Welcome to From Insults to Respect.
My previous post utilizes the Kinks song “Low Budget” to sympathetically discuss how our money woes can take a bite out of our feelings of respect for ourselves and others, while suggesting some helpful approaches to deal effectively with such challenges. The positive feedback that I received led me to see if I might utilize another Kinks song, partly just for the fun of it, but also as a way to explore some issues relevant to respect.
On this blog, I have on several occasions (see HERE and HERE) made the case for the value of transforming periods of depression into the more helpful experience of melancholy. It just so happens that the Kinks song, “Misfits,” offers us a wonderful opportunity to further enhance this pregnant idea.
After the first introduction verse, Ray Davies sings,
You say your summer has gone
Now the Winter is crawlin’ in
They say that even in your day
Somehow you never could quite fit in
Though it’s cold outside
I know the Summer’s gonna come again
Because you know what they say
Every dog has his day
These words suggest Ray is singing about you, the listener, but as I interpret it, he’s also singing about his own feelings. He’s feeling emotionally chilly with the way things are going for him. He has a desire to comfortably fit in socially, but he’s not there. You, the listener, might feel this way from time to time as well. Within this emotional state, Ray seems to be seeking to turn his attention to a more hopeful future, with the return of a warmer weather, happier period.
The chorus then goes on to say,
You’re a misfit, afraid of yourself, so you run away and hide
You’ve been a misfit all your life
Why don’t you join the crowd
And come inside
You wander round this town like you’ve lost your way
You had your chance in your day
Yet you threw it all away
But you know what they say
Every dog has his day
Here, Ray sees his difficulty is made worse by running away and hiding from it. He’s also bemoaning that there were actions he could have taken back in his day but failed to do so. Still, he seeks to bolster his spirits with the hope his day will come.
The song’s bridge tells us to,
Look at all the losers and the mad eyed gazers
Look at all the looneys and the sad eyed failures
They’re giving up living ‘cos they just don’t care
So take a good look around
The misfits are everywhere
La la la la la la
We see here Ray throwing the typical insults at those with the shortcomings and feelings he and the others are singing about. At the same time, he recognizes they are not alone; there are folks all around us having similar feelings, and they are giving up living. This giving up doesn’t sit well with Ray, so he launches into the next verse that seeks to lift our spirits:
This is your chance, this is your time
So don’t throw it away
You can have your day
‘Cause it’s true what they say
Every dog has his day
In the song, we see Ray using two approaches to deal with how he is feeling–insulting himself, and trying to lift his spirits with hopeful, positive words. On this blog, when people are singing the blues and insulting themselves, we say they are experiencing depression. One type of approach to kick yourself out of depression is to focus on some positives, such as the fact that you have company with what you are going through and keeping hope alive for a more positive day. But there is a dramatically different alternative for dealing with the blues than these two, an approach I refer to as melancholy.
Consider how musician and song writer Joni Mitchell described melancholy in her beautiful song, “Hijira.”
There is comfort in melancholy where there is no need to explain, it’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.
She sees melancholy as a comfortable state and natural.
At another point, Joni tells us such experience “can be the sand that makes the pearl…. Most of my best work came out of it. If you get rid of the demons and the disturbing things, then the angels fly off, too. There is the possibility, in the mire, of an epiphany.”
In a New York Times article titled “The Case for Melancholy” we learn from American writer Laren Stover about her own personal experiences. After telling us of her weariness of all those folks on the internet promising to show us how to be delightfully happy in just a few short steps, she writes:
“Whatever happened to experiencing the grace of melancholy, which requires reflection: a sort of mental steeping, like tea? What if all this cheerful advice only makes you feel inadequate? What if you were born morose?”
Laren continues to weave her creative images of melancholy with such words as:
“Sadness has a bad reputation. But I soon came to feel that melancholy — the word itself is late Latin from the Greek melancholia — is a word with a romantic Old World ring, with a transient beauty like the ring around the moon.”
Here’s how the great psychologist, William James, viewed the subject at hand. He wrote that many so called “healthy-minded” individuals believe that those who worry are “morbid-minded” and “diseased,” but it may very well be true that “the world’s meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart.” He, himself, learned to appreciate these visits of melancholy as something of extraordinary value, and stated that,
…there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
Although the pharmaceutical industry has spent millions seeking to convince us that these types of experiences are pathological, a sickness, requiring drug “treatment,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, tells us,
If we listen carefully to the body, it can teach us a great deal about what is most difficult for us to recognize and come to terms with from the past, and how we might approach our hurt with kindness and wisdom.
We can learn to respect and honor melancholy. Yes, as we do so, from old habits curses along with efforts seeking to bolster these bluesy experiences may arise. We can come to recognize them as old habits while not absolutely accepting their validity. During all of this we can learn to become friends with the underlying experience, patiently, empathically, being with them, spending time with this natural, healthy way to process life’s challenges.
Well, them are my thoughts for this week. Love to all the Kinks fans out there.
My Best,
Jeff
——————————-
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
There’s comfort in melancholy
As another example, we learned in an 
When the sun shines
All of this leads to the person experiencing periods of self-loathing. As a result, they develop what some call a double depression–not only are they depressed, they are depressed that they are depressed.
A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled, “
Don’t you dare start with this crap or I’ll give you a real reason to cry! You’re acting like an infant!!! Now you stop this instant and get to bed!!!”
“I see you are feeling sad. That’s understandable. You were enjoying the game so much, and you’re disappointed about having to stop. You know, when we feel sad, it’s to help us figure out how to better handle what we do in the future. I wonder how we can better handle the going to bed situation. Any ideas, Carl?”
A team of researchers (Brock Bastian, et al.) published an article in the peer reviewed journal Emotion titled, “Feeling Bad About Being Sad: The Role of Social Expectancies in Amplifying Negative Mood.” The authors begin by summarizing previous relevant research, then describe four studies they carried out to throw light on this subject, and then present their conclusions. The entire article can be viewed for free 
Daily we are reminded of the value of happiness, from TV advertising that highlights the hedonic pleasures of consumption, to national campaigns designed to improve happiness and well-being.
Meanwhile, commonplace emotional experiences such as sadness, depression, or anxiety are pathologized and medicalized, viewed as deviant from desired norms…. Negative emotions are touted as bad for our health… and can be “cured” with an array of drugs and interventions designed to quickly and efficiently return us to normality. On the other hand, the many benefits of negative emotions, such as their creative potential…, importance for interpersonal relations…, and role in achieving a rich and meaningful life… are rarely prominent in current social discourse. 
[T]he importance placed on happiness and the devaluation of sadness is not as apparent in Asian cultures. In Japan, acceptance, emotional balance, and even hardship are highly valued, and the pursuit of happiness often has “immoral” connotations.
Among the findings, there was a clear tendency for Australian individuals to feel worse about themselves when experiencing negative emotions than the Japanese individuals who were more likely to view sadness as normal and helpful.
Emotions are fundamentally social phenomena. Our research provides the first evidence that people’s generalized beliefs about how others expect them to feel may play a central role in their emotional experience and well-being. Our work shows that the more people hold beliefs that others expect them not to experience negative emotions, the more frequently and intensely they are likely to experience those negative emotions. Such ironic effects also relate to indicators of well-being, such as satisfaction with life and depression. 
Moreover, our findings suggest that these relationships are at least partly mediated by negative self-evaluations that people have when they experience undesired emotions. Attempts to promote the value of feeling good over the value of feeling bad by emphasizing social norms for these emotions may therefore have the effect of making people feel bad more often.
Now, relevant to this discussion, there does exist some evidence that sometimes people who experience depression end up hurting themselves, or lapse into periods in which their functioning diminishes. This evidence is used by many psychiatrists to urge people to take psychiatric drugs. But, is it really the depression that leads these people to hurt themselves, or is it how they respond to their sad feelings that lead to various undesirable outcomes?
A central difference between the two has to do with throwing insults at ourselves; when we are depressed we spend a great deal of time doing that, in melancholy, not so much. To better understand what I mean by this, and to clarify the natural function of depression and melancholy, it will be worthwhile to first take a brief look at another state of being, sleep.
As a result of our special familiarity with sleep–we experience it pretty much every single day–when I point out six of its characteristics, everyone will readily know what I’m talking about. It will then be easier to see that similar characteristics occur with the less familiar depression and melancholy experiences.
Before we go to sleep, we experience a warning that sleep is heading our way. We refer to this warning as “feeling sleepy.”
Feeling sleepy can range from being a little sleepy, all the way to the point where we can barely keep our eyes open. This range of sleepiness is dependent on a special memory that stores how sleepy you are. This memory can be visualized as a bucket. If you are a little sleepy in the morning, the bucket is viewed as only slightly filled. If you manage to divert your attention from the sleepiness so you can go to work, by the time you get back home, your sleepiness memory hasn’t forgotten that the bucket was slightly filled earlier, and now that several more hours have gone by without getting some sleep, the bucket has filled up beyond the height than it was in the morning. 
This becomes noticeable by more frequent waves of sleepiness, and each wave feels more heavy or intense. If you divert your attention from how sleepy you are so you can have dinner and watch a few of your favorite TV shows, you will find that none of your earlier sleepiness has been completely forgotten for long, and on top of that, even more sleepiness has been added. 
By the time you are watching the opening monologue of the Tonight Show, your bucket may now be filled up, and sleep will come even if you try to resist.
Finally, some people, desiring to avoid having their bucket getting filled up too early, will carve out some time in their day to take a nap or two. Each nap lowers the level in their bucket, and they therefore remain more alert during the day after a few minutes of grogginess passes.
As Katrina is on her way to work, a concern arises within. “My job is not really right for me,” she says to herself. “It’s getting more and more boring, and the pay is barely enough to make ends meet. I have to make a change.”
Upon arriving home, Katrina puts on the TV to see some shows she likes. While watching, she finds that her concerns intrude into her consciousness more frequently and in a more intense manner than previous recent days. In the medical model of thinking about this, these intrusions would be viewed as symptoms of a possible mental disorder. As I view them, they are as natural as a sunrise.
Like the sleep memory that we visualized as a sleepiness bucket, we can visualize the concern memory also as a bucket. As time passes for Katrina, her memory bucket remembers all of her previous unresolved concerns, and as new concerns come her way, her bucket begins to fill up more and more. As it does so, she experiences more frequent reminders of needing to deal with all of her concerns, and these reminders begin to feel heavier or more intense. Eventually, her concern memory bucket becomes filled to the top and, therefore, putting off dealing with her concerns can no longer be done.
As it did for sleep, this visual metaphor of a bucket works well for depression in two other ways. First, when we look at the various characteristics of depression, we find variation in people’s ability to put off until a more convenient time addressing their concerns. We can visualize this as having either a large, average, or small concern memory bucket. Second, like the sleep memory bucket which we can decrease its contents prior to our main sleep experience by taking naps, there are ways we can decrease the contents in our concern memory bucket before entering into a full blown episode of depression. For example, by meditating once or twice a day, this provides an opportunity to spend time addressing concerns with little distractions.
Meditation is supremely useful for this because the practice involves going to a quiet place and then closing your eyes. Although during meditation you may spend some time focussing on your mantra, this mantra task is so simple that ample time and mental space is available for your concerns to bubble up to the surface where they can be addressed while you are in a relatively calm state.
In today’s world, because there are so many opportunities to distract us from addressing our concerns, from entertaining TV shows, movies, the ease of calling friends, and engaging on social media platforms, methods that free us from so many distractions for periods of time can be enormously helpful.
We have just looked at six characteristics of depression that are somewhat similar to the six characteristics of sleep that we discussed earlier in this essay. There are, of course, some differences between sleep and depression. The difference I want to point out here is that the passing of time is the main factor that leads to needing to go into a period of sleep. The longer you are awake, the sleepier you are likely to become.
Some concerns are relatively easy to address, others are harder. Moreover, concerns vary with regards to how threatening they are to one’s goals.
The six characteristics that apply to depression apply to melancholy as well. The chief difference between the two, as I mentioned earlier, is when people experience depression they insult themselves, whereas when people experience melancholy, not so much.
All of this leads to the person experiencing self-loathing. The insults people attack themselves with add to the concerns in their bucket, leading to it becoming fuller more quickly than if they did not do this, and the insults are distracting, so that the real work of addressing the real concerns are less efficiently addressed.
Despair takes us in when we have no where else to go; when we feel the heart cannot break anymore, when our world or our loved ones disappear, when we feel we cannot be loved or do not deserve to be loved, when our God disappoints, or when our body is carrying profound pain in a way that does not go away.
Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair, a temporary healing absence, an internal physiological and psychological winter when our previous forms of participation in the world take a rest; it is a loss of horizon, it is the place we go when we do not want to be found in the same way anymore. We give up hope and certain particular wishes are no longer able to come true and despair is the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope.
Melancholy provides a richer, and more powerful approach for addressing our concerns, even the most challenging ones. It doesn’t waste time with all of the insults, though, because of old habits, some may still leap into consciousness. When they do, those in melancholy can observe them without believing they are true. Rather, they recognize them as old unhelpful habits, allow themselves to experience the physical sensations that come with them, and then, when those sensations pass in their own good time, they move on to other work that needs to be done.
In our society, many of us learn to address our concerns using the depression pattern. How can they change that pattern so, when the bucket is full they experience, instead, melancholy?
Though most personal counselors are stuck in the medical model that pathologizes the experiences we discussed today, more and more are turning to an alternative approach that values enhancing self-compassion. Naturally my two favorites of these are my son, Jack Star Rubin, and his talented wife, Emily Whyte Rubin. You can learn about their services, which are available online, by clicking 
For some, like Lincoln and Joni, their suffering never completely went away, but they, in a sense, made friends with it. They did so by coming to understand that experiencing challenges more deeply than people with a happy-go-lucky temperament has the potential to provide a motivating force to bring forth valued achievements. As Joni so beautifully expressed this, 
Leo Tolstoy provided us the most vivid example. His depression stimulated a gnawing questioning that eventually led to one insight after another. His trouble had not been with life in general, not with the common life of common people, but with the life of the upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life that he had personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. By spending more time in nature and in a supportive community, “things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away.” According to Tolstoy, his suicidal feelings disappeared, and he went on to live a productive life until he passed away at the age of 82 of natural causes.
William James’s story is more in line with this second type of depression experience, in that he, like Tolstoy, found that by making certain changes in how he was living and the situation in which he was living, his experiences of dealing with depression decreased to a point that he felt he was getting more out of life. I briefly reviewed these changes in an earlier post titled, “William James’s Personal Bout with a “’Mental Disorder’” (see 
Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on the benches, or rather shelves, against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them, inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other.
It is of special interest that William tells us that his experience “has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since.” For those of us who value people who can sympathize with those having such feelings, we see that something positive came out of William’s own experience. This theme that depression is often a tool to create something of value, runs throughout William’s writings for the rest of his life.
Initially, William, upon having his fearful experience believed that all mental health concerns now referred to as mental disorders are required to have a physical basis and that there was nothing anyone can willfully do about them. Today, short of taking a pill, many of today’s psychiatrists are promoting a similar view. Thus, their basic position is that these concerns are due to something within the patient’s physical makeup. This misses the overwhelming evidence that how people construe their past and current experiences, and their current social and work situations, are often the central causative factors.
One thing that he had decided to do was to spend more time than he had been on focussing on some uplifting life experiences. For example, he began to read poems by William Wordsworth. Consider Wordsworth’s poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”
Continuous as the stars that shine
For William, the delight that Wordsworth had for the beauty of nature was catching, and William began to spend more time in nature, especially in the Keene Valley area of the Adirondack Mountains. Also, of enormous help, was to find the right type of work for his temperament, as we see from a letter he wrote to his brother, the gifted novelist Henry James:
To continue this series on the experiences of famous persons who dealt with depression, I just finished reading a wonderful book titled, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.
I actually began discussing the book in my last post, which has the title, “
Lincoln, up till his mid-twenties, was not viewed as being a melancholy kind of guy. Friends and neighbors saw him as sunny and persisting tirelessly. For example, during the Black Hawk War, a fellow soldier said of him, “I never saw Mr Lincoln angry or desponding, but always cheerful… the whole company, even amid trouble and suffering, received strength and fortitude, by his buoyancy and elasticity.” Also typical of comments made of him, a neighbor said, “He was the best natured man I ever got acquainted with.”
Oh, there is evidence of cracks in his sunny disposition during his early years, but they occurred during times of great disappointments, which is pretty typical of most people. For example, after he and a partner opened a store and it soon failed, as we might expect, some described him as moping around, and one person reported hearing him say he might “let the whole thing go.”
…after that event he seemed quite changed, he seemed retired, and loved solitude, he seemed wrapped in profound thought, indifferent, to transpiring events, had little to say, but would take his gun and wander off in the woods by himself, away from associations of even those most esteemed, this gloom seemed to deepen for some time, so as to give anxiety to friends in regard to his mind.
The next period in which people who knew Abe clearly saw he was very depressed began at the beginning of January of 1841. Letters reveal how concerned people became. “We have been very much distressed on Lincoln’s account,” wrote one person. “Lincoln you know was desponding & melancholy when you left,” wrote another. “He has grown much worse and is now confined to his bed sick in body & mind,” wrote another.
For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon me, it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.
Some people experience depression, and then they have a “breakthrough” or “turning point,” and it goes away. This is what happened to Leo Tolstoy.
He spent an increasing amount of time alone, which can be profoundly important as people come to terms with loss, and sort out their ideas. Crucially important for him is that he found a cause that provided him a reason to live.
He yoked his feelings to a style…of melancholy that was, more than anything, philosophical. He saw the world as a sad, difficult place from which he expected considerable suffering. “There was a strong tinge of sadness in Mr Lincoln composition,” said his friend Joseph Gillespie. “He felt very strongly that there was more of discomfort than real happiness in human existence under the most favorable circumstances and the general current of his reflections was in that channel.” 