Robert Rowland Smith on Feeling Down

It’s February. Christmas is a distant memory, the days are still short, the Easter break’s a long way off, and there’s plenty of winter to come. An urban myth says that most suicides take place at this time of year. Small wonder if you’re feeling down.

 

Actually, the research claims the suicide rate peaks in May. It’s highly ironic, but the early season sunshine gives depressives the energy they need to put their desperate plans into action. The good thing about winter, therefore, is that it keeps you too low to do yourself in.

 

But not all feelings of being down are circumstantial. They can depend simply on the kind of person you are, or what in medieval medicine was known as your ‘humour’. There were four humours which corresponded to four character types, and one of these was the ‘melancholic’, the person who’s prone to the doldrums. Literally, melancholy means ‘black bile’, for the medieval doctors believed it was the excess of this bitter goo in your system which caused the negative behaviour. Today, we’d translate melancholy as depression, and instead of a surplus of acid in the liver, we’d cite a deficit of seratonin in the brain, but the shape of the concept is broadly the same.

 

There’s another take on melancholy in psychoanalysis. Freud contrasts it with mourning, which is the sadness of bearing the memory of a deceased love one. The dead person is gone, but you still shelter them within your memory. Melancholy, on the other hand, comes about when you can’t properly hold other people inside you, when you feel that people who matter to you remain lost. This applies to the living as much as the dead. In simple terms, we feel down not because of brain chemistry or the time of year, but because our contact with others fails to be meaningful. Instead of us bearing them in our hearts and minds, we keep them on the outside. The result is a feeling of alienation and detachment. We might call it depression, but at its root is a failure to welcome other people properly inside us and give them a home.

 

Perhaps this is the most effective winter warmer. Not a getaway to the sunshine (we know the risks of that!), nor a course of anti-depressants. The remedy for feeling down is to let other people into your heart.

 

 Robert Rowland Smith is on the teaching faculty of The School of Life.

Comments

[Space by Eliana Tomas]

well, i feel i should share my experience in here. 5/6 years ago i used to joke i didn't have time to get depressed - and i didn't. almost all my friends and family were in a depressed mood. and guess what? 4 1/2 years ago i came to london, and on my 3rd year in here i got into depression. there're many variants i can recall to dragging me there: i wasn't communicating in my mother tongue, got back to study, living in weird conditions, i'm from a very bright country and had no friends or family in london just to name a few. and yes, i didn't "let other people into your heart", but i'm not sure if it was because i didn't let or because no one was actually available to.
the funny thing is, it was through blogging that i was able to get up and start walking (again).

[Tobin]

Many of our problems stem from this belief in the separateness of our identity, when of course this is not possible. Though we may convince ourselves we are not an integrated part of the whole, we nonetheless remain connected to everything. All these people around you, they're not separate, they're not even different, they're the same as you, and the same as each other. Mere beliefs or experience do not make them different to you.

Mind you, it's amazing how easy I feel happy when it's sunny, and low when it's grey. I think maybe the UK is the wrong place for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

[lostbaggagedepot]

I hope you'll do this one again as I missed it, and I could use it!

[haineko]

Thanks for the article
I didn't know about 'seasonal depression' maybe because I didn't know anyone who suffered from it until now, including me.
"The remedy for feeling down is to let other people into your heart."
What if they don't want to come in?

[Desiree]

This is such a lovely, simple cure that I might actually incorporate it next time I'm feeling particularly glum--

[twentyinsix]

In response to the previous comment, they might take the advice of the previous blog entry and begin by letting an animal into their hearts. Animals love unconditionally.

[Nick Robinson]

Feeling a bit down might not be quite the same as being desperate enough to take one's own life, but perhaps that isn't what you intended to suggest?

I've never suffered in this way but friends who have, have told me that it is extremely difficult during those periods to let people into your heart for fear of being hurt further or being considered unlovable or unacceptable.

What do you suggest for people who are perhaps more than just a little "down" so that they might feel safe and acceptable enough to let other people into their hearts?