The Shape Of The Hole
A friend of mine, another therapist, once shared an analogy with me about chronic depression.
He told me that depression was like ‘a hole in a road in the dark’, and that — because the road is life, and because we have no choice but to walk it every day — the odds are that, sooner or later, we’ll fall into the hole again.
The trick was, he told me, to not waste time and strength berating and shaming ourselves for not remembering the hole’s existence, for not seeing it lying out there in front of us in the pitch black. Instead, just acknowledge we’re in it again, recognise the shape of it, feel its familiarity, and then maybe see if we can remember how we got out last time.
I think I’m fond of my friend’s hole analogy, because I can so perfectly visualise the road he described to me, the deep rift in the surface. I grew up in Devon after all, Official Home Of The Pothole™ and where street-lights are still seen as modern technology in most of the county.
I’ve walked home from parties in darkness so thick I would have to shut my eyes to make sense of it. I’ve broken car axles in the caverns caused by snow-melt, rainwater, rivers bursting their banks, so a dark country road with a hole in it is a friendly metaphor. Which is maybe the reason it feels so painfully hard to accept as my own experience.
Because I know this hole. I should have remembered where it was. I should have seen the signs. And, at my age, given everything I’ve learned and teach and know about the nature of depression, I *absolutely* should not be back here again.
Of course, shame about being here is part of the hole’s decoration. If the hole was wallpapered, the wallpaper would be patterned with something truly awful. Phrases that a bully might use if they knew just the right words to hurt me. Since I qualified as a therapist, my wallpaper likes to remind me that I am a hypocrite and a fraud, because what kind of joke of a therapist doesn’t know how to avoid depression?
My sister has told me that her wallpaper says she’s unlovable, that she’ll always be alone, because no-one would ever want someone who ‘can’t even find the strength to put a smile on their face’. Another friend describes to me how his hole is filled to the brim with shame at his own weakness, so much so I imagine he can’t even reach a hand out without the fear he’ll get dragged deeper. Everyone’s hole has a different shape and size and depth, unique to them, but they all — it seems — have one thing in common.
There’s only room in the hole for one.
As a therapist and Radical Honesty trainer, my aim is to deal in reality rather than stories. I was taught — and I teach — that the way to process emotions is by being present with my experience, by noticing my thoughts and sensations, and allowing it all to come and go. But my depression finds those ideas hilarious. It laughs at them, and then loads me up with more thoughts and sensations than it feels possible for me to deal with.
My depression dredges up every stupid fucking idea I’ve ever clung onto, every belief I’ve thought unshakeable, every excruciating memory of every foolish broken heart, and it drags it all into the hole alongside me.
And do you know the smartest, meanest thing that my depression does then? It tells me I’m alone. That no-one knows I’m in the hole, and that — even if they did — no-one could help. That literally no-one exists who would be willing to stay with me while I’m floundering around in all this dark and shame and confusion, and talk to me, so I know I’m not alone.
Depression tells me that people like that just don’t exist, because why would anyone in their right mind love somebody who spends half their life in a hole?
But, here’s the thing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through living and working with humans like me, who find themselves again and again in that deep dark place, raging against their inability to avoid it. We are more fucking alive, more vividly and fascinatingly constructed than any permanent-surface-dweller you are ever likely to meet.
We’ve learned stuff down in the hole that they’d never believe. We’ve seen things, we’ve discovered truths both terrible and awe-inspiring, and we’ve carried them with us back to the world over and over again. We’ve written songs and poems, we’ve painted masterpieces, we’ve woven tapestries, fuck it — we’ve penned some of the greatest literature ever written.
The hole may be an awful place to painfully land in, it may even feel like a prison, but the things we discover there have a glitter and vibrancy and a relevance to the world that I honestly don’t believe can be found anywhere else.
Yet despite knowing all this and seeing its familiarity after thirty years of recurring bouts of depression, I will never learn to accept this place. No part of me wants to be here, unless the desire is so deeply buried in my subconscious a backhoe couldn’t unearth it. I can’t wait to get out, and as I type that, I realise something. That writing these thousand words from this familiar place is something that the smart-me, the me-who-remembers, long ago figured out is the first step on the ladder.
It’s an outstretched hand to those of you who recognise what I’m saying, and are supported with the knowledge that we are not, in fact, alone at all. Not as long as we continue to talk to each other, to tell the truth about our experience, and to offer each other the one thing that will always eradicate shame:
Empathy.
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Law Turley is an MBACP-registered Integrative Therapist and certified Radical Honesty® Trainer living and working in the south west of the UK.
