It’s just one word, but it says so much. DREAD. Anyone who’s been there knows the instant terror that overtakes the moment. Worse, because NOBODY can feel it like you feel it, in that it floors and disables you, it can leave others mystified at best and condemning of you at worst.
A whole hour of dread is enough to make a person wonder what happened to make the day fall into such a hole. A whole day of it leaves a person shattered and debilitated. And unfortunately, that dread can linger for days and longer leaving a person in absolute despair, really to the point that a full-blown depression manifests in the inability to do anything—even the smallest things are like massive mountains to climb.
When I talk in terms of situational depression, I really am talking loss, but it’s not always the traditional losses that we grieve so much that cause us to be depressed for a time.
Sometimes it’s losses like a dream you’ve lived that’s gone, or one that’s passed you by, and therefore reality is constantly tinged with an unavoidable sorrow that expresses itself in complaint, bargaining or anger (or combination thereof). In this place, you can’t reconcile that there’s nothing you can do. Everywhere you look it’s hard. Dread!
Until you’ve been there, that deep in dread that you can’t climb out, people don’t see how callous they are in telling people in it to get a grip. I know, it can be so frustrating when it looks like a person’s making every excuse under the sun to make life difficult for you.
Just imagine how it is for the person who isn’t lying or pretending or chickening out. Imagine for a moment that what they’re saying is real.
Sometimes losses loom larger than Everest and panic overwhelms you. How on earth did the bottom fall out of hope, where fear rides high and steals away every capacity for peace? I recall the season long ago where I suffered a series of seven scary panic attacks over a month or so—you only need to experience one of these to fear the next one for a very long time, even if it never comes.
It’s from depression that you’ll learn you’ll do anything to climb out of it—when, and if only, you’ve got the energy and confidence to do so. You’ll try faith if it’ll give you a leave pass to joy, hope, and peace, and especially so if there’s someone who will sit and sojourn with you. Many of the great spiritual awakenings come as a direct result of the hardest seasons of life, as some of the worst times in living memory become the catalyst for some of the best times. Afterwards. After the dread ebbs away.
The dread has a lot to answer for, and yet this dread teaches us empathy when nothing else could. There’s something to be said for trauma in what such experiences of life teach us, as our powers of empathy grow fathoms deeper in understanding.
Yes, I know of men and women who’ve been there—the privilege of riding counselling couches with them once or, with some, for weeks and months on end—who came to be champions for help because of the help they themselves received. It’s how we all start I think.
One opportunity we all have is to see that our experiences aren’t another’s and vice versa. When life is well with us, there are always those in our midst who are doing it especially tough. Having been there, you know it’s true. It shifts your perspective to be open in what people could be dealing with. And the world needs more of that space held, one for another.
See the purpose in a situational depression. It’s to learn empathy and to care for others in kindness when we can. But the dread is a horror to survive.
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