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The black hole syndrome
How it feels to be in it
Pros and cons of being in it
What causes it?
How to get out of the hole
Bon Journal
The black hole syndrome
Part 1: How it feels to be in it
You feel motionless and immobile. You can hardly smile, let alone laugh. There is an absence of desire, want, interest, energy, and activity.
It's a kind of nothingness, a void where nothing matters anymore. It's a kind of permanence, as though it has always been this way and it will always stay that way.
There is a preoccupation with death. You invent scenarios of how to die. You don't see the point of living and carrying on the pointless scurrying-about called life. All is trivial and meaningless.
No more rose tinted glasses to view the world, you see only the negative. Your glass is half-empty not half-full. You find it difficult to appreciate what was attractive and desirable to you when you're not in the black hole. You dwell and magnify your own failures and regrets.
"Misery loves company," but the awareness of your miserable state of being makes you fear that you will infect and affect others. Because you have no desire or want, you don't make an effort to seek the company of others, especially those who seem happy and positive. It's hard to relate to them now.
There is a loss of "flow." Flow is present when you are totally engrossed in your work and enjoying it. In that active state, you are hardly aware of time passing. In the black hole, you are aware of time and how it trickles ever so slowly. You can stand there the entire day in the same position from sunrise to sundown, witnessing the passing of time and not doing anything about it.
You may feel ugly, unwanted, undesirable, unworthy of love.
After awhile, you start rationalising why it's okay to stay in the black hole, a place of absolute static stillness. It becomes comfortable and familiar. Human beings are known to resist change. So you stay there and indulge in your misery.
10 January 2005 Monday
Related links:
Before the sun appears
Black moods
Fear of running and running from fear
Hitting rock bottom
Transforming depression - book review
SAD or MAD?
"Depression I know so well right now" Sonnet I
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