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Depression caused by Emotional Fluctuations by Haridas Chaudhuri Talk about it: Depression is often the periodic suffering of a certain moody type of personality. There are some people who go through strange emotional fluctuations or changing moods. sometimes they see themselves on top of the world. They are elated and exuberant, ready to accomplish anything. They feel light and joyous like a balloon, freely soaring in the sky. But this mood of expansion and exultation is followed by the opposite mood of contraction and depression. Such changes may take place in the course of the same day or week, or they may occur at longer intervals. When in the mood of depression, a person feels that he is good for nothing; life holds no charm or color for him. He loses all self-confidence and suffers from guilt and inferiority. He feels like a flat tire or a burst balloon. He begins to entertain death wishes or nihilistic delusios. And this nightmarish mood appears like a pitch dark night that is never going to end. When the emotional fluctuations of a moody personality assume unmangeable proportions, he is known in psychiatry as a manic-depressive case. A pathological case of this nature has to be cared for in a hospiital and be given competent psychiatric treatment. But adequate psychological and spiritual understanding can enable a moody person to improve his condition and prevent the pathological turn of his emotional instability. The more the causes of the emotional see-saw are known, the better equipped a person is to overcome it. Up to a certain point it is natural and quite normal to have an ebb and flow in one's affair or in the stream of one's available energy. But extreme reactions to such ebb and flow create an emotional problem. There are periods in the life of a person when the outlook of life is bright, the joy of living is spontaneous, the will to accomplish is indomitable. Also everything appears to go one's way and fortune smiles with exceeding kindness. It is wise to make maximum use of such a favorable wind as it blows. But some people react to it i an exaggerated way. They become overconfident and overestimate themselves. They turn a blind eye to their own shortcomings and to the forces of darkness in the world They underestimate enemies and take friends for granted. In the flush of enthusiasm and seeming success, they may overexert themselves and beomce intemperate in eating, drinking, and other habits. They feel strong enough to act in utter disregard of the feelings and interests of other people. In consequence the tables are soon turned as a strong reaction sets in. Excesses committed and overexertions made, provoke the opposite exreme of hopeless exhaustion, dull despondency. The ebb peiod is then magnified beyond prooprtions as interminable gloom and self-annihilation. Deep clouds darken the mental horizon, and they seem to have no silver lining. All the positive features of life are blacked out. One enters, as it were, into the terrible dungeon of self-punishment. But excess on the negative side provokes, again, its opposite on the positive side. Extreme self-suppression turns beyond a certain point into exaggerated self-expansion and exaltation. Life force is like a strong, elastic string which cannot be suppressed forever. The irrepressible urges of life react against morbid contraction with an excessive rebound. Moreover the period of depression is, for some people, a term of punishment for the ego for its excesses during the buoyant modd. After servind its term of incarceration, the ego again feels justified in asserting itself beyond all bounds. But excessive self-indulgence sows the seedds of guilt feelings and repentance which, in due time, bring on the dark night of depression again. And thus it goes. It is like the story of the man who was involved in the vicious circle of whiskey and onions. After a bottle of whiskey he used to kill the smell of liquor by eating onions. But then he would proceed to kill the odor of onions, which he strongly disliked, by drinking whiskey again. It is good to remember that like night and day, flow and ebb, spring and winter, there is the dynamic flow of opposites in our subjective existence also. An understanding of this law of psychical change would help reduce much psychic tension. A depressed person has a tendency to feel that his dark night will never end. Such a feeling worsens the situation. As soon as he remembers that even the darkest night passes away with the advent of dawn, and that even the blackest clouds may have asilver lining, the situation immediately improves. When a person hits bottom, he may remember that he cannot go any lower. Falling to the bottom actually may help one conquer the fear of hitting the bottom. The next movement can only be upward. Our emotional mood largely determines our lines of thinking. Ina gloomy mind we only perceive the gloomy facts of our life situation. We tend to ignore the silver lining even though it is there. Similarly in an exultant mood we tend to ignore the dark forces operative in life. It is desirable to practice restraint during the up phase of emotional mood. Similarly it is needful to keep alive the flame of faith and self-confidence during the down phase. Even when we are reduced to a helpless position, we can turn to the fountain source of all help and strength. It is always possible for man to draw upon the higher power of the Supreme that surrounds him. The collapse of the ego with all its resources may, with the right attitude, open new hidden springs of resourcesfulness. Man's calamity can indeed become God's opportunity. Self-opening to the infinite can turn a curse into a blessing. - excerpt from Talk about it:
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