Depression

Anyone familiar with depression can easily see why some of our ancestors likened it to a demon. Acedia, nicknamed the “noonday demon” by Evagrius Ponticus in the fourth century, is one such example of an ancient analogue for the modern day psychological condition known as depression. Acedia was so nicknamed because of desert monks who would cloister away in their cells during the hot noonday hours, for rest, prayer, and meditation, and it was acutely during this time of more or less inactivity, the temporary cessation of regular work, planting, harvesting, cleaning, and any other number of tasks, that one might be susceptible to depressive evil forces, and toward feeling the transience of life lurking underneath the surface of one’s incessant doing. Taunting, mischievous, and debilitating, the demon of acedia could sneak into an unsuspecting person through the cracks and crevices of empty time, boredom, tedium, a felt sense of the meaninglessness of the rote and routine, or a slew of similarly related phenomena. Once inside, distinctions between perceptions of fantasy and reality blur, as the incubus secretly contorts the mind of its inhabitant, making it increasingly difficult to see and sense the beautiful dimensions of the day, and all too easy to entertain the ugly, inside us and others. The influence of such a specter might feel soulfully heavy, as if one is literally “pressed down,” an original meaning of being de-pressed, from the Latin depressus. But the spirit of depression might also feel like the polar opposite of heavy, namely, empty, an experience far worse than mere melancholy, an occasion for what was also known in Latin as the horror vacui or “fear of the void.”

One of the main shortcomings of demonic descriptions of depression in antiquity is that it locates the source of sorrow outside the self, a force that invades, an evil entity to be exorcised, or avoided at all costs. And one of the main shortcomings of our contemporary psychological renderings of depression is that hereditary, biochemical, and environmental factors are often considered as treatable primarily, if not exclusively, pharmacologically. Both approaches, however, fail to adequately address the inner energetic quality at the heart of depression. Energy, simply defined, is the availability of power, the capacity for activity, and depression is just this: a force, a raw potential of power, a dark capacity for activity, such as creativity, positively, or suicidality, negatively, as artistic depressive types like Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko, Chris Cornell, and Robin Williams knew all too well. While depression can definitely feel unholy and otherworldly, as spiritual descriptives cue us into, depression is nevertheless universally experienced as internal (how could it be otherwise?) with no reason for us to assume an external origin. Likewise, against the limitations of the pharmaceutical approach to depression, while prescription drugs can have an important role to play in treating the debilitating and even dangerous effects of depression, most medications merely mask its symptoms, while failing to touch and transform the dark energy of depression itself.

But what if depression was approached by those suffering from it with this inward energetic quality more in mind; not apart from but with the use of medicine, when needed, and regardless of whether depression’s origins are only psychological or also spiritual? What possibilities for healing and wholeness might emerge from recognizing the essential energetic nature at the heart of depression? And how might a deepening recognition of this energy reshape our ways of working with depression? Energy cannot be created or destroyed. But it can move and mold. Energy can transfer and transform. Perhaps so, too, depression.