TO WRITE: How does your depression look?
In Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (an outstanding book!), author William Styron describes his depression in many ways. He calls it "a storm of murk," "the abyss," "the ogre," and like "being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room."
Play with this...
What does your depression "look" like to you? What does it "feel" like? And then, how do you see or feel improvement in your health? Write continuously for 10 minutes and see what comes up for you. Sometimes naming and putting a face on these things can help people feel that they are not their depression, but instead a person who has depression. An important distinction!
About Me
- Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer, Ph.D.
- My book, WRITING THROUGH THE DARKNESS: EASING YOUR DEPRESSION WITH PAPER AND PEN, was published by Celestial Arts in June 2008. I've been a science journalist, textbook editor and author, poet, memoirist, creative writing instructor and -- sometimes -- a bipolar depressed person, since earning my Ph.D. in biology at Stanford University in 1991. For the past ten years, I've combined my interests in writing and mental health by teaching creative writing to other people with mood disorders in a class meeting at Stanford's Psychiatry Department. I speak on mental health topics, both personal and professional, to a wide variety of groups.
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