inevitability of pain. Hope doesspring eternal in the human breast. This
may make us shallow, but it also makes us brave.
In order to deal effectively with the What’s the point? Explosion, you
have to understand what you’re actually hearing. You’ve heard it before in a
slightly different form. Underneath many depressions are our old nemeses—
fear and avoidance.
Ask Carol why she doesn’t tell people no:
“Well, they might get angry.”Ask Alonzo why he doesn’t find someone new to love:“I couldn’t bear the pain if she were to leave me.”Ask Randy why he doesn’t look for work:“I don’t think I could handle the stress.”You can’t say that these fears are unrealistic, so don’t try. Instead, you
need to understand how these depressed people came to be where they are.
If you run away from fear, you end up in depression. It is a simple
fact: There is no avoiding pain, but you do have a choice about what sort
of pain you experience. The ultimate cure for depression is recognizing
that we stand at the crossroads between fear and despair at every moment,
and the choice is ours. Why then should we go forward?
Why not?
The kind of existential philosophy I’ve been spouting is an example
of how great depressed minds of the past have reasoned their way out of
depression. Talk about rolling a rock up a hill! Luckily, normal, unrea-
sonably optimistic people never have to come to grips with such questions.
Or is it lucky? I told you that depression adds depth to human expe-
rience. Where else can you get the realization that life is only rock and roll?
What islucky is that you don’t have to explain the meaning of life
to help depressed people get better. When you encounter the What’s the
point?explosion, respond to the fear beneath it. You already know how to
deal with fear disorders.
The Psychology of Depression ❧ 199