drive to keep you where you lay and reluctantly you choose the path of least resistance and you make it to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Then what? You do what you have to and return to the bed glad the experience of activity is over. Now you can return to the nothing that you were unhappily (but satisfactorily) absorbed with before the drive to move you arose. And you lay there with your mind mostly blank (perhaps snoozing on and off which helps pass the time). And this continues for days on end, and then weeks.
Humiliation has been a key factor in my experience of depression. Whether it is the shame of the illness, the war on against soul, or the stripping of my human dignity, it is always there lurking in the darkness of depression.
posted by Blackdog at 1:14 PM
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