As discussed in the blog about Anxiety, the intensity of any one of the three negative Emotions can be represented as ranging on a scale from 1 to 100. To continue applying this same principle to Depression, at a very low or 0% level of Depression one would not feel very little sadness. As with Anxiety, at such a low level of depression a person would not even have much sense of being human. An unknown psychological reality is that Depression is a necessary feeling whose potential exists in everyone because it is the natural human reaction to LOSS. And we all know from personal experience that LOSS is an inevitable fact of the human condition because human life can never take its course without continual gains and LOSSES. In fact, nature gives humans their unique reaction to LOSS, tears of sadness, something that does not occur in other animals. For example, as babies we latch onto the breast or bottle, and become saddened and cry if we lose of our source of nourishment. Or, we become attached to a stuffed toy and are inconsolable if we have to give it up. Later we go through life gaining and losing whatever we love or invest our feelings in, such as the people around us, our possessions, our youth, our beauty, our familiar home, etc. So although it is an uncomfortable and undesirable negative Emotion, all human beings must experience Depression because LOSS is universal. The numerous LOSSES we must endure in our physical world, and the essential associated feelings of Depression, absolutely must go hand in hand. Therefore, just as with Anxiety, less than 65 or 70% Depression is probably not possible in human experience.
Moreover, as important features of human experience, also unrecognized in the study of psychology is the fact that LOSS and Depression build empathy, sympathy and compassion in us. For although LOSS may seem earth-shattering in childhood, over time it is only through experiencing and mastering our own LOSSES that we learn to sympathize and empathize with the LOSSES of others. In other words, if you don’t know how it feels to go through your own LOSSES, never experience the associated Depression yourself OR never overcome, emotionally work out and integrate your own LOSSES and Depression deeply and completely, you cannot appreciate the LOSSES and Depression of others.
It is only through experiencing the sadness or Depression that comes with LOSS ourselves
that we slowly develop the heartfelt compassion we need to sympathize with
the suffering, sadness and LOSSES of others.
So how much Depression is normal or average? How much Depression should you or your close ones endure as you go through life? In DOLIF the same general rules apply as with Anxiety. That is, the average amount of Depression that a person should feel at any point in their lifetime should be around 65%. More than this, at about 70-80%, would become burdensome and take its toll, warping personality and becoming expressed through the behavior of the subject such as through mental illness, criminal activity, substance abuse and the like.
There is however, one caveat. If we humans face too many LOSSES during our childhood and these LOSSES pile up to the degree that your Emotions and personality can no longer tolerate the pain you feel, that is to say, if your Depression “cup” gets filled to the brim, such as through abuse or loss of one’s parents, then the overflow may begin to spill over to fill your Anger cup, Anxiety cup, or both. Going by our image of the seesaw action between Anger and Depression described in other chapters, this means that when Depression reaches an intolerable intensity, the pendulum might swing from the Depression side to the Anger side in some people. So for example, even though we may believe that hardened criminals, psychopaths and sociopaths have no sympathy or empathy for others, it is not because they are low on Depression or sympathy with others. On the contrary it is because as children they suffered too much LOSS and were subjected to so many DEPRESSION-inducing situations that they became numbed, jaded or stultified to the point that they begin to reject or deny any feelings of sadness at all. In these people the degree of sadness they endured was so intolerable, and they experienced so much disappointment in themselves and others during their lives, that Depression became too deeply etched, embedded or entrenched into their psyche – to the point that they can hardly feel it any longer. It is an indication that their pendulum has been tipped into the field of Anger because their encounters with our real world were so severe that they can no longer face their sadness. And even though sometimes we may not agree or believe that their life was so hard to endure, we should know that they experienced their LOSSES as so severe that it became unbearable for them. When we explore their histories we find that most of them either endured beatings, verbal, physical or sexual abuse, or too frequent, prolonged and painful separations from their beloved parents or caregivers to whom they had become Emotionally attached. Unfortunately for them, this culminated in the build-up of an enormous store of Anger we observe, that is the overlay or cover for their original Depression, the feeling that they were overlooked, cheated or short-changed in life.
For example, a person such as Ted Kaczinski, the infamous unabomber, had no obvious reason for the Anger he unleashed by sending letter bombs to innocent people. By all accounts, he was treated well by his parents in his early life and was raised in much the same way as his younger brother, continuing his education to the Ph.D. level and culminating as a Harvard professor. Yet his experience in his Family of Origin apparently left him feeling isolated and socially rejected. As described in the chapter about Ted, he many times expressed that he felt Disfavored compared with his younger brother David. Although we do not know the exact details of his early interactions with his family, we can surmise that after the arrival of his baby brother, he was deeply affected by this LOSS of attention and affection to the degree that his young psyche could no longer tolerate, cope with, or endure the psychic pain that was associated with the accumulation of Depressive feelings and thoughts. In DOLIF this is the reason behind the build-up of his extreme Anger, the searing, intolerable Emotional pain of Depression that overcame him and induced his criminal actions. We can be sure these are feelings that criminals such as Ted routinely experience. However, caught in their situation and egged on by the injustices they perceive in the social world around them, many such extreme criminals persist in denying their pain, refusing to acknowledge or assign any more “psychological space” to it, and finding refuge in their Anger. Ted showed this not only through his actions but in his scathing manifesto about the evils of society. As reported in the blogs about Ted Kaczynski, we find he actually did talk about his feelings of Disfavor, in that he felt he was not as tall or as good-looking as his brother. In congruence with the tenets of DOLIF he also rightfully asserted his sanity and refused to try to save his life by pleading insanity. However, although his actions spawned many books and documentaries, the SIBLING RIVALRY source of his motivation was dismissed as frivolity, and never acknowledged or investigated as the critical factor.
Over time, it becomes almost impossible for people such as Ted Kaczynski, who have built such a store of Anger, to even conjure up, feel or be sensitive to the depth of their own sadness. Rarely do they shed tears. In essence, they rebel against their deepest and saddest feelings of disappointment and LOSS in their life. Instead, they divert their energy from deep Depression into raw, venomous, revenge-seeking, self-protective Anger that, as we now know, seeks to be vented on outside social targets. It is in keeping with the DOLIF premise that Anger is an externalizing Emotion that is aimed at punishing and blaming others for threat or harm rather than blaming the SELF. Considering their urge to protect and defend the SELF, they seek to exact revenge on others in the social environment for the injustices they endured. It is as if they are saying: “Why should I suffer? I never got a fair shake. I was treated unfairly by others so I will make everyone suffer now for what this world did to me”.
The case of Ted Kaczynski well illustrates that, in keeping with the DOLIF emphasis on Favoritism as the key factor in developing a personal identity, by far the greatest feeling of LOSS and the greatest cause of distress in life, is the feeling of DISFAVOR as compared with a next born sibling. We note incidentally here that this Angry style of reaction is more common in males. Observation suggests that males are more inclined toward the Anger side of the Anger-Depression spectrum. We find in general that a violent, externalized, Anger-filled style of reaction to feelings of injustice is less typical among women, who generally tend to lean more toward the Depression side of the Anger-Depression spectrum. Accordingly, we find it is predominantly males who populate our prisons, indicative of Anger+Anxiety as the motivating forces, while women are more likely to seek psychiatric help or medication to quell their feelings of distress, indications of their Depression+Anxiety social adjustment.
As we see then, no human at all lives with zero Depression because life is a process that is inevitably replete with successive LOSSES. As we noted, in childhood this may be the LOSS of a favorite stuffed animal, a parent, a sibling, or even a change of environment such as moving from a home or neighborhood that entails LOSS of friends, schools and familiar surroundings. Alternatively it may involve LOSS of social status or SELF-respect through bullying, teasing, humiliation, or otherwise.
Finally, note that the entire process of determining appropriate amounts of Anxiety, Depression and Anger, and the way that personality and behavior develop through the Mind of a Child, takes place entirely throughout the formative years of childhood. Experience dictates that, in terms of age of occurrence, this process probably ends by about 14 to 16 years of age when in DOLIF there is a transition to the Adult Mind. It is congruent with the stage in life that Jean Piaget called Formal Operations when a teenager can finally solve certain Intellectual problems at an adult level. In the end, the particular balance of feelings and traits established during childhood and middle-teen growth becomes permanently etched into the adult personality structure and marks that person as an individual. Without appropriate attention, treatment or intervention, this particular individual style, portrait or balance of the 3 Emotions of Anxiety, Depression and Anger will remain to define and identify each person by continually asserting its influence throughout their lifetime.
