Further Observations on the Abyss

Being overtaken by black moods and in fact talking about them is nothing new for me or this blog, but I have some revised or additional things to say about it.

1. The episodes seem to get more intense as I get older. It may be because they are now tangled up with my sense of mortality and the question of how far I might or might not fight a serious illness should it come my way (or when it does), or with issues of how far I’ve made the best use of my life hitherto. I say more intense: that doesn’t mean longer in duration, rather that they feel more dangerous.

2. There is nothing positive or useful about them. They bring no new insights or sympathies – except perhaps for other people who are afflicted in the same way – and in fact they clog up and obscure clarity of thought and vision.

3. There is no shifting them by effort, or by trying to spot and avoid the conditions that give rise to them. This is because this enemy is subtle, and can make use of any stimulus to achieve its result, no matter how innocuous. Most of the time you won’t even be able to spot or isolate the origin of the mood: it moves as quick as thought.

4. But if there is no guilt either in suffering from black thoughts or being unable to dispel them by will (and that kind of guilt can just deepen and intensify the thoughts), neither should they be acquiesced in. They need to be positively closed down whenever you find yourself caught up in them (and ‘find yourself’ is the correct characterisation, because it will happen before you know it), or they will deepen.

5. In fact, I am reticent about talking about them at all, for fear that they might catch! The cunning of this condition is such that recognising that others suffer from it could itself be an encouragement not to resist it when it comes, not to treat it as the adversary of all things human it really is.

6. It absolutely needs outside intervention to cure. If nothing the sufferer can do will shift the black mood, and it can be fuelled by absolutely anything, the best kind of intervention is a surprise, including to the person (if there is one) who brings it about.

7. The contribution the sufferer makes is therefore to be open to intervention, to be willing to put themselves in the kind of position where something surprising, unchosen and unanticipated can take place. A deliberate exposure to (say) the company of other people may not work, but it provides the space and occasion for something to work, and that’s about all we can do.

8. We must always rejoice and offer thanks whenever the danger passes.

Now then, does that help!