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 zero level of Depression you would not only feel very little sadness. As with Anxiety, at such a low level of depression you 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 gain and LOSS! In fact, nature gives humans their unique, spontaneous reaction to LOSS – tears of sadness – that does not occur in any other animals. For example, as babies we latch onto the breast or bottle, and cry if we lose of our source of nourishment. Or, we become attached to a stuffed toy and 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 our possessions, the people around us, our youth, our beauty, our familiar home. So although it is an uncomfortable and undesirable negative Emotion, Depression must be present in all human beings because the experience of LOSS is universal. The numerous LOSSES we must endure in our physical world, and the essential associated feeling of Depression, absolutely must go hand in hand.
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 and 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 have? Generally, in DOLIF the same rules apply as with Anxiety. That is, the average amount of Depression that a person should feel at any point in their lifetime should fall somewhere between 50 and 70%. More would become burdensome and take its toll warping personality and becoming expressed through the behavior of the subject through mental illness, criminal activity, substance abuse and the like. On the other hand in fact, less than 50 to 70% is probably not possible in human experience.
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, then the overflow begins to spill over to fill your Anger cup, Anxiety cup, and more likely, both. Going by our image of the seesaw action between Anger and Depression described in other blogs, this means that when Depression reaches an intolerable intensity, in some people, the pendulum might swing from the Depression + Anxiety side to the Anger + Anxiety side. So for example, even though we may believe that hardened 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 in the past, as children, they suffered too much LOSS and were subjected to so many ANXIETY+ DEPRESSION-inducing circumstances or situations that they became numbed, jaded or stultified to the point that now they reject or deny any feelings of sadness at all inside themselves. 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 + Anxiety because their encounters with our real world were so severe and they can no longer face their sadness. It is to say at least that, even though sometimes we may not agree or believe that their life was so hard to endure, they experienced their LOSSES as so severe as to be unbearable. 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 as a child. Unfortunately for them, this culminated in the build-up of an enormous store of Anger, and it is this Anger that we now observe through their behavior, which is the overlay or cover for their underlying Depression and feeling that they were 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 within his Family of Origin apparently left him feeling isolated and socially rejected. As described in the blogs about Ted, he many times expressed his feelings of Disfavor compared with his younger brother David. Although we do not know those exact details of his early interactions inside his family, we can surmise that after the arrival of his baby brother, he was evidently affected by this LOSS of attention and affection to the degree that his young psyche could no longer tolerate, cope with, or endure the pain associated with the accumulation of Depressive feelings and thoughts. In DOLIF this is the reason behind the build-up of his extreme Anger, the drastic, intolerable psychic pain of feelings of Depression that overflowed and that he, and criminals such as himself routinely experience. However, caught in their situation and egged on by the injustices they perceive in the social world around them, many such severe criminals persist in denying their pain, refusing to acknowledge or assign any more “psychological space” to it. 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. However, because of the present state of knowledge in psychology, what he actually said and the SIBLING RIVALRY source of his motivation was dismissed as frivolity, and never acknowledged or investigated.
Over time, it becomes very difficult for people such as Ted Kaczynski, who have built up such extreme 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 know, becomes directed toward outside social targets. In keeping with the DOLIF premise that Anger is an externalizing Emotion that is aimed at the punishment and blame of others for threat or harm rather than blame the SELF, considering their urge to protect and defend the SELF, they seek to exact their revenge on others in the social environment for the injustices they endured as a child. It is as if they are saying: “Why should I suffer? I was treated unfairly by others so I will make everyone else suffer for what this world did to me”.
As in the famous case of Ted Kaczynski, in keeping with the DOLIF emphasis on Favoritism as the central factor in the development of personal identity, by far the greatest feeling of LOSS and cause of distress in life, is the feeling of DISFAVOR as compared with a next born sibling in the first family, the Family of Origin. We note here too that this style of reaction is more common for 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 is less typical among women, who generally tend to lean more toward the Depression side of the Anger-Depression spectrum or seesaw. Accordingly, we find it is predominantly males who populate our prisons, while women are more likely to seek psychiatric help or medication to quell their feelings of distress.
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 and familiarity. Alternatively it may involve LOSS of social status through bullying, teasing, humiliation, or other ways of LOSING SELF-respect. In keeping with DOLIF highlighting of Favoritism and the case of Ted Kaczynski, by far the greatest feeling of LOSS and cause of distress in life is the feeling of DISFAVOR as compared with a next born sibling in the first family. Ted is in effect a poster child for the DOLIF paradigm.
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 at the age of about 14 to 16 when, in congruence with the ideas of Jean Piaget, the Adult Mind takes over from the Mind of a Child. It is this same point in life that the famous psychologist designated as the stage he called Formal Operations when a teenager can finally solve certain intellectual problems at an adult level. In DOLIF this is also the point when a child reaches the adultlike emotional stage of thinking that will determine their future personality. In the end, the particular balance of feelings and traits established during this childhood and this middle-teen early growth period becomes permanently etched into the personality structure and become the marker of that person as an individual. Without appropriate attention, treatment or intervention, this individual style, portrait or balance of the Emotions of Anxiety, Depression and Anger will remain to define and identify each person by continually asserting its influence throughout their lifetime.
