We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
Lao Tzu
but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
Lao Tzu
Breaking the Cycle of Depression
Dreaming and Depression
One of the functions dreams perform is to dissipate unspent emotional arousal from the day in order to clear the mind for the next day. If, for example, someone has annoyed you during the day and you have talked it through, that emotion has been played out. If, however, you were annoyed but could not do anything about it because the annoying person was your boss, for example, that emotion is left unspent and is likely to be played out metaphorically in a dream that night. That is why if you want to know what a dream relates to, you should look at the feeling in the dream rather than its superficial content.
People who are depressed characteristically spend a lot of time thinking about a sad event that they cannot do anything about, often because it is in the past. This builds up a large amount of unspent emotion that needs to be dreamed out at night. People who are depressed dream much more than when they are not.
Unlike deep sleep, dreaming is actually quite an active state. Dreams provoke all the physiological reactions you would have in real life affecting your heart beat, adrenaline levels, sweating, and so on. Large amounts of time spent dreaming cut into the amount of time available for deep restorative sleep and deplete adrenaline levels, which is why people suffering from depression often wake up feeling exhausted and lacking in energy.
The unconscious mind recognises the danger of dreaming too much and often wakes the depressed person up in order to stop them doing any more dreaming. That is why people who are depressed often suffer from 'early morning waking syndrome' in which they wake up early and cannot get back to sleep even if they are still very tired.
Thinking
The tiredness caused by excessive dreaming impair the person's ability to think usefully about the situation and they can slip into emotional thinking, which then feeds back into even more dreaming the next night.
Behaviour
Because the dreaming has depleted their levels of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol during the night, life can seem to lose its 'colour' and activities that someone used to be pleasurable no longer seem so interesting. This leads people to stop doing activities they used to enjoy, activities that might otherwise give them an escape route from the depressed feelings. The tiredness can also lead to lethargy and a decrease in physical exercise, which also serves to deepen the depression.
Feelings
The fatigue, depressed thinking patterns, and reduction in enjoyable activities and exercise naturally make people feel even more depressed, leaving them with even more unspent emotions to 'clear out' in their dreaming the next night, thus perpetuating the problem.
Getting Rid of Depression
The good news about the way depression works in a loop is that an improvement in any area -- dreaming, thinking, behaviour, and feeling -- feeds into further improvement in the others and you can go round the same loop in the opposite direction, becoming increasingly balanced, invigorated, and emotionally resilient. A good therapist will help you do this as quickly and effectively.
You do not need a therapist for everything, though. One of the most important factors in depression is what are called 'basic needs.' Looking at your basic needs and ensuring they are met will go a long way to preventing depression and other problems.
Next>> Basic Human Needs