Last night during some deep anthropological discussions, the subject of depression came up.
“Depression is the incongruence between creations of your mind and soul, and the creations you are manifesting in the material world.” Lauren explained. “A depressed person feels as if their mind is disconnected from their emotions and from their body. One’s feelings take over their body and although their mind might be wanting one thing, their energy levels prevent them doing it. It’s like the disconnection felt by a person who’s had a stroke… It seems to come down to a loss of hope.”
I know I’ve talked about depression when I was feeling down and lost, but my self-diagnosis may have been a little over the top. I might eat when I’m emotional or annoyed – as a “fuck you” to myself – but I’ve never been unable to get up in the morning and I’ve never lost hope in humanity and life. I guess there are different degrees of everything.
Western societies today have the greatest rates of depression than ever before. Why?
When I woke up this morning after a night of processing all we had discussed, something dawned on me… my last entry was wrong:
NOT ALL of us live by a narrative of peace.
And what happens when we don’t? I guess our minds might travel down a narrative of destruction. A narrative that affirms in our minds that nothing is going to get better. Depression being a possible consequence.
I guess the thing about narratives is that they do change over time – a narrative of destruction can turn into a narrative of peace. How? I’m not really sure. I guess that’s what I’ll look at in my phd if I do it.
One thing I know for sure is that I’m loving narratology already. Simply the idea of interpreting the world and our minds as different narratives seems to provide so much opportunity for understanding. And I haven’t even read a book on it yet!
