Depression and the experience of time

“When you’re depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. Being upset, even profoundly upset, is a temporal experience, while depression is atemporal. Breakdowns leave you with no point of view.” - Andrew Solomon

Our experience is typically temporal. We have a sense of being embedded in the flow of time. The past recedes behind us, the future opens before us. We can remember things, both positive and negative, and we can allow those memories to have an impact. The future may be bright or scary, but it nevertheless exists as an ever-present possibility. When you’re depressed, there is no past and future. You are confined to an infinite present. This is not the calm, serene presence you experience in meditation or in moments of gentle contentedness. There is a sense of being trapped in this present, like in a locked cupboard. It is stifling and confusing. From this place it is extremely difficult to orient to past and future. The possibilities of the future cease to be. The past, washed out and blurry, is lost in obscurity, and positive memories won’t crystallise. When experience is flattened into an unfelt, unexperienced present, it becomes difficult to imagine things getting better.

This temporal disruption is central to understanding the sense of hopelessness and helplessness that accompanies depression. It feeds back and maintains low motivation. If you cannot imagine things getting better, you do not have the motivation to take action, because what’s the point? And if you have no motivation to change, how could you imagine things getting better? The serpent eats its own tail, so to speak.

It is important to note the perceptual disruption that occurs in the throes of depression which makes it much more than just a malfunction of thinking. When working well, our perception operates as a dynamic process which embeds us, as a participant, in the world. When you’re depressed, you are not a participant. You are an observer of a world which you cease to feel a part of in any meaningful way. This is why relationships are so fundamental to the management of depression. Being in meaningful relationships allows us to re-experience a sense of participation in life. If you can notice that sense of participation, your recovery is underway.

A simple exercise (adapted from “The Zen Path through Depression”:

Put away your clocks away for a few days. Pay attention to the way time flows within you. When does it move slowly? When does it speed up? What are your thoughts and feelings at those times? Make notes on this. Notice the way that what you pay attention to affects how you experience time. For example, how does scrolling on your phone affect your sense of time compared with spending time in nature? Experiment with this.

Resources

Solomon, A. (2014). The noonday demon: An atlas of depression. Simon and Schuster.

Martin, P. (1999). The Zen path through depression. HarperSanFrancisco.