Motivation During Depression

I got a new book. It’s a well known idea, almost a joke, that therapists love new books We both love and hate books because our clients love books, read them, then take what they say and do that thing even though we’ve been avoiding telling them to do that thing for months because we want them to come to it themselves – and then they do it and we get no credit. Even though we KNEW it!

Anyway, this book is about writing, and it’s by Julia Cameron (there is a joke here – having to do with the timing of this blog. We’ll discuss it later). She’s the woman who wrote The Artist’s Way. There is a lot to complain about in her books, but sometimes she just tells a particular truth over and over and I can’t ignore it. The bottom line is this: there are tricks and techniques to get going when you’re stuck, but using them requires motivation, and if that motivation has been stolen from you by depression it becomes very hard. It’s hard to remember to challenge your thoughts, or take the one step to go on a walk, or drink water. It’s hard (I think that turkey in the picture might be depressed because I think he is looking for his flock. It’s hard to fly away and search).

If you (or I) want to get moving on anything, we have to start with a very small step – and it might be an actual step, maybe a call, maybe opening a journal and the motivation to do that has to come from something deeper, maybe so far within ourselves it is outside ourselves. And we have to find motivation to look for it, to ask for it. It’s that spark of life. It’s the creative, generative, life-giving spark. Once the spark is found, the techniques fall into place. It’s so close but sometimes feels a billion miles away. The first step is believing it’s there and believing you can access it. Wanting to stay alive might mean asking for motivation when the spark seems very dim. For me, I’ll try to access it even when my only contact with it is the trying. And I’ll rest when the trying has exhausted me.