Greetings Everyone, Welcome to the podcast “Close to the Bone.” I’m Carl Vreeland.

This is episode #56, it’s called, “A Cure for Depression.”

But before I begin. . .  if you’re enjoying the podcast, please consider supporting me by leaving a donation which will help me to continue to produce these podcast episodes and all my other free content. Just go to my website, carltvreeland.com, and go to the menu tab, Offerings, you’ll see a donation link there. Thank you in advance. Your generosity is greatly appreciated. OK. Now to the new podcast episode. . . .

For as far back as I can remember, I was stuck in my head. I lived there, in my head, in my own little world. And I watched the rest of the world from afar. I was like a camera eye, viewing all my school mates, friends, and passerby’s interacting, smiling, and shaking hands. Of course I was close to my family, but nevertheless, somewhat of a distance away. “Carl, are you listening to me? Where are you?” These were common questions my late mother asked me quite often.

Now there are many reasons why we wind-up like this; stuck in our heads. For me, it was childhood trauma. In short, at age four, my father and mother had heart attacks. Neither died. But they were absent for a while. And I imagine, for just about any four year old, such an event would be traumatic. And I was no exception. It broke me. From that point on I lived with tremendous fear and anxiety. But as I said, there are many reasons one can find themselves stuck in their head; physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence, being in a car accident, genetics, and on and on. And although, as an adult, tracking down the cause, say, in therapy, can be helpful, in my view, it won’t cure the problem. Now if I was treated therapeutically as a young boy, perhaps that would have fixed things. But I wasn’t. And I would say most folks aren’t. And so, as it happens, the symptoms of the trauma grow and progress.

For me, it led to anxiety attacks, anger issues, alcoholism, drug addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder (otherwise known as OCD), and depression. But it’s the depression that I want to focus on. And it’s the depression, I believe, that ultimately kept me in my head. Now, that’s not to say that alcohol didn’t play a role. It certainly did. For one, it kept me in my depression and contributed to deepening it. Yes, alcohol is a depressant. But again, for now, let me stick to depression.

Depression distorted my view of the world. It blocked me from living outside my head. It prevented me from enjoying life. To be clear, depression isn’t simply feeling depressed or sad. No, depression is typically a chronic state of being. Now, the severity of it fluctuates, but the cloud of depression, no matter how dark, remains perpetually hovering above us, and usually just distant enough to not notice it. And so, life is always cloudy and dark, and the light and the sunshine that positive people and poems express, is just a myth to the depressive. It’s never seen, just spoken about. And so, it is not believable. Such is the view from a depressive. And this goes for joy, peacefulness, serenity, comfort, and ease. It’s never seen or experienced. Yes, depression is a place of exile. A place of non-belonging. There’s a disconnect. And the problem is, for most of us, at least the folks like myself who have been depressed and angry since a young age, well. . .  it’s all we know. And so the world was always gray, and sometimes not worth living in. Yes, suicidal ideation becomes part of the play as it were. In the drama wherein depressives play a part, death is the protagonist. I would go as far as saying death and God actually; they are the main characters. And so we look to God and ask, “Why? Why this life? Why this darkness? Why this suffering?” But God never answers. Or if He does, we can’t hear Him. Perhaps the murky clouds are too thick, or the chatter in our head is too noisy to hear Him.

This leads us to the other component of depression; the focus on the self. Stuck in our heads, in our own little world, we can’t see outside of it. Our view is an egocentric one. We are the center. Everyone and everything else revolves around us. And so “why this suffering?” is really more like “why me?” Yes, poor me, poor me, pour me