Jean Vanier encountered many people who seemed "imprisoned," lost in an immense sadness they could not fathom. He was often struck by the suffering on the anonymous faces he observed in the subway, on the streets, in shops. This text is drawn from a talk in which he reflected on that experience.
He also wrote a short book that can help us understand depression more deeply and, gradually climbing back up, recover the joy of living.
I venture to open a window on this subject, Jean Vanier said, because I have listened to so many men and women—disabled and nondisabled alike—who suffer from this inner darkness and live it as a nightmare. All of them carry the painful certainty that no one can understand them or love them.
The Mystery of Human Suffering
It is vital for each of us to think about the mystery of inner suffering. It can range from a depression that still allows us to work and live with family, to total immersion in a tunnel with no way out. In a society that increasingly risks degrading what is human, we must reflect on the wounds that life inflicts.
Television breaks communication and prevents us from speaking to one another. Daily rushing around and excessive activity exhaust people and drain them until their capacity to resist snaps. Some have no friends, no community, and resign themselves to a life filled with sadness and solitude. Often they make things worse by blaming themselves, even condemning themselves.
I remember an assistant at L'Arche who possessed genuine human compassion and solidarity. Yet within her lived a kind of negative force that made her say: "I am incapable of love. I do nothing good." It was as if inside her stood a Pilate sentencing Jesus to death, able to extinguish every light.
More and more, I meet people like her—people who seem to have lost all trust in the light that comes from their own hearts, invaded as they are by inner darkness.
Now we must discover together why it is so natural and so common to be wounded.
First, we must understand that we do not want to look our wounds in the face and live directly in a dream. Human life is a succession of crises, of passages. In a community, for instance, tensions and difficulties can grow so great that they seem to have the power to kill. Then a new person arrives and the difficulties settle or resolve, and peace returns. If we imagine we can live forever without falling into traps, without receiving wounds, we are living in utopia, in illusion—and when illusions crumble, the suffering is even deeper.
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Before speaking of the "wound-depression" properly so called, which has roots in the depths of the unconscious, I want to say a word about what I call the "wound-failure" or the "depression of mourning."
In life we suffer greatly when we lose something. The loss of work, the disability of a child, abandonment by a spouse—these leave a dramatic sensation of emptiness and helplessness. It is profoundly painful to be separated from what nourishes our life. When self-condemnation is added—"perhaps it is my fault"—this kind of depression can take shape.
Paths to Healing
What, then, are the paths to healing? The first is time. When we are immersed in mourning and sadness because what we love no longer exists, we cannot respond at once. Life must be reborn in us gradually, from within, and sometimes this process is long. In such cases, medicine cannot heal us, but it can stimulate the healing potential that always lives in us. It is clear that healing can be hastened if someone near us understands—a friend, a companion, a brother, a sister, a therapist, a priest. It matters not who, but this person must be someone who does not judge, who does not condemn, and who stays near. He or she may be able to explain that this sense of guilt, this rebellion and anger against God that erupt in us are normal. Indeed, it is far better to be angry at God than to reject Him: anger is a way of keeping communication alive.
When I have stood near parents of disabled children during their moments of anger, I have not said: "You must not rebel; your child is beautiful." Parents live an extremely difficult reality and deserve true words, not false comfort. They need to hear: "What you are living is very hard. I simply want to stay near you." When people express their suffering, we are tempted to offer them solutions. Do not do this too quickly. Instead, try to be their friend. Say: "I understand you. I hear you. If things become too difficult, call me."
Through wounds and suffering caused by failure or loss, we can also discover another mystery of life. Saint John speaks of it when he records the words of Jesus: "The gardener prunes the vine so that it will bear more fruit." It is true; we all need to be pruned, purified, perhaps to prepare for our final pruning. Pruning can help us find what is essential: to love, to be true. Everything has meaning, even if we discover it years later. God is present and guides us in all that happens in our lives.
If we have this faith, we come to know that "mourning" is not a punishment from God. In our lives there is spring and winter, moments of death and resurrection; there is a whole cycle through which we grow, little by little.
Understanding Our Mechanisms
However painful the "depression of mourning" we have just examined, its causes remain comprehensible. Deep depression, by contrast, plunges us into a suffering so total and incomprehensible that to grasp its meaning, we must turn to certain mechanisms of the human being. The most important thing to know is that everything we have lived since conception is marked into our being. The small, wounded child remains always present within us.
The small child is very vulnerable and lives only through relationships. When he knows he is loved, he feels at peace, happy. (I love hearing babies cry when they are with their mother, because she understands their cry at once and interprets it. "He's soiled himself" or "It's his teeth." Even with disabled people who sometimes cannot speak, we use nonverbal language. We are forced to interpret, to decode the cry that expresses itself through violence and depression.) The loved child is happy, I was saying, but if he senses he is a burden and discovers there is no place for him, his heart is wounded as ours would be. But when this happens to us as adults, we find ways to overcome it: we watch television, we read a book. The child is too small and does not know how to protect himself from pain. Sometimes he gets the impression he is the great guilty one, that he is the cause of his parents' divorce, for instance. What can happen to him with a wound he cannot bear? He enters into anguish. He loses sleep and appetite. (I remember a young woman broken in another way. She had come to realize that in her life she had never made a choice—never chosen her studies, her entertainments, anything. Her mother was possessive and had completely controlled and dominated her. What possibilities did this young woman have for deciding about her own life?)
In reality, in the secret of children's hearts lie experiences of abominable situations, and one of these is sexual abuse.
They will never be able to speak of it. It is too terrible.
The Walls We Have Built
The child is too fragile to face these wounds, to bear a world full of conflict, to bear not being loved. He finds a way out through dream, cutting himself off from reality that is too painful.
Mental illness that imprisons us in dream is first and foremost a protection against anguish.
The small child we once were builds, little by little, barriers around the heart to forget all this anguish, all this guilt. We build walls for ourselves; we want to protect ourselves. This does not mean we no longer want to love, because the fundamental search of the human being is always for love. Yet we are very afraid to love, because to love means to become vulnerable and to know we will suffer. We want love, communion with others, but in our unconscious—in that place within us so wounded, so ambiguous—there are fears that make us dread them. Each of us carries hidden within a world of anguish, a world of guilt. It is a kind of tomb where we place all we wish to forget. This tomb, on which we place a stone, is one of the mysteries of being human.
Discovering Light Through the Path of Resurrection
"Deep depression" properly so called appears when certain events seem to open this tomb. Thus rejection by another person can trigger suffering that has hidden roots in our childhood. From the depths of ourselves rise forces that reach our consciousness. Sometimes we enter then into the torment of sadness and death, into feelings of guilt and hatred toward ourselves and toward the world.
To begin a healing process, we must look more deeply into the elements I have just described. To examine more closely these forces of darkness, the depressed person needs, besides a friend, someone who is competent and compassionate—someone to lean on along this difficult path. Without such accompaniment, she cannot recognize and bear the suffering that surfaces into light and truth. Sometimes we must also turn to a doctor who prescribes antidepressant medicine so that the body can receive again the chemical substances "consumed" by depression.
We must also enter more deeply into the mystery of faith.
A depressed person once told me how she had been helped by praying the psalms: by making those cries of desperation and calls for help her own, she gave voice to her despair and her need for aid. But perhaps in depression one is no longer even capable of praying. Jesus in agony could only offer. Sometimes we have only the strength to offer this suffering that rises from nothing, yet in that moment we begin to sense that light is coming. Then we discover that God is a rock, truly present even in these sufferings, even in this sensation of being abandoned. Those who have lived through the night of depression and found the way of resurrection say that there, in mysterious ways, they encountered the presence of God.
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Jean Vanier, 1995
