Depression and Creativity

Sharon (audience member - Oprah and Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth Online Class): I have close relationships to people who suffer from depression. And in talking with them, I find that there's an inwardness and a strong identity that they have as people who suffer from depression.

Eckhart Tolle: Whether it is a physical condition that one suffers from or a psychological condition, there is the tendency to identify oneself with it.

Continued in article Eckhart Tolle On Depression.

~ ~

Connie Francis

Connie Francis reports that a biopic about her life is progressing.

“The script is done and set to shoot later this year,” she says. “I collaborated with Gloria Estefan, who’s going to portray me in the film.”

In the meantime, Francis, now age 69 - who has survived four divorces, bipolar disorder and a rape - maintains a busy schedule of concerts and says she always includes audience favorites, like her hit “Who’s Sorry Now.”

Also read interviews with Eric Maisel.

..~ ~

From article The Art of Seeing Depression, by Tom Wootton :

Depression Advantage "Each time I was forced to experience depression it became more clear to me. I began to redefine what depression is and better recognize the features that I could now 'see' more clearly. My scale began to change from one based on pain to one based on a much richer perception of what was going on."

His books include The Depression Advantage, and The Bipolar Advantage.

Also see his Bipolar Advantage site.

..~ ~

Depression and
negative thinking

Question: Can you help me handle depression? Every time I ask my husband, he only irritates me by saying things like, "Don't go there!" or "Depression is just a thought; drop it."

I totally miss what he is trying to tell me. Any hints?

Answer: The next time depression takes you over, think toward it instead of from it.

What this means is that you are to realize in the moment of being taken over by the darkness that you are simply wrongly involved in thinking about your state from the state itself.

This is exactly how negative states take us captive. See the depression as a temporary imposition instead of accepting the position the state is telling you that you must accept. Work at this. Your efforts will be rewarded.

Guy Finley / Life of Learning Foundation

~ ~

Her bout with depression made Lorraine Bracco ["The Sopranos"] determined to help others. "I think a lot of people are depressed, and they don't know it. It's like a low-grade fever. We've been told to buck up and just do it, and sometimes that's not possible."
Her memoir is On the Couch.

> more quotes on : Depression
> article: Lorraine Bracco talks about her depression & 'The Sopranos'

~ ~

Blocked creativity
& depression

St John’s Wort, therapy, homoeopathy, and a stay in hospital.

There are no escape routes from depression that I haven’t tried, but I have also never found anything that worked for longer than a temporary sticking plaster whose edges gradually curled up and fell off leaving the bleeding wound exposed yet again.

What no one ever suggested was that frustrated or blocked creativity might have been a factor.

The Van Gogh Blues showed me how powerful a factor creativity is in the equation and the amazing energy that it taps into and releases.

Eric Maisel makes transparently clear in his book how very toxic it is when we suppress that energy and are not creating.

from review of book The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel for Mslexia [mslexia.co.uk] by AnnA Rushton - writer and creativity coach creativecatalyst.co.uk

.~ ~

Andy Behrman on overcoming his “manic frenzy”

Weekly $25,000 shopping binges at Barney's and "high end" boutiques...

I could stay up three nights in a row and crank out screenplays and novels that would take other people years to write. ...

Since the drama of my manic frenzy, 19 electroshock treatments, all kinds of experimentation with medications and talk therapy is over, the dust has finally settled.

I have been living even-keeled with only one major episode of manic depression in the last five years...

But for quite some time, I was left was left with a huge "gap" in my life... There's a tremendous amount of loss associated with "saying goodbye" to mania...

from article Living Mania-Free
by Andy Behrman

Author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania

More quotes on page Bipolar Disorder

~ ~

Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses Of Gifted Children And Adults: Adhd, Bipolar, Ocd, Asperger's, Depression, And Other Disorders