{"id":19917,"date":"2023-01-01T16:33:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T05:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anneskyvington.com.au\/?p=19917"},"modified":"2024-03-09T09:29:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T22:29:05","slug":"my-struggle-against-depression-leads-to-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anneskyvington.com.au\/my-struggle-against-depression-leads-to-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"My Struggle Against Depression Leads to Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I turned thirty and wanted to change. Engaging a therapist who utilized a post-Freudian type of psychoanalysis<\/a>, seemed to me to ensure a cure for low self-esteem and depression. True, this pragmatic change did occur, over a decade or so, along with something else quite surprising, even shocking to many people. I became a believer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was in the seventies and the empathetic young psychologist encouraged me to use journalling since I liked writing. This, combined with her \u201cholistic\u201d Gestalt (\u00e0 la <\/em>Fritz Perls<\/a>) approach, led to early gains in awareness of my problems, and how they were linked to childhood trauma. My brother\u2019s near-death fall from our family pony was an obvious one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was also unearthing, in a Freudian way, the many themes and motifs that were applicable to my situation. Frogs, for example, were prolific on the farm where I\u2019d lived, and I analyzed them as sexual symbols. I tried to apply this to my father, who\u2019d been possessive in relation to me, his first daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Things moved too quickly at times. I was teaching and bringing up two small children almost on my own. My husband had just started on his career pathway and Dad, who had always been under a lot of financial strain, died around this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one stage, things seemed to be going too slowly for me. I felt like I was bogged down in the swamp lands of my childhood background. I felt that I had to progress more hastily, before it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not sure what the connection was, but I changed therapists suddenly, just after the book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>by Carl Jung, had fallen into my hands. It wasn\u2019t that I\u2019d found the ideal replacement to gentle Sarah. The new male psychologist knew nothing much about me or about Jung. He just seemed, like me, willing to take risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t long before I was unraveling. After six months with the new psychologist, I experienced a strange sort of transference vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em> this man whom I barely liked. It was embarrassing, to say the least. And I was spiraling downwards. My depression had turned into a clinical-sized one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had to take anti-psychotic<\/a> medication, which were primitive treatments with various side effects. I put on weight. I curled up next to the open fire in a fetal position for three months. My husband had to take care of the family. He blamed the psychologist. I knew that it had all been of my own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The years of therapy that I had received, along with self-psychoanalysis, meant that I had gotten to the bottom of my main issues, mostly linked to my brother\u2019s accident. I learnt, after \u201cgoing deep\u201d, through a sort of active imagination<\/a>, that I\u2019d blamed myself for my brother\u2019s accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a few months, during which I managed to recover from the worst effects of the nervous breakdown, I realized that my long-term depression had completely left me. I was seeing the glass half full instead of half empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the most surprising aspect of the whole therapeutic event was that, on looking back, I had experienced personal change like \u201cgrace descending\u201d. In fact, I\u2019d had a total spiritual transcendence, along with the pragmatic changes in me from low self-esteem to a stronger sense of self.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI’d Thrown Off Depression With Great Effort<\/h1>\n\n\n\n