The Question Of Depression Symptoms Psychotherapy

Someone I love dies in the first year of life. Or something is wrong between us. To love means to be attached to him. I’m addicted and so is he. We lived together. I clung to him. Or I didn’t cling as much as I should have. Or I wanted dependence and he was afraid so I am also left without dependence. This means in me that he gets the feeling of the intense fear of death. Something inside me is dying. Myself.

The depressed carries a dead man

There I carry a dead person inside me. And I go on and on carrying the dead. Never ends. I’m going to have a relationship, I’m carrying the dead. I go to study, I carry the dead. I’m going to get a job, I’m carrying the dead. I’m going to have a family, I’m carrying the dead. Carrying the dead object inside you means that you are depressed. These are from the first year. Because there the self does not exist without the other. He is merged with the one who takes care of you. So if he dies, you die too. If he’s afraid to depend, it means he can’t understand you wanting the other person very close all the time, as one. So there you die. The fear of annihilation is great.

The first year of life and depression

Only in the first year does one get depressed. Depression, not mood swings, not the one where one day I’m not well and I don’t feel like it. Depression with symptoms that refer to the image that life has no meaning, no pleasure, endless guilt, etc. Life there is excruciating. You can’t escape the cycle of guilt. Punishment hovers over your head, you must be punished, you also find people and situations that make you guilty. You become self-destructive to vent the anger you have hidden underneath or you start and kill inside yourself friends, acquaintances, relatives, colleagues, groups, etc. There you kill the dead object in the face of friends and acquaintances but you continue to be depressed. The attempt at self-healing fails. Because killing is not a cure. That’s why it fails.

How is depression treated?

Depression is treated with psychotherapy. He has a special way. You bring the object to life inside you (in the therapeutic relationship this happens), you get angry with it and learn to live with the ambivalence that it will leave you, or that you will leave it. You learn to live both with what I want and with what I don’t want. But this is done within the special relationship of the therapist with his client. Where there is a therapeutic context, confidentiality on the part of the therapist, observation of what is happening in the relationship, expression of feelings and their analysis, explanation. There one learns to live with ambivalence, i.e. with all the emotions that exist – sexual, aggressive, fear, despair, anger – without belittling them, without denying them, but instead making the opposite effort that one makes in everyday life his life. To bring them to consciousness. And there are many ways to do this in therapy. The experienced therapist knows them. I mention the main ones:

• Feelings developed by the client towards the therapist (we call it transference)
• Analysis of the client’s dream process through the processing of the transpositions and condensations which have confused the real feelings.
• Free association which is used as a basic means of conveying inner experience in speech.

So the problem is not whether there is a cure today for depression. Treatment is psychoanalytic type psychotherapy. The problem is in the patient’s decision to seek treatment and begin treatment. The resistances are many and tough because depression is a heavy thing. But it doesn’t go away by itself, nor can drugs cure it.

Melancholy Dysthymia And Depression

It is a safe way to express our emotional world and not fall apart. But of course all the issues of anger are hidden behind. Depression is anger towards the you I love turned on me. I can’t take him out on you because I’m afraid I’ll lose you but I also feel guilty for having aggressive feelings towards you. This guilt makes me self-destructive. I blame myself. I blame him. I hate making you angry. Everything comes back to me. Thus one becomes procrastinating, punitive, indirectly aggressive, but basically aggressive.

This cycle creates melancholy, dysthymia and depression. The terms don’t matter. None. What matters is what lies beneath. What is hidden? We seek to find this hidden thing in psychoanalysis. Where the world is all about oneself. There we can feel safe even in the midst of madness. Even in the madness. It’s weird but it’s not. Madness must exist for man to communicate. But madness in the form of spontaneity rather than paranoia or delirium or suspicion. In order to do this, however, we must feel safe even in madness. Which is not easy because the other person must also endure the madness. We call the state of disorganization madness. We all go through it when we are babies and because we went through it we were able not to go crazy. So the treatment is a regression to these stages. In the parts of the psyche where everything is possible. In our unconscious part. In the place where time and place are unclear.

Now as adults we may think of these as odd if we are overly conservative. But in dreams, fantasies and daydreams, slips of the tongue, misdeeds and forgetfulness, no matter how conservative you are, the unconscious material will come out. Man is made to be able to navigate through unconscious time. This is his real homeland. There it is essentially. In the sea of remote feeling. A feeling that will become the meaning of life or that we will never let it go and suffer in our little journey in this world. With symptoms, with bad relationships, with daily murders, with bad attitudes, with insults, with self-punishments, with guilt. These are human. And they come from constant repulsion. The treatment, if it is the right treatment, is done to drop the resistances and let the islands of spontaneity embrace us.

See also: Depression What Is It?

*republication of the article is prohibited without the written permission of the author

The process of psychotherapy requires commitment, dedication and is addressed only to those who seriously see that they need to change their lives. If you are thinking of starting this journey, call me at 211 71 51 801 to make an appointment and see together how I can help you.

Mixalis Paterakis
Psychologist Psychotherapist
I accept by appointment
Karneadou 37 Kolonaki
Tel: 211 71 51 801
www.mixalispaterakis.gr
www.psychotherapy.net.gr