Dips, Crevasses and Hope

Exploring the mental state of depression via imagery and the way we create stories that help or hinder

I often think about words and recently found myself contemplating the word ‘depression’.

I was considering the common understanding of the word - to convey a sustained state of black mood - and how this relates to and correlates with its other meaning, a physical dip or low point.

Feeling depressed can indeed feel like a dip, a bleak valley flanked by hills. I picture a traveller navigating a varied landscape, descending into a dark forest.

A news story that always haunted me, featured a man who was hiking a glacier in New Zealand and slipped into a crevasse and died. I had visited the area not long before and thus it seemed that much more real to me.

To fall into a crevasse, means you are beneath the surface, for all intents and purposes, invisible. Unseen and walled in. I often think about that man. How long it took for him to die. Falling down into a crack. Possibly injured or waiting for hypothermia to set in and take him. To me, that is an accurate physical representation of true despondency, isn’t it?   It is more than a depression or dip down. Perhaps ‘crevassed’ should be the popular term given to the severely depressed. A person who feels fated, hemmed in and irretrievable.

In my call centre days, one of the most unsettling calls I ever took, was from a man whose 12 year old daughter had fallen down into a storm drain. Thankfully she’d had a mobile phone and it hadn’t been that deep so she had managed to get reception, call her father and tell him.

Where I live by the Yorkshire moors, local word has it there are lots of disused mineshafts and no-one knows where they all are. I used to think about the possibility a lot when I walked up there, cheery bugger that I am. ‘What if I suddenly fall into a disused mineshaft?’

Is mental landscape similar to the physical?

I believe so. Sometimes, we clearly see the valleys. We know not to ‘go there’, we know what lurks in those dark woods, yet all the same find ourself deliberately doing so. We read certain triggering things, look at photographs or listen to music that remind us of someone or something. Is it simply self destruction, or is there a part of us that needs to master surviving our own woods? To enter, experience them deeply and exit them?

I think many fairy tales allude to this and part of their purpose is to relay this message to us. Little Red Riding Hood for example. Hansel and Gretel.

Although we sometimes see ‘the woods ahead’, on other occasions, we cannot foresee what is to come.  Like those who encounter a crevasse, mineshaft or storm drain, we are just living our lives and boom, down we fall, the shit hits the fan.

Using imagery to storytell our state of mind is useful because it helps us make sense of it.  The problem for many of us, is that we get locked into a particular one. A certain image speaks to us and we let it define and limit.

So often in my own ‘story’, for example, I am ‘wasp in a jar’, trapped, zipping round in circles repeatedly, trying to break free, getting angry, becoming exhausted and giving up. Rinse and repeat.  But what if I play with that mental imagery? Visualise my predicament as something different. What if you do the same with yours? Can we make new, improved visuals of our own experiences that better serve our mental health?

Jars containing wasps can smash.

Young girls survive storm drains.

My morbid curiosity led me to research that someone once survived 6 days in a crevasse before being rescued.

Whatever situation we find ourselves in, whichever terrain we are currently navigating, there is always hope. Whatever we think of how hope has let us down in the past, without it, we are resigned to our fate. Fucked.

Hope is not a heroine. She will not save you. When we personify hope, we find she is a neutraliser. She is the kind fairy in Sleeping Beauty. Her intervention serves not to erase a curse but make the best of. In Sleeping Beauty, she effects this by limiting damage. The princess will still suffer but will eventually awaken.

We cannot always change our circumstances. There is neither a ‘back button’ nor ‘delete’. But by adopting a similar image, an idea of hope as ‘Life Tippex’, we can attempt to write again. The ‘words’ beneath are never gone but we can at least form meaningful symbols tentatively but legibly over the bumpiness.

Imagine ‘Hope’ as a real character. Flesh it out, have her glitter and smile like a fairy. Or envisage ‘Hope’ a clever inventor, wise sage or a fearless strong bear. But never, ever a saviour.

Impose this new character ‘Hope’ on to your own most challenging story……..and soften it.

PS: I write lots of different things. If you appreciated this piece, you may appreciate more of my reflections, located under ‘Musing’ at the top of my ‘Mother Of Hope’ home page.