Does That Help?

At the moment my friend Cylene isn't much up to coming out, and adds to my general dislike of using the phone a reliance on unreliable technology, so we communicate most by text for the time being. Cylene is not very happy, and told me about a cycle of suicidal thoughts while waiting for her visit from the Community Mental Health Team and the help that might, or, experience suggests, might not, bring. I told her she had to hold on at least to discover how bad the new season of Dr Who would really be. 'Dude', she said, for she is a Colonial, 'comments like that at times like this, that's the sorta thing only you could pull off'. Well, only me with someone I know very well, it's not the kind of pastoral technique I'd attempt with someone from the parish.

We both share frustrations with the way people tend to approach those caught up in dark sadness. Perfectly understandably, confronted by the horror of irrational misery, folk often tend to offer, as Cylene puts it, ' "Hey, cheer up, let's go shopping!" Or, "It's OK! You can do it! Yay! Things aren't so bad, the only way left is up!" '  However those of us subject to these disturbances tend to have thought of all the reasons why we shouldn't be miserable already, and discounted them; or if we find ourselves remaining miserable despite those good reasons it's another cause for self-castigation. Dark sadness can't simply be willed away; it has to be digested first.

Looking at my own experiences, and hearing those of other people, it seems to take something unexpected, unanticipated, to break in through the thick clouds. Readers with long memories may recall my encounter with the goldcrest in 2010 which was the beginning of the way out of a particularly nasty trough. Coming up with the unexpected thought, the unanticipated insight, is not a trick most of us can pull off; most of us, most of the time, do better work observing quiet sympathy.