Depression: The Anger Within
When the darkness of depression takes away the joy of living. Leanne Caskin* tells her story.
Depression is not intense sadness; it is suppressed anger that has been redirected at yourself,” says psychologistauthor John Gray in W hat You Feel You Can Heal . Diagnosed with posttraumatic stress, I suffered with severe depression and panic attacks—in medical terms, agitated depression.
After some months of therapy, I still felt sad, experiencing severe emotional pain that manifested itself in actual physical illness. I felt stuck in grief and hurt. Tired, listless and all cried out, I felt driven toward suicide. Instead, I chose “emotional” suicide, completely killing all feelings. It was easier to live feeling nothing than to exist in constant mental and physical agony.
To others I appeared recovered. “How did you heal?” they might ask me, adding, “I wouldn’t survive a sexual assault.” Smiling, I would tell them that, paradoxically, I had gratitude for the experience, because it had surfaced childhood and adult experiences, and I could now deal with them. This was a halftruth.
In fact, I was angry but didn’t know it. Unconsciously, I was suppressing the anger.
A therapist detected this and asked me what it was that I was so angry about. I stared at her in disbelief: I denied any anger, assuring her I never felt nor displayed it. Undeterred, she persisted, pushing my emotional buttons. Then, quite suddenly, the sadness melted to be replaced by a sense of rage. An anxiety attack flared in an attempt to smother the raging fire within me.
Gray says depressed people will feel tired and lifeless as they consume energy maintaining their anger and preventing it erupting. “The long-term effects of not telling the truth to yourself or others is that you lose your ability to feel positive emotions like joy, excitement and passion.” He’s right. He stresses that when total truth about feelings isn’t expressed to those you care about, including yourself, the outcome is to withhold love.
Why had I suppressed my feelings of anger? The most significant reason was that I’d learned that it wasn’t safe to show my emotions. Many women are taught, Gray explains, that it isn’t “ladylike” to express anger and that men don’t like it when a woman does. He says women tend to cry and feel afraid when something painful happens—after all, they are allowed to express vulnerability. So, like me, they get stuck in sadness, with crying, criticism and hysteria a convenient cover.
I believed my anger didn’t fit my selfperception— who I was and who I wanted to be. I also believed anger was “unchristian”— even a sin—and experience taught me that expressing feelings of upset or hurt led to abandonment or persecution.
Not surprisingly, I was filled with selfhatred, racked with guilt and felt certain that I was unlovable and bad.
With whom was I angry? First, I was angry about my life experiences— growing up without a dad and with a sick mother; the persecution I’d suffered because of my deprived circumstances; and, as a child, sexual, physical and emotional abuse, which was repeated as an adult. I was angry at the perpetrators and those who had allowed it to happen.
God was also on my hate list: How could He let these atrocities happen to a defenceless child; He could and should have stopped it, if He loved me. When I realised I felt this anger, I felt so ashamed. My heart’s desire was to love and forgive others—and myself. I wanted to follow the teachings of Jesus, who said we should love and forgive others as we would want to be loved and forgiven ourselves. But peace continued to elude me, and inside I struggled between the twin sisters—anger and love.
It was no wonder that I became severely depressed. Gray says a person needs to acknowledge and express all their feelings.
Problems arise when we neglect to express the whole truth. In W hat You Feel You C an Heal Gray states what he terms the four Rs—the warning signs of depression and emotional separation or loss of love.
They are resistance, resentment, rejection and repression.
Resistance occurs when I feel myself putting up barriers to what another is saying, doing or feeling. I withdraw or internally criticise others. If I don’t express the truth about this resistance and resolve the feelings, they build into resentment.
Resentment produces blame. Annoyances are blown out of proportion and you separate yourself from others emotionally.
Anger, frustration and hate are all symptoms of this stage. If I don’t communicate the truth about this, it builds to rejection.
In rejection, the level of resistance and resentment make it impossible to stay emotionally connected. Rejection is the natural result of harboured resentment.
Finally, comes repression.
In this stage, I’m too tired to struggle on.
I repress all my negative feelings to keep peace.
It’s a stage of emotional numbness.
Gray’s four Rs apply to all relationships, even my relationship with myself.
Gray concludes, “Every time you express the complete truth about your feelings and get back to the love inside you are increasing your ability to love.
Every time you suppress the complete truth and automatically repress your feelings your ability to love decreases. . . .
Sometimes, when you tell the complete truth, it may not look like progress because as you heal repressed feelings, you may move backwards through the stages from repression, to rejection, to resentment up to resistance. But when you are finished you are free to feel clear and loving again.” As an authentic, complete human, I’m called to love and forgive all others, including my “enemies,” according to Christ’s command (read Romans 12:14- 21; 13:10; John 13:34, 35; Matthew 5:43-47.) And what was His example in this regard? Well, on one occasion, He was consumed with righteous anger at the selfish disrespect shown to God by unholy merchants in His temple (see John 2:13-21; mark 11:15-19; Matthew 21:12, 13). His anger was appropriately directed at the sinful, disrespectful actions of defilement.
The apostle Paul characterises my body as the temple of God (see 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). So it’s right that I be upset with any activity that uses me for selfish gain and interferes with my worship of God.
God doesn’t (so neither should I) take lightly any action by others or myself that defiles my “temple.” So while I will love my enemies and persecutors, it is not “love” to continue to allow disrespect toward me in any form.
Until I learn to appropriately express anger and set Godly boundaries on the use of my body and mind, wholesome, unconditional love and respect toward myself and others is impossible. That is my experience. Jesus is truth and the example of the truth setting us free. He can release me from the impact of the sins and actions others others have inflicted on me. His love and truth can mould me to become the person He planned me to be.
* Not her real name.
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This is an extract from October 2002
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