Grant: Embrace Your Suffering With Friendliness

By ELIZABETH GRANT, LPCC
Los Alamos

Depression is wretched, even traumatic for some. However, with practice, we can accelerate our rate of healing from a depressive episode and even transform its darkness into meaningful change if we cultivate a self-compassionate approach to our suffering.  

The recent Megan Markel interview illuminates one strong point regarding depression. Whether you live in a castle or a condo, no one is immune from depression. It’s a universal condition. When people in influential positions share their suffering, it helps to deflate the shame and stigma that exists with mental health issues. If we can let go of shame and approach our experience with self-compassion, we can begin to make headway into the healing and transformation of a depressive episode.

To begin with, one must understand depression in order to connect to the experience. The intensity and duration of the symptoms of depression span a broad continuum. The landscape of someone suffering with depression is infinitely bleak.

Imagine that you’re wearing sunglasses and all you can see is a dark hallway in front of you. Nothing holds any promise or spark. Occasionally, you see a window with a crack of light, but then the dark clouds drift in again and take you prisoner. You feel utterly helpless, leaden, dull, unable to move and at the same your mind is going full tilt with incessant chatter. You’re holding the experience of being exhausted and terrified simultaneously.

While depression might look like a sedate experience from the outside, internally, it’s a daily battle scene. Amidst all that internal chaos, simple decisions like “what’s for dinner” and a host of other day-to-day routines become unmanageable prospects. Your state of mind is on chronic overwhelm.   

Here are some ways that we can apply the self-compassion approach:

Approach your suffering with compassion. If you haven’t had permission to feel for your experiences, this will be a very meaningful challenge. You may think that you have to employ the inner-critic to make change, however this will result in graver paralysis and despair.   

Compassion isn’t about pity or resignation. It’s about acknowledging how hard it’s been to get through the days and offering yourself the same nurturance that you might offer to someone that you care about if they were suffering. It’s about seeing yourself as someone that needs so much more love than judgment right now.  

Think of a person whom you love a great deal and ask yourself “What would you do if they were suffering?” Would you take them for a short walk, play a song, make them a cup of tea or help them get a few dishes done? Ask yourself this question daily: “How can I love myself today?”  

Watch your stinking thinking.  The greatest assault weapon of all is depression’s propensity for faulty reasoning which turns into self-loathing and self-flagellation. There’s a persistent voice in your head that says things like “it’s always going to be like this, you’re a burden or you’re always going to fail at relationships.” I like to say “depression is your brain on deception.” 

In order to avoid the negative self- talk trance, you have to become a referee of sorts where you call out your critical thinking. Negative thoughts will persist and at times it will feel like stopping a high-speed train. But when you recognize these thoughts you can breathe mindfully and say “these are my thoughts under the influence of depression. I will not entertain or feast on any thoughts that do not support my recovery.”  

I had a minster who referred to the negative thought process this way, “I am not going down that dark alley, it’s in a crummy neighborhood and there are no cops on duty.” This is a solid approach because if you walk down the dark alley, it’s like you’re swallowing the depression Koolaid. The more you drink it, the more you believe it.  

Don’t try to talk yourself out of your depression. Often times people will minimize or deny their pain, thereby creating more suffering. Imagine telling someone who is greatly distressed “It’s no big deal. You need to just get over it. You should be grateful.” Such advice is not comforting; it feels totally invalidating and creates more helplessness.  

The act of self-love in this case is to take our pain seriously. My graduate school mentor used to say “Things can’t change until they are allowed to be what they are.”  This has been one of the most powerful bits of advice for me in my personal and work life. It’s our resistance to what is that creates more pain.  Acceptance is about facing it instead of denying it. A popular 12-step slogan that I use when I am struggling with resistance is “Acceptance is the answer to all my prayers.”   

Isolation is fertilizer for depression.  

When you’re depressed you feel compromised and that makes it difficult to want to expose yourself to others. The problem is that isolation allows depression to get a hold of your airwaves and it convinces you that you’re the depression rather than a person suffering from a depression.  

All psychic pain is an invitation to go deeper in your love for yourself and in this case, it means exposing yourself despite the agony of doing so. See if you can find someone who can be supportive about your struggle. If you live with others, tell them you need their support and that you want them to help you stay engaged in some way. Keep it simple.  

Ask for help- You don’t have to slay this beast alone. We are relational beings and we heal in relationships. The idea is that another can hold the flashlight of hope for you until you can feel it in yourself.   

You don’t have to understand things or reveal things in order to say that you’re not okay. Maybe you can’t describe exactly what you’re feeling or point to why you’re feeling so low. But you can convey that you’re not feeling well to someone and that you need support.   

Remember, this too shall pass.  With treatment, I stand firm on this statement. I would not work in the world of psychotherapy if I didn’t see phenomenal outcomes both personally and professionally with treating depression. I understand however that when you feel like every day is a fight it can feel like that’s all there will ever be. As an exercise, one of your self-care activities can be to say this slogan over and over again while breathing in and connecting to your body and to any emotional sensation. “This too shall pass. “     

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” Victor Hugo.

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