[Deb]

I have read some of your book and wanted to ask something about trauma and depression. In your book you said that feelings are really healing. So why is it that some sadnesses never seem to heal, to pass?

I had an awful childhood. My mother could be quite cruel, was physically abusive and not very nurturing. This seems to be something that happens on my female line. This happened to her and her mother. It's as if the women don't click with each other the way the mothers do with their male offspring. Her mother (she has a couple of brothers) described her relationship with my mother once as 'we all felt so connected - except to her. To me it felt like she was a stranger in our midst.' My mother too would say to me that she felt no connection to me, and for my part as a mother, I don't seem to have bonded with my daughter the same way as I have with my son. I just try to be aware of, and resistant to, possible consequences that can arise from not connecting properly.

So even if you can identify trauma in the past, and you have feelings of sadness and depression, how do you get it to pass on a more or less permanent basis? I have found some of the reasons for my sadness are surprising. I would have expected most of my depression to relate to my childhood, yet often it arises from feelings about what is really someone else's trauma. Once we had a guy come around for dinner from my husband's work. He was young, 21. It was 12 years ago. I only met him two or three times. He was lovely, a really nice guy. Then one day he went into a park, took an overdose and died. He wasn't an addict. He left a note saying he was sorry but he didn't want to live anymore. Even now, remembering him, its like a grief that never quite goes away. And yet I hardly knew him.

Even when I feel happy, there's a poignancy to it, as if happiness and sadness run in parallel on separate roads. Like looking into your children's eyes and experiencing a slice of heaven, ever so faintly stained with what seems like an ever present sense of loss.

It's true what you said in the book, that part of the problem is that we lack knowledge of how to move on. Yet loss is like time; once lost some things are gone for a lifetime, - youth, childhood, my husband's friend who died.

[Gareth]

Hi Deb,

Hope you don't me replying - I know your post was meant for Benjamin, but it rang a lot of bells with me.

I can relate a lot to what you are saying and I have my own theories about your question.

Following a recent run-in with anxiety and depression myself I have looked back into my childhood. I have always been aware I think that a crappy period in my childhood left me with a lingering sense of underlying sadness and restlessness. What I have learnt though, is that its not enough to just feel the end results of what happened, it is necessary to see the patterns in your life that have emerged as a result of the initial trauma.

It is really interesting that you say you felt very sad about your husband's friend committing suicide. Clearly you felt some deep connection with him, or some deep connection with the act that he was carrying out. I am a great believer that reactions like this are always more about the person having the reaction than about any real sadness or empathy for the object (i.e. in this case the lad who killed himself). You probably know what I am talking about if you have read Benjamin's book.

The final line of your post for me is very poignant. You speak of how things are lost and never regained. You mention your youth and childhood in this, as well as your husband's friend, whom you have already mentioned earlier in your post was "young".

It all speaks of mourning to me. Mourning for your own lost childhood, mourning for the person that you could have been if things had been different, mourning for the youth that (I imagine) you spent as a somewhat inward-looking, perhaps reserved person, always experiencing a little pain even during moments of great happiness, and perhaps never really being free from a certain unnamed ennui?

You sound extremely perceptive, particularly your realisation that "happiness and sadness run in parallel on separate roads". For me, I think that perhaps confronting the mourning that you need to go through for all of the things you have lost will give you some release from the sadness that you experience and always have experienced.

This is a process that I have begun recently, with a psychotherapist (this is something that is impossible to do alone!) The realisation that you have lost so much is very painful, but I believe, very important.

What do you think?

[Deb]

Hi Gareth,

Maybe it's not about getting over loss and learning how to move on but learning to live with it instead. One thing that really 'spoke' to me in the book is that we often don't know what we are doing, don't know how to do the thing we are trying to do.

It's true that mourning the dead, is very much to do with your own loss of that person in your own life rather than the person losing their life. But perhaps for those of us who mourn, be it for the dead or the past, the key is to find a way to embrace it, integrate it into ourselves? There seems to be this 'movement' in our society, a set of mass beliefs that goes something like 'Sadness and depression are negative. They don't serve you. You are meant to be happy. Anything less than that is 'less' and the patterns that follow on from such sadness are inferior to who you are meant to be.' People are scared of depression, or even of strong emotions. Of being sucked down into whatever dark hole the other person is currently inhabiting.

One of the main reasons for sadness and depression is probably, as you say, grief. But the patterns that you refer to may arise not because we are mourning, but because we tend to mourn in secret and in isolation. Mourning for a past we will never have again and for the dead who will never come back to us, well, not in this present life in the form they were with us before. And from helpless is a short step on to hopelessness and despair. From sadness to depression.

I'm not sure if mourning is totally the right word for this feeling. It's not just a sense of being in mourning because of the bad things that have happened. It's also a sense of longing. That sense of looking into a 5 year old's face and knowing you will never see that particular face again. A perfect moment, lost forever. Such an exquisitely painful sense of loss. My father's family are Welsh, and they have a word for this - the Hiraeth. This translates as longing, but it's a poor equivalent.

I went on a course in the early 90s with a Native American guy. We went into a sweat lodge with him and prayed, and when we came out a few of the group were really upset, just sitting on the grass crying. He said to the group of us 'Why do you just ignore the ones among you who are suffering? Why is it that not one of you is prepared to go and comfort these people? I notice this every time I work with Western people. They don't know how to comfort each other.' A guy answered him: 'It's grief. It's private. We don't want to intrude.' Perfect description of our society really, isn't it!

Maybe it isn't knowledge of how to move on we need, but rather how to live with the longing we have so inadvertently awakened.

[Gareth]

Deb,

I agree - how do we tell ourselves which of our feelings are necessary and which are not? From a personal perspective, my head hurts with the amount of material that my psyche is processing at the moment, and random events from the past flutter into my consciousness unchecked and without warning. Something goes on in there, some sense is being made of something - but how to connect to it properly? How to let it pass through and help it on its way? How to have confidence that in allowing it to pass through, the mood will improve and some peace of mind will be regained? Perhaps these questions in themselves prevent me from releasing what I need to release.

Something certainly awoke in me about 10 weeks ago and forced itself into my conscious mind. In response to my symptoms I looked around for answers, and I found this forum. I read Benjamin's book and I became aware of the theory of trauma being released by the subconscious into the conscious mind. It rang true for me and I committed myself to allowing the trauma to flow, allowing my mind/body to do what it needed to do, allowing the feelings to come. 10 weeks later I certainly "feel" more (with the help of examining the past and present with my psychotherapist), but I only think I am feeling better when I realise that I am more accepting of the truth of who I am than I was 10 weeks ago, that I am calmer in my darkest moments, that I am less filled with panic over my state of mind. My state of mind may still be uncomfortable, but it is what it is. It is me, it is genuine, and I am finding (very slowly) some trust in its knowledge and good intentions.

Mourning and longing are (intellectually at least) a big part of what I am going through. I agree that they are closely related. Mourning for a person that I could have been, for how different my life could have been if I had experienced a different set of circumstances as a child. I understand that I need to experience this sadness and this loss, and I understand that it is precisely because I haven't experienced this yet that I have always been dissatisfied, somewhat sombre, moody and anxious in myself. The longing is for what could be - to feel peace again, to live a better life.

Both mourning and longing, in a way, are disingenuous and somewhat redundant. What do I need these feelings for? The past is gone and the future is whatever I make it. Mentally torturing myself over either is self-defeating is it not? But if they come, they come, and there will always be a reason for it. And if they never go away? What to do then? A very complicated question. I would suspect that if you take Benjamin's theories on board, they don't go away because we're not genuinely releasing our trauma, part of us is deliberately standing in its way due to our fear of what will happen to us if we allow it all out. All of this happens deep within us though, and connecting with the processes is the very hardest part.

People are afraid of sadness and depression because they are uncomfortable to experience, and because they are associated with breakdown - with losing the efficient functioning of our conscious minds, the tool that we use to keep us alive. The logical extension in our conscious minds of being depressed is that we will stop functioning, stop gathering food, starve and die. Depression is a threat and therefore comfort is the great aim of modern society. This is why money is prized so highly - it is a symbol of comfort and security. When in fact as we know, comfort and security only come from peace of mind.

I would say that its not about sadness and depression / anxiety / other supposedly negative sensations - for me it is about peace. There are actions that promote peace of mind, and there are actions that do not. If you are at peace being sad, if you are at peace being angry, if you are at peace with mourning, then it is a healthy emotional state. Unrest, turmoil, internal struggle, however - I do not believe these to be healthy or beneficial to the individual. They may be part of a process the mind has to go through to get to somewhere else, but the experience itself is not edifying or revelatory. It can be sickening, inconvenient, and terrifying.

My father's family are also Welsh, and there is a tradition certainly of a kind of Celtic brooding mentality. My father has worn his depressive personality as almost a badge of honour, as something that proves that he is part of something - an ancient and deep cultural tradition. I also get the sense that the men in my family believe a "depressive episode" to be a sign of a richness of character, and also a certain intelligence. And yet these same men are unable to express their emotions, they make terrible mistakes in their lives, act selfishly and without compassion, and do not find peace of mind or self-fulfillment. Their way is the wrong way - but what is the right way?

As you say, we don't know what we're doing. We were both raised (forgive me for being presumptuous) in families that did not teach us a healthy level of emotional functioning. We were taught harsh lessons about how alone we are emotionally, and not given the basic tools with which to find peace of mind. How can we be expected to know "what to do", or "how to feel"? We must find this out for ourselves, and this is the uncomfortable part - the path is littered with mistakes, wrong turns and dead ends. All we can do is look to people like Benjamin who have come through their pain to another side that is more peaceful and more comfortable. But as I'm sure he would say, Benjamin does not have the answers - only we do.

I have been reading about meditation and mindfulness and this has strong resonances for me in all of this. It speaks of allowing the mind and body to release whatever it needs to release, of breaking down mental barriers to emotion and through this process beginning to see the world as it really is. At the moment most people only see a version of the world, they only see the screen onto which they project all of their own pain and prejudices. Mindfulness practice is the practice of being 100% honest with ourselves. Of not detaching ourselves from things we observe in our mind/body that we find uncomfortable, but of embracing these things, and being confident in the knowledge that they will not hurt us. Also Benjamin Fry once said to me in a message on this forum, something along the lines of "there is a strong distinction between the you that is suffering and the you that is observing you are suffering". This comes from his belief that acceptance and the natural and unrestricted flow of emotion is the key to peace of mind. If we are unable to have this unrestricted flow, we will continue to suffer. Being brave enough and knowledgeable enough to do this, however, is the hardest part.

[Benjamin Fry]

Firstly my apologies for the slow response to your question. It seems that you are held in the thrall of a loss that is hard to identify. Everything that you describe is easier to understand if you accept that there was an original loss that has not be completely mourned. It pokes its head out in tangential ways such as via the death of someone that you are not well connected with, and in the awareness that certain precious moments wonít last forever. These events in the present are being used by you as a catalyst to try to release the frozen traumatic energy from the original loss. Your challenge if you wish to be free of this is to find that loss and deal with it directly.

Can you identify your first sense of loss in life? Was there a death in your family or perhaps is was a slower psychological death that you grieve? It may be that you became acutely aware as a child of the death of your true self, like a death of your soul. You need to speculate about the origin, communicate about it and understand how you feel about it. If you wish to do so here, please do.

[Deb]

Hi Benjamin and Gareth,

Thanks for your replies. Yes, I can identify my first sense of loss in life, the times in my childhood, specific memories of feeling rejected and betrayed. I wrote a few of these incidences down, and the emotion I came back to each time was a sense of having been betrayed. Of dying inside, a little more with each event. In the end I left when I was 16, and even when we wanted to marry, because I was underage, my mother withheld her consent, until somehow her neighbour, also her close friend, persuaded her to give it. Even then, we were late for our own wedding - rather traumatic in itself, and ended up hitching a lift in a van then racing down the main street. We got there an hour late only to discover that the wedding scheduled to be after ours was a shotgun affair so had taken our slot, and we were able to take theirs.

I then spent a lot of my twenties dealing with the rage I felt then over what had happened to me. So time went on - in my late twenties we split up, then, within the year, I met someone else, whom I have now been married to for twenty years. I don't feel angry anymore, and haven't for years, but the sense of loss for all that I had written it down - I do feel that I understand where it came from initially and what caused it - talked to people about it, even talked to it directly, has never really left me. It's as if it has become part of me, as if it were imprinted into my cells.

I am sure there is some of my energy locked up in that early childhood sense of loss, because at times I feel quite physically frail and lacking in energy and motivation. I think where your book helped, Benjamin, is that it gave me a process that enabled me to get very specific about certain events that happened to me and how I felt about them, then and now. I had thought that understanding this better, going through the kind of process suggested in the book, would help me release my hold on this inner sadness I have let captivate me for so long. I even tried to discuss the events my mother had been involved in with her as part of this process, but she didn't want to talk about it.

I also recently worked for 7 years for a company where I was psychically attacked by a corporate psychopath who was my boss for a few years - a guy. Finally I took a package 18 months ago, which funded my return to the UK, where I hadn't lived for 40 years nor visited in 19 years. So thank you to the company at least, if not this particular boss.

Reconnecting with those events that I remember that caused my sense of loss has lessened my sense of grief, yet not released me in the way I had hoped. There were things I enjoyed doing in my past that I have taken up again, but they don't bring me the same pleasure that they used to. it's like my heart isn't in it. I currently feel in some kind of low energy/low motivation, limbo.

So Benjamin, when you say 'let go', how would you recommend doing that? Is it a mental process or are there things you could recommend to do in the physical world that would bring about letting the past go and moving on, i.e. steps beyond understand how the mess got there to begin with?

I think one thing I really like about Spendaholics is not just the part where you go through and analyse why the particular people spend the way they do, but the very practical help you and Jay give them to break the pattern, i.e. giving them a restrictred amount to live on - so at least they have confidence that they can break their spending pattern - and a proper budget.