The Route In

Depression is one of those things that mean different things to different people. The word is often used to mean mild despondency at one end of the scale, and at the other end of the scale it can refer to being on the brink of taking one’s own life. I’ll go with all of those, though they’re not all the same, and the causes can be different.

For the sake of understanding the way I am looking at things, there are two distinct phases of depression: one is like having a black cloud hanging over you which won’t go away, but you want it to go away and you are seeking a means to make it go away. The other is where you have given up hope, which then leads on to a way of seeking to get away from life itself, which takes many forms.

People who believe that nothing exists beyond what you can see and touch like to believe that the hanging black cloud aspect of depression is like a disease that happens to you, like catching a cold. The view is that you have no control over it, but it can be treated with drugs. I’m not going to dispute that mood can be closely correlated with serotonin levels, and that hormonal and other chemical imbalances can induce that sense of the hanging black cloud. However, I can’t go along with the blaming of body chemicals for problems which are essentially psychological, nor can I go along with the notion that using drugs can help cure a psychological problem, though they may make things more bearable for the people who have to cope with depressed people. It’s my opinion that far too often depression is blamed on something physiological, when the cause actually lies in the person’s belief system: what they believe about themselves and how they view the world (and God).

For me, the cloud of depression had been hanging over me from the age of 7, on and off, though mostly on. It went all through my teenage years, and throughout most of my adult life as a born-again spirit-filled Christian. My wife and family have suffered much under it and I have coped over the years by limiting my exposure to life, which has been less than successful because of the world of work.

In terms of the giving up on life phase of depression, I have been into that in a number of stages in my life. The first, and only really determined, attempt on taking my own life was when I was 9, I think it was. It was a cold winter and my Mum told me that if I slept with my head too far under the bedclothes I might suffocate and not wake up in the morning (we had sheets and blankets in those days). I thought this was a brilliant idea, as I longed never to wake up the next morning. So I tried sleeping with my head down the wrong end of the bed under the covers, tucked in all round. But all that happened was that I woke up the next morning with my head down the wrong end of the bed with everything untucked. I tried this several times and gave up. My Mum asked me why I was sleeping the wrong way round, but I never said anything. Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that no-one had the first idea about what was going on.

For the large part, the giving up on life bit would only last a few hours at a time, and usually characterised by my refusal to do anything. Given the opportunity, I would just go and hide somewhere, and preferably go to sleep. Going to sleep was my primary coping mechanism for any time I was upset or couldn’t cope – my ultimate painkiller.

I was never really demotivated with regard to academic or related achievements. My school work didn’t really suffer, and my involvement in music also provided a good escape. It was really interacting with people which triggered things, though as a teenager I remember hating the holidays at home as there was nothing to do and no-one do do it with.

However, within 6 months of my being healed of autism, things took a nose dive. I was healed in February 1998, and by June that year I had completely given up on life. I gave up on all my goals of achieving something worthwhile with my life, fulfilling a calling and being a man of God. What triggered this was another (yet another) business failure. All attempts to start a product-orientated business up to that point had always ended in failure (though not bankruptcy). This time, I had someone alongside me who had a lot more experience than me, and had been involved in helping to start businesses that had ultimately proved to be successful. I had long since felt that business was my calling, and from the time I first believed that, I set out in seeking to fulfil that calling. My first attempt ended up with my becoming a freelance electronics/software “consultant” as I am now, and all subsequent attempts used this freelance business as a launching point.

Whereas before, I was able to cope with letting go, this time I didn’t cope. The thing that made the difference was that I was healed of autism, and I now know (from other observing people who have been healed of autism) that getting deeply depressed some time after being healed is quite likely without further rehabilitation – which in practice means the inner healing which this website is all about.

The reason why being healed left the way open for my becoming easily depressed is because I am now connected to myself in a way that I wasn’t before. I am much more “in touch with my own feelings”, as the cliché goes, and I can no longer think and behave in such a completely detached and stoic way. I believe this is actually a good thing, as it enables me to understand and empathise with people. However, there was a lot I missed out on in learning when I was growing up, and it is these gaps that lead to my failure to cope with “normal” life in the way that other people can.