And I like the clear-eyed appreciation of how that state works. I've succumbed, in the past, to the feeling that I'd overcome once and for all that state, and that I'd never think in that way again. — csalisbury

Same here. I've escaped for years at a time to be sucked back in to the whirlpool. It's been almost a year since the last bout. I had a variety of pills on hand to self-medicate. I did some very real and very gloomy writing. I still have it but haven't bothered to re-read it. I was cleaning out a dead woman's house, dealing with ashes of family (in-laws) literally and figuratively. And I was also temporarily unsure of who I wanted to be in the world. And there was (as there often is in such cases) a dream of purity (monk-like simplicity) that plays a role. Even marriage seemed like too much entanglement, even a good one. The will to purity is akin to the will to death, in my experience. Only the silence of the grave is pure.

Anyway, I worked through this last bout in just a few weeks thankfully. I remember worse cases lasting for maybe 2 months. I'd wake up thinking about suicide. Yet I'd keep my job and relationship intact. It was all or nothing. And I've always been too proud or stupid or cynical in such modes to seek any professional help. I insisted on interpreting my agony in terms of the universal human condition which I was heroically facing. And I was seemingly willing to die to maintain this fiction (?).

What I want to say is that the depressive state has to be met on its own terms. — csalisbury

I don't know how good the legal drugs work these days, but my unprofessional hunch would be that drugs are maybe necessary. At least for me the mood was just so thick and physical that it was all going on below ideology, even if an icy logic of suicide was a symptom. Indeed, I'd often get a little risky with substances in such states. While this isn't ideal, it often helped. One good party could wake up the will to the live. I guess I needed the others to connect to just as much, though. It's just that I needed the drugs to open me up again to what I already had in the others perhaps. I still haven't tried ecstasy, but I believe that was developed for therapy. To me that makes sense: jumpstart the will to live.

So the really good state wants to dance and exult and see the bad state as 'blindness' or 'confusion' that is over now that the truth is revealed. And the really bad state wants to see the good state as deluded and sugarcoating. — csalisbury

I generally agree, though the last time I was stricken I didn't stop believing in the good states. I knew that I was irrationally afflicted. I was self-consciously trying to reactivate my lust for life. It's all about the darkness of the future, perhaps. Is that darkness made of pure threat? Or is there enough promise in that darkness to embrace the threat? One falls out of love with life. Or that's how it is for me.

I'm not the type to dismiss ecstatic states, but I have been trying to figure out how to integrate them into my life. — csalisbury

Yeah, this is tricky. I'm not good at living in the middle. I'm not at all claiming that I live in a state of ecstasy. I mean I usually really approve of myself or I am really disgusted with myself. While there is a healthy or unhealthy-but-enjoyable narcissism involved, there is also a genuine lust/curiosity that directs me beyond myself when I am happy. (I assume this is pretty common: happiness as being on the hopeful chase.)

I'm sorry - I wasn't posting with the intent of upsetting you, but I can see how the way I responded was callous. I'm trying not to respond to the stories and thoughts of others with the same ' corrective' impulse I've used for a while, especially on here with philosophy, but thats just what I did, I think. — csalisbury

It was precisely that, yes. It is somewhat inflammatory to disagree with the interpretations of events or things people said in someone else's experience that you weren't even there for... that is a high level of causal distrust and dismissal. Unless someone is quite a dubious character, that attacks one's competence and integrity.

It's also important to point out that I never had any special experiences, I dedicated a lot of time and effort into cultivating something. Many years.

I’ve dealt with trauma and probably have my own defense mechanisms. My mother was under a lot of stress while pregnant with me due to my father’s alcoholism and infidelity. Her cortisol levels during pregnancy certainly predisposed me to feeling that the world was unsafe. I dealt with verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse as a child. It’s been difficult to get over, but I have finally found my peace, I think.

Schizoaffective disorder is somewhat manageable on high doses of medication, but the negative symptoms are still very much present. I find it much easier and I feel much more open with people who have been broken as well. However, I am very lucky to be married to someone with a master’s degree in counseling who understands trauma and mental illness. I would be lost without her.

I don’t have any advice, but I hope you see from the responses in this thread that you are not alone. I think reading all of your stories has been therapeutic for me and hope it has been for you, too.

I have some advice. Studies show (that's the new prefix to replace ,'And God said') that group singing is one of the very best activities for lifting depression. Join a choir, it might save your life. It's the group togetherness, it's the deep breathing, it's letting out some feeling beyond words, who cares, it works.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42431430

I have been meaning to start going back to church where group singing is acceptable even with a poor singing voice. Thanks for the advice.

On school of rock Gene Simmons upset all the little children by picking the kid with the most passion to be the lead singer, rather than the kid with the most pleasing, and refined sound.

I also like how when kids disagreed with him he pulled authority and was all like "I sold millions of records, did this, or that, and know what I'm talking about, and you don't", and the kid was like "so, I don't care!" and he felt like he'd lost that exchange, like he was the establishment against the rebel, and immediately wanted to change places.

Funny guy.

:)

https://medium.com/wordsthatmatter/why-trauma-is-the-word-of-the-year-e19c4d16e0b0

Excellent read.

The part that haunts me the most is this :

"The irony of trauma is that even though it happens so deeply inside a single person, so quietly and close to the bone, it is never personal. It is shared, and it is collective. You cannot keep it to yourself. It is handed from one person to the next like a strain of herpes or, if you like, a fruit cake gifted and regifted every year during the holidays. My father’s trauma becomes my mother’s trauma. My mother’s trauma becomes mine. Whose will mine become?"

That rings true to me. And it's scary. I read a book by a retired psychoanalyst who told the stories of various patients in a way that was a little bit like a collection of Chekhov stories (I have some mild ethical qualms about this, even with the secure identity-protection, but that's another topic.) One thing he talked about is how, when someone is unable to tell their story, they will (usually unconsciously) behave in ways that make other people relive it.

I'm as disturbed by this idea as I am convinced of its truth. The story will be told, despite one's best laid plans and good intentions. The two outlets I see are art and community (of conscious fellow-sufferers). Or both, as with the choir.

The tough thing is, as always : The fear of not really being able to do either ---the fear that the 'false self' will take the reins. And that I'll be the bloodied woman in a 1970s slasher flick running down the road, escaped, desperately flagging down a truck --- only to recognize, with horror, the driver.

I always get hung up on this last image or metaphor. It's been with me for a long time.

It's funny though. I've been reading Kalsched's book - there's a common theme in the therapeutic process where sufferers of trauma, just as they begin to open up, begin to have dreams of persecutory figures. These can be really dark. They usually involve a sadistic and powerful figure somehow hurting an innocent victim. The interpretation is that the psyche is staging a drama of vulnerability and its betrayal in order to set the patient's unconscious in line, to prevent that betrayal happening again in real life.

I've had many dreams like this. The one I remember most from childhood involves shadowy figures in a kind of police interrogation room forcing me to sit and watch a movie. In the movie, a person is being beaten, with chains. At the moment the person dies, the shadowy figure tells that me that his ghost is in the room watching me watch him die. I can feel the ghost come up behind me as I watch a video of his body dying. I must've been 9 or 10, but I can still remember this dream vividly. There's something to it of making me complicit in the murder.

So: very much in the vein of the other dreams Kalsched mentions. I wish I could remember what was going on in my life at the time.

Buut anyway, recently, I had another variant of this 'genre' of dream. And the way in which it varied gives me hope.

In the dream, I was talking to my therapist. I got really excited about some video I wanted to show him. We went over to his computer and both sat there as I pulled it up. I remember looking over at him, and seeing him brooding and thinking. Then, with a sort of clumsy deliberation, he reached over and grabbed me. He held me firmly and aggressively. And then he groped me. There was something comic about the groping. It was almost phoned in. A reach over and one quick squeeze. I was less scared than bewildered. The dream-therapist looked at me and said something like 'how are you ever going to trust me anymore?'

It was almost like that technique in parody where you sketch a scene that draws on a grand 'tradition' but you do it so literally and so free of nuance that it becomes absurd. Almost like the dream-figure was someone poorly cast in a role going : "ok, I know I'm supposed to do something like this, umm, was that good enough?"

My dreamself responded with a kind of shrug.

First as tragedy, then as farce?

I'm really glad some of my posts have been therapeutic for you. It's been good for me to write them out, but I've also worried about how helpful they are for others.

I'm happy to hear you're finding a way to make it work, and that you've had the good fortune to find someone understanding. That gives me some hope.

So much to say. I resonate with almost all of what you've said, including:

. At least for me the mood was just so thick and physical that it was all going on below ideology, even if an icy logic of suicide was a symptom. Indeed, I'd often get a little risky with substances in such states. While this isn't ideal, it often helped.

Though for me it was - and occasionally still is - alcohol. And sometimes adderall. But it was very much about doing whatever was necessary to get to a state where I could try to connect with others, at whatever cost. It does sometimes work, is the thing. I'm of two minds here.

Yeah, this is tricky. I'm not good at living in the middle. I'm not at all claiming that I live in a state of ecstasy. I mean I usually really approve of myself or I am really disgusted with myself. While there is a healthy or unhealthy-but-enjoyable narcissism involved, there is also a genuine lust/curiosity that directs me beyond myself when I am happy. (I assume this is pretty common: happiness as being on the hopeful chase.) — sign

As I've mentioned, I've been cautiously approaching St John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. In a very different mode than how I used to approach it (which was: I'm having a Dark Night. St. John talked about a dark night, and then talked about a higher joy. Therefore I'm close to that higher joy.) I also tend to oscillate between self-propelling self-joy and self-disgust. It's only becoming clear to me now that the real gem of the book is how it deals with the art(?) of integrating ecstatic and nonecstatic states. Of balancing being-close and being-far-away. He provides, in the very first chapters, an astounding typology of the vices that arrest spiritual progression. (Not the vices that prevent people from seeking the path of spirituality. The vices that attend those who have already decided to take that path.)

One of my favorite quotes so far in my rereading

There are others who are vexed with themselves when they observe their own imperfectness, and display an impatience that is not humility; so impatient are they about this that they would fain be saints in a day. Many of these persons purpose to accomplish a great deal and make grand resolutions; yet, as they are not humble and have no misgivings about themselves, the more resolutions they make, the greater is their fall and the greater their annoyance, since they have not the patience to wait for that which God will give them when it pleases Him.

I've been toying with another idea that the point of nonecstatic interludes is to fashion a soul or self that is able to retain the insights of the ecstatic moments without being disintegrated

Keats, again:
"The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is ‘a vale of
tears’ from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitary interposition of God and taken to
Heaven – What a little circumscribe[d] straightened notion! Call the world if you Please ‘”The
vale of Soul-making” Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the
highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for
the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say ‘Soul making’ Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence – There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions – but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.
I[n]telligences are atoms of perception – they know and they see and they are pure, in short they
are God – how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have
identity given them – so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence?
How, but by the medium of a world like this?"

Though for me it was - and occasionally still is - alcohol. And sometimes adderall. But it was very much about doing whatever was necessary to get to a state where I could try to connect with others, at whatever cost. It does sometimes work, is the thing. I'm of two minds here. — csalisbury

Indeed. It's tricky. Because I know a few people who have been just eaten up by substance abuse. I'm probably lucky in that I don't like alcohol that much without stimulants. And I am very slow to go scrounging for such stimulants (my nicotine gum and coffee vice is bad enough.) If I had just two weeks to live and could have whatever I wanted as a comfort, I might just include a pile of cocaine. I see drugs as heaven and hell, intensities of good and/or evil, re-humanizing and de-humanizing.

It's only becoming clear to me now that the real gem of the book is how it deals with the art(?) of integrating ecstatic and nonecstatic states. — csalisbury

'Art' seems like the perfect word.

I've been toying with another idea that the point of nonecstatic interludes is to fashion a soul or self that is able to retain the insights of the ecstatic moments without being disintegrated — csalisbury

I like this. It makes perfect sense to me.

How, but by the medium of a world like this?" — Keats via csalisbury

I love both quotes. Keats is offering a pretty good theodicy. It reminds me of early more spiritual Feuerbach. The 'species-essence' ('Christ') develops in billions of different ways. Its richness can only be manifest as a plurality of personalities if it is to be infinite. To me it's like finding the infinite in the finite.

What is a good party? I am there as me in my strangeness. Others are just as distinct, just as quirky. And yet we all love and value one another not only despite but mostly because of these differences which can surprise and delight us.

In the introduction to Thoughts Feuerbach assumes the role of diagnostician of a spiritual malady by which he claims that modern moral subjects are afflicted. This malady, to which he does not give a name, but which he might have called either individualism or egoism, he takes to be the defining feature of the modern age insofar as this age conceives of “the single human individual for himself in his individuality […] as divine and infinite” (GTU 189/10). The principal symptom of this malady is the loss of “the perception [Anschauung] of the true totality, of oneness and life in one unity” (GTU 264/66).
...
Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is

a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137) — SEP

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

Forgiving the 'species essence' language, which is dated, I enjoy that as something like the core of a spirituality of this world that doesn't hide itself away. It's not anti-flesh. It's not anti-sex. Indeed, the sex-death is central. Of course I think it would be terrible to interpret this as a kind of cheap anti-egoism that basically hates the human being. I believe that there is a healthy self-love that makes the love of others possible and sincere. To love the self in the right way is to love others in the right way and the reverse. Or that's what my guts tell me. I hope this isn't too much of a digression from the Keats quote.