February 2019 – Tool of the Month – Walking Yourself Out Into the World

The tool-of-the-month for this month is a simple one that is often not easy to execute on. The way depression works is primarily to pull the levers and knobs of the imagination, to convince you that the world, well, just is grey and bleak. But, the solution to depression is often described by the 180 degree opposite from what it’s doing: if it’s imagining greyness for you, then you can imagine color for yourself.

So, this is a description of the process of imagining out from where you are, in concentric circles of the world around you, in order to remind (“re-mind”) yourself that there is a world of possibility and potential out there, and that depression was just forgetting it for you.

Walking Yourself Out Into the World

My English Lit professor, way way back when, told us about the author E. L. Doctorow, who at one point hit a writer’s slump. Apparently, sitting there one day, he stared at a spot on the wall—I imagine he’s feeling flat, and dejected by the Muse—and then just started writing about that spot. Then he walked his attention outside and imagined the street life, then he focused in on some of the strangers in his mind, and that apparently was the beginning of his novel, Ragtime.

When we’re getting stuck in depression, which means getting stuck in our selves, it’s so hard to imagine a world “out there.” We can see the present reality (though it is hard to feel), but whereas when not depressed we can imagine with color and taste the world at large, in depression that all collapses into a grey, deflated mush.

But, as you know, simply deciding there’s a colorful world out there, full of potential, is like deciding that you are off your leash. You go running off and get yanked back like a cartoon dog. So, the better method is to accept that you’re on that rope—depression is weighing you down, making it impossible in the moment to feel the world as abundant and available—but not to accept that there actually isn’t any world there. Because there is.

So, taking inspiration from the illustrious Mr. Doctorow, the tool for this month is a relatively simple technique of starting where we observably are, and walking our attention and imagination out into the world through progressively larger circles. When you find yourself in that constricted space, try this exercise. (Remember, though, as with any exercise, you must consider it only one tool in your tool belt: if it does not work for whatever known or unknown reason, you just stick it back in the belt, and try another one. It’s all, at the end of the day, experimentation.) I’ll give my example after the description.

1) Bring your attention to your current place—literally, the physical environment you’re in.

2) Notice the quality of the world that you can’t actually see. In your own imagination, is it even out there, or is there just a grey smear? Is it there but chunky, indistinct? Is it there but full of bleary fearful things? Is it there, but without any life but you?

3) Now imagine just the next layer out from where you are, the first “ring” of imagination. Let yourself sidestep what you noticed in step 2, and imagine what it typically feels like when you’re out there, maybe on the sidewalk, maybe the kitchen, maybe the backyard, maybe the forest.

4) Now go to the next “ring” in your imagination. See what is beyond that immediate layer, maybe out into the city block, or the neighborhood, or the local nature. Try to both see what’s there—drawing on both your memories, and on your knowledge of the typical experience of that area—and feel into it, emotionally and in your body.

5) Keep going! Let yourself keep expanding in rings around you, larger and larger, but stopping at each level to imagine and feel and sense the nature and experience of that ring of reality.

6) See how your sense—meaning, the complex of feeling, senses, memory, assumptions, and faith/openness—of those various rings changes as you practice, and keep noticing how engaging your imagination in relation to the world shifts your experience of your mood. Remember the adage, in this case in relation to your sense of reality: if you are not doing something consciously, depression will do it unconsciously.

Ok? So here’s my example:

1) I’m at my home office, and maybe feeling a bit bleary from writing all day, and have a dulled sense of the world around. Which, being unpleasant, I’d rather not feel. So, I look around my room and take in the stuff I can see: some books, some paintings, bric-a-brac and chotskies, and let the feeling of them in. I start feeling a bit more oriented, and the colors and textures can now be felt in my body. Good, a good start.

2) The shades are closed, so I can’t see outside. It seems kind of blank out there, so I imagine the typical scene: there’s the lawn, the street, the backyard, and I just stop my attention there and pause to feel them. The sense of the hardness of the asphalt comes in. The smell of the lawn. The sense of space is there now, whereas before it felt flat.

3) Also good, so then I move my imagination and attention out to the neighborhood. Oh, I realize I hadn’t been seeing any people! So, I let my mind populate with the map of the houses and streets around me, and fill in with typical images of neighbors, some with kids, a few walking dogs. I feel what changes in me as I remember that, yes, there are fellow humans in the world. It makes the flatness recede and be replaced with color, and history, and the sense of the possibility of relationship. I notice that my body feels more real and present, so, huh, that’s interesting.

4) From there I keep repeating the same process: out to my town, places I know, things I like, the uglier bits to give it fullness. Then my region, the mountains, the ocean nearby, images of a dolphin I saw once in the surf. Then my state, the desert at dusk, Yosemite, choked freeways.

I decide that’s good enough, as the goal of reconnecting myself to the world around, reminding my various systems that it’s not just me floating in space, has been accomplished.

So, this is just another possible device to pull out as needed, and as with all the others, its only goal is to remind you of what’s already true: that you exist, that you are not in an ugly world, that you are woven into uncountable relationships, and that your life and the life have heft, and weight, and meaning.