Grief and depression are not only normal, they’re vital for growth

“Since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since giving up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.  It becomes abnormal or unhealthy only when something interferes with the giving-up process, with the result that the depression is prolonged and cannot be resolved by completion of the process.”

— M. Scott Peck M.D., Wisdom from The Road Less Traveled

According to Peck, life for all of us involves the process of giving part of ourselves up continually; that depression is actually a natural part of it.  It’s a condition necessary to life lived with good effect.

The anti-depressant pharmaceutical therapy provides hope for many, as does support, counselling, diet, sleep, exercise, time, understanding and reframing our thinking processes, etc.

These matters of grief and depression are the subject personal change management as we encounter the varying transitional situations of our lives including our reaction to them.  Change in this way is inevitable unless we bow out of life.

Yet, as we contemplate bowing out, there are many ways we can passively bow out and take a detour to nowhere.  The worst of it is being stuck in a toxic cycle.  This is an interference.  So too is trauma.  Trauma will interfere with the giving-up process like nothing else.  But there is always hope if we believe we can recover.

Life is all about balancing or reconciling.  Balancing counteracts the things about ourselves that we are giving up; what reduces the pain of depression is the discipline of balancing or maintaining life balance.

Peck identifies the crux of the issues of grief and depression here.  “The loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance.”  (Italics added.)  Many people don’t have the self-discipline to maintain life balance, but life would be far easier if they did have it.  This is akin to making hard decisions that are easier in the long run.  Yet, many of us want life easy and we therefore make life harder than it needs to be.

Both grief and depression involve a lot of giving up.

At some ends both grief and depression are maladjusted forms of giving up — we don’t want to or simply can’t give up those things holding us back; not “yet” anyway.  And surely the very idea that recovery is slow, and the fact we must be patient, should ease the burden.  When we’ve been there, taking the pressure off does help.

Grieving and depression are inevitable life phases for us — almost none of us will be exempt.  There is wisdom in couching mental illness as normal.  It is right and just and fair to attribute grief and depression as normal.  Not only is it more common than we acknowledge or accept, its prevalence is something that will always be there.

Let’s not demonise grief and depression, the people who suffer them, or the emotions that come and go as a normal part of human experience.

Once we’ve been through it, we really have grown.  There’s no better proof than seeing how we tackle grief and depression on the second and third times around.  The first time we learned so much.

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash