Depression

This is a short summary of depression and its effects on daily life with a few tips on how to deal with it.
Metaphysical meltdown:
In the grub-pots of the city you will suddenly find mighty disturbances that can almost drive you out of your mind with the ferociousness of it all, when all you want to do is eat in silence, and they happen most frequently when you least want or expect them to. There must be a very good reason for this, why else would it happen? Surely it can't just be being in the wrong place at the worst time?

To jump out of one's skin at a sudden noise means there's an imbalance. Stress can be a cause, a wearing down of one's inner reserves and resources to leave the immune and nervous system open to attack.
Too much change and not enough beneficial routine can leave you psychologically challenged, where every little thing becomes too much to deal with and finds you seeking solitude and quiet to recover. A depression can set in to which the effects of this are either sleeping too much, or not sleeping enough.
Sleeping too much is your body's way to recover, and in the short term can be the best solution. Over a long period of time though it shows there is something more serious going on.
Not enough sleep can wreck the nervous system very quickly, where only rest, proper nourishing food, quiet and non stressful surroundings will help. But if left for too long a nervousness can set in that will take a lot of help to sort out. Sometimes it goes on for so long that it is not realized that it has become a habit and can feel like a part of life, a norm grown into.

Tranquillizers can help in the short term and can be a relief from symptoms, but in the long term will lead to addiction and reliance on them.
Being in this state for too long can feel like you are always jumping out of your skin and so you will be always in a control mode to bring the emotions under control. This can leave very little room for spontaneity, and sometimes extremes may be experienced as either too much control, or seemingly uncontrolled laughter or anger which can pass quickly back into control mode where the emotions are severely suppressed.
Food, heavy in carbohydrates can be a relief as they supply tryptophan and seem to bring one down somewhat.
Voluntary isolation in a calming room to meditate away from all the input, and speaking kindly to the intruding thoughts also works as a form of self hypnosis. This can be an immediate self-help remedy.
The most up to date thinking on how to deal with depression is anti depressant drugs and group therapy with the practice of mindfulness. This doesn't work for everyone.

Shell shocked is one term, where the nervous system has been severely overloaded and is not able to deal with any stress at all to the extent where even a sharp noise can bring a nervous breakdown. Such an emotional disturbance can lead to severe disability in leading a normal life.
Some have learned to cope with this state and can live a seemingly normal life, on the outside. While some others are prone to sudden breakdowns. In the long term, if not treated, this condition can lead to an extreme lack of quality of life to such an extent that thoughts turn to finding a way out, and a spiralling negativity can set in that feeds upon itself until only one conclusion is upper most: end it. It is here, where the most desperation reigns, and for some there is only one way out. For the others their cry for help gets heard and they find the help they need.
Finding the right help

To get into this kind of state usually comes from long term pounding on their being, often in childhood or from severe short term attack such as in a war.
However one arrives in this condition it means the same: one's quality of life has diminished to be replaced by a darkness that makes life an ordeal.
Finding the right help is not always easy, and for most can seem like a maze to wander through. The wrong sort of help can hinder, and even cause aversion to any sort of help at all. For those without the funds to pay, or divine intervention, hope may be lost completely and life can be a very dismal place indeed.
Songs have been written about being down in the hole, and indeed alcohol and drugs can put you there, and it always seems like there's no way out when you are there. But for most people, avoiding the use of inebriants leads to normality fairly soon.

The lassitude of spirit that is talked about here comes from a much deeper place and is often caused early in life. So the damage runs deep. Years of abuse can cause the body's memory to make negative pathways that only the most skilled health professionals would have any hope of finding the light from which to slowly build a lasting regime/lifestyle to deal with such an acute problem.
Some never get this far, and suffer alone until the end; and you have to wonder; what, when and where in their lives could a point have come when they could have turned it all around?

Perhaps for some the damage is too deep and they never had a chance from the start. There does seem to be some like this that life has turned its back on. Of course people with a positive and or healthy outlook on life say: where there's breath there is hope, and this must be so, to them. But for the ones down in that hole these kind of sentiments make little or no inroads into the blackness of their hell, and perhaps only serve to make their entrenched depression deeper; and telling them to pull their socks up, get a life, and look on the brighter side is very much a slap in the face.
Many say: stay away from them as they will only drag you down to their level, and they have to get out of it on their own. This is thinking that comes from a lack of understanding and perhaps for them it is so. Thank God not everyone has such a mercenary and unenlightened stance. The helping hand may be the only thing that keeps the so called damned here alive at all; and most especially when they reach out for help and it is given, that's mercy; and who can know if in the hearts of these ones is a greater wisdom and depth that can one day help us all.
There are many degrees of down, and many paths of deviation from the so called normal. What is normal when every single one of us is different?

Love is the source of all, and resistance to love is in the end a futile separation that leads to suffering. So it could be said that a lack of love is suffering; and so finding your way home to love could be your greatest journey, and on that path your suffering could be your baptism of fire, so to speak; your ladder back to grace; that cleansing of the soul through pain that strips away those bonds of illusion that confounds the spirit and hides from it the birthright it came here to claim, that very thing we all look for that is inside.
Images from Pixabay