Depression is NOT the result of our present life's circumstances

Very frequently you will hear people say that they are depressed because they just broke up with their partner, lost their job, are stressed out, failed an exam, lost a loved one, don't have enough money, and the list goes on. I was no exception to that. When I was around 25 years old, I started having marital problems, I had problems in grad school, and I started feeling very lonely, lost, hopeless, afraid of the future, simply not fit for life. I started with group therapy, but soon my despair was growing even more. At that time, and many times later, I contemplated ending my life, or simply getting away from it all, on some remote island, free from the pressures of "modern" life, which I thought had caused my misery.

Yes, the current events have most likely triggered my feeling depressed, but the roots of my depression were much deeper. It took years of therapy and reading for me to realize that, and this realization was the key to my freedom from depression. My depression was rooted in my childhood experiences, a childhood during which I had been severely emotionally abused by my parents. The abuse was however not the sole cause of my depression. The deeper reason for my depression was my denial (as an adult) of the abuse I had suffered. I will expand on this in future postings. For now I am going to leave it at that, and will add that I didn't come up with that incredible insight on my own. I am deeply indebted to Alice Miller, a swiss psychologist, who wrote an article entitled "Depression - Compulsive Self Deception", which opened my eyes in this regard.