day fifty-one - compression
Everyone has their ups and downs. It’s a cliché, but as we go through life, there will be inevitably good and bad times. Experiencing the emotions of joy and happiness, sorrow and sadness and everything in between are a big part of what it is to be human.
Depression can feel as though all your emotional range has be re-calibrated. Your baseline emotion has been dragged down to where most of time, you’re feeling pretty lousy, and everything is on a comparative scale. The good things only just feel ok, and bad things feel terrible.
One of the early medications I was prescribed initially brought that baseline back closer to the centre, but also compressed the emotions, almost to the point where everything felt the same. I was cognitively able to understand what I should be feeling in a given situation, and sometimes act accordingly, but there was no internal reaction. I was effectively emotionally numb - flat with a fake smile.
A very non-scientifically based graph I made purely to illustrate the story. It isn’t meant to imply that there’s a constant swinging from high to low.
This was, for me, utterly disastrous, and at times, harrowing. I so desperately wanted to feel… something - not just know that I should. It took a change of medication and quite some time to begin addressing my limited range of emotions. Once my psychiatrist changed the prescription, and I’d had a chance to get used to them, I was able to regain a range of emotions while still treating my anxiety and depression.
When there’s something beautiful in your life, you should be able to experience and enjoy it for all it’s worth. When there’s sorrow or grief, even though it hurts, feeling that can be absolutely the appropriate response. It can honour people and times past. It provides contrast, and can help to see who and what are important to you. There can be a real beauty in sorrow, just as there is in joy.
I don’t want to feel flat, with compressed and suppressed emotions, nor do I want to be happy literally all the time. I just want the normal, day to day feeling to be at least at the median, if not above, and be able to properly experience the joy and sorrow that life brings.
Kilt of the day - Campbell of Argyle
Soundtrack of the day - R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rOiW_xY-kc
Late 90’s ethereal Trip Hop Soundtrack of the day - Teardrop - Massive Attack
