Reflecting on Depression

Working with the sorrows of the psyche is similar to working with sorrows of the flesh. If you have a cut you don't immediately want to change it, make it into something else, you meet it where it is. You want to hear its story, find out what it needs to heal and tenderly give it what it needs. The cut starts to heal itself with your support. Depression is something that needs listening, gentle caring and holding. Childhood depression is a relatively new diagnosis.
 There is no longer room for darkness in childhood. Where do things that we as a society push away, gloss over, fix up? Instead of medication, we need to accept whatever is present. Acceptance of depression, shame, and or fear stops the mental or emotional resistance in the body and creates a space for re-alignment or resolution. Acceptance of feelings, behaviors, and /or thoughts frees the body to move to new feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. Non-acceptance sets up resistance or locks the body into rigidity. Art Therapy can be used to accept and work with what is, in a creative way. We can't push away the darkness without also losing the light. Rilke said"no feeling is final."