DEPRESSION INCIDENT
Helen wriggled on her bed. She couldn’t sleep. The time was four o’clock in the morning and three hours earlier she had abruptly awakened. Her mind started immediately spinning to the events of the previous day, in this conversation with her provost. This time, however, there was also someone who was commenting what had happened: her own inner voice, which bombed her with a bunch of critical questions:
“Why should I present it this way? I must have appeared to him very silly, dumb. And what did he mean when he said that my performance is satisfactory?- but not good enough to warrant a raise? And Maria’s department, what has it to do with the presentation? This is my own job…for now, at least. Maybe that’s it what he meant when he said he wants to evaluate the process of my work? Maybe he thinks assigning the task to someone else. I knew that my presentation wasn’t good enough –not only I won’t get a raise, but I might also loose my job. I should have foreseen it…”
Helen couldn’t go back to sleep. When the alarm clock finally rang, her thoughts had advanced: the place of despair from the alleged dismissal took the dead end in which she and her children would reach, if she were forced to find another job. She stood up from her bed in a bad mood and headed with difficulty to the bathroom. Already, she mentally saw her rejecting from a possible job in another.
“It is not their fault. I can’t figure out why I always feel so miserable. Why everything suffocates me? Everyone else seems to be doing quite fine. I guess I just can’t cope with work and home at the same time. What was that my foreman yesterday told me?”
Her mind started to play the same “tape” over and over again.
George hadn’t sleeping problems. Rather the opposite. He found it hard staying awake. We can watch him sitting in his car at the parking of the company in which he works, feeling the burden of the day tie him up the car seat. His body is heavy, like a pencil. The only thing he manages is to untie his seatbelt. He sits motionless, clogged, failing to gasp the handle of the door, open it and go to his office.
Perhaps it would help him thinking back on the program of the day… this always had worked. Not today. Every appointment, every meeting, every phone call he has to make bring him a knot in his throat and with every effort to swallow, his mind removes from the agenda of the day and focuses on the question that torments him every morning:
“Why do I feel so awful? I have almost everything- a loving wife, great kids, safety at work, a beautiful home… What is happening to me? Why can I not impose to myself? And why is this constantly happening to me? Chara and the kids are tired of seeing me always like this. They won’t tolerate me for much longer. If I could find out what is happening to me, things would change. If I knew why I am feeling so bad, I would solve the problem and I would continue my life as everyone else. What is happening to me is totally absurd.”
The only thing Helen and George want, is to feel happy. Helen contends that there are happy moments in her life, they just don’t last. Something causes her panic, and incidents which she ignored in the past, today are causing her despair, before she even realizes what’s happening. George has his happy moments too- he describes them as periods that feature the absence of pain, than the presence of joy. He has no idea what makes this undefined pain to relent and then return. The only thing he knows is that he can’t remember the last time he head fun, laughing with his family or his friends.
As the imagery of unemployment come after one by another in Helen’s mind, a deep fear that she won’t be able to do what she must for herself and her children, lurks at the edge of her mind. Not again, does she think while she sighs. I clearly remember what happened when she found out that Dimitris was cheating on her and she throw him out of the house. She had of course felt sadness and anger, and humiliation too because of his behavior. He had cheated on her and she felt to “lose” the battle to save their relationship. Afterwards, she felt trapped as a single mother. At the beginning she showed courage- for the sake of her children. At the beginning everybody around her supported her, however, it came a moment where she thought she had overcome him. She could no longer ask for the help of her friends and relatives. Four months later, she felt more and more depressed and melancholic, she lost her interest in the children choir she was directing, she couldn’t concentrate at work, and she felt guilty, because she thought she was a “bad mother”.
Helen and George suffer from depression.
- Helen started psychotherapy and in the space of two months she saw improvement and within months she rediscovered herself and of course her self- confidence.
- George started pharmacotherapy for depression and within a little while he began to feel better. Now he has fun with his wife and his children and derives great joy and pleasure.
- An important step of the therapeutic process is to keep in touch with the dark sides of ourselves, the sides who we have denied out of fear, renounced or oppressed.