I sense that in our culture the word depression has lost its true significance in that we use it for everything from mild sadness/disappointment to severe grief. Over the course of my psychotherapy and meditative I have come to formulate depression in different ways. I think that depression is a bodily signal of stuckness, stagnation, that things are not aligned. Its roots are varied, I have experienced depression as a result of anger directed inwards (towards myself) versus skillfully outwards when my boundaries were violated; I have also been depressed when a feeling which needed to move (such as grief over losing a relationship) was not allowed to be felt and resultantly morphed into depression. In equine therapy we use depression as an “emergency break,” a sign that what we are doing or where we are headed in our life does not match up with our values and desires. In the end, curiosity towards feelings including depression versus shame or a need to fix, maybe the most helpful stance as a first step to healing.
Take care,
Arsalan