My song today is, ‘Have You Ever Been Lonely? (Have you Ever Been Blue?) This a song which was first published in 1932, with music by Peter De Rose and lyrics by Bill Hill (writing under the name of George Brown). It has been recorded by many singers, becoming a standard.
The most familiar version of ‘Have You Ever Been Lonely?’ is an electronically created "duet" featuring country music singers, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline, who had both died in separate plane crashes (Cline in 1963, Reeves in 1964), and had never recorded together during their lifetimes. In 1961, both singers recorded their own solo versions of the song and released it to various albums.
In 1981, Owen Bradley (who was Cline's original producer), lifted their solo vocal performances off their original stereo tapes, synchronized them and recorded a new backing track. The song was released in the fall of 1981, and in January 1982 became a Number 5 hit on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, and a Number 1 hit on the RPM Magazine ‘Country Singles’ chart.
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Loneliness has been a growing problem in society among many groups of people for the past decade, and the recent lockdown in the country(because of Covid-19), and across the world has merely exacerbated it for the aged and single person who lives alone. Too often, loneliness can inevitably lead to increased depression.
There have been many times in my life when I have been on my own and have had to face this or that alone, but with one brief exception, I have never been lonely in my life, and I have never been blue or depressed. I have worked with hundreds of lonely and depressed people but thankfully depression is not something I do! Depression is something that I regularly experienced during my 27 years as a Probation Officer and a Relaxation Training Instructor.
I am not, and I am not aware of anyone who is qualified enough to know what it is that makes a person depressed. I do know of numerous experienced workers from the field of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists who have worked with depressive people all their lives but have never personally experienced depression. To experience depression one can either have it, be surrounded with someone in your life that has it, or work with people who experience it!
The causes of depression are as many as the symptoms depressive people can display. While I do not know what makes a person depressed, I naturally have theories that I subscribe to, and I do have sufficient worker’s experience of how to minimise and lessen depression to more acceptable levels. I cannot say for the life in me whether any treatment or working method can fully dispel and eliminate depression from a person’s life, thereby ensuring that depressive symptoms never come back, but I know of working methods which can help to fight it off and which can keep depression at bay.
I am 100% certain that depression is so personalised a condition, and while there are many common symptoms that overlap the experiences of many sufferers, no depression is precisely the same in any two people who experience it. Equally, I am of the view that no depression can ever be fully understood by any person who has never suffered from it.
Here are just a few different descriptions that I have heard from the mouths of hundreds of depressed people with whom I have worked:
“I laugh. I cry, and then I repeat the process because I cannot stop crying.”
“I have lived with depression so long now that I no longer fear its presence. What I fear most is facing myself today and living with myself tomorrow, and the day after!”
“My depression is like being flung into a deep, dark sea, where you sink more and more and never have enough kick in you to come back up.”
“I started feeling depressed when the pain first arrived. At first, I managed to cope each day without depending on doctor’s tablets because I hoped it would soon pass. Hope gave my pain meaning and made it bearable until worsening depression gradually robbed me of hope and medication addiction made me hopeless.”
“I get tired looking for answers, and trying to explain to others is too exhausting. I get fed up with people always asking why I am depressed? I don’t know why! If I did, I’d bloody well do something about it! If you showed me a switch to get rid of my depression, I’d turn it off.”
A few important things I learned as a worker during my career is that depression is virtually impossible to adequately describe to anybody (however intelligent they are) who has never experienced it. It is like a depressed person attempting to describe a place that you have never been to. It is like showing someone a photograph to describe a depressive experience. Such an exercise can never be more than a second-rate exercise, as the photograph is devoid of ‘feeling’ and it is the ‘corresponding feeling of depression’ which gives the condition meaning!
Over my 27 years as a Probation Officer, one of my proudest achievements was to help hundreds of depressed people who had been addicted to medication for periods between one and ten years, break their addiction. The main methods I used to help diminish depression involved a change of lifestyle more than seeking the actual cause of its presence. It is true that regular daily monitoring of one’s pattern of behaviour (immediately before feeling depressed, along with what specifically one is doing or thinking when depression starts to descend), can help the worker better understand ‘what to do’ and ‘what not to do’ to lessen or aggravate the depression. First, I encouraged all clients with depression to talk about their debilitating condition, especially with loved ones and significant others.
I taught them that while the physical symptoms that their depression displays are real and physical, the depressed condition they are feeling begins in the mind, lives in the mind, is controlled by the mind, but tortures the whole body.
I taught all people with depression with whom I worked how to relax, how to breathe easier to reduce tension, how to relax their muscles, how to stand and centralise their body force, how to engage in positive self-talk, and how to improve their sleeping patterns and awake more energised the following morning. Being energised and depressed is bad enough, but being depressed and lacking energy to fit back is wholly debilitating and bodily destructive.
I found that people with prolonged depression are more prone to have suicidal thoughts and engage in suicidal acts. I found that such people find it hard to love others and invariably hate themselves. These broken souls, even if they find love, are usually unable to keep the love of another without driving it away. They have got so used to living in the dark so long that they have forgotten how to appreciate anything which shines in their life; even the good and loving people who surround them.
So, if you know of a person with constant depression, please do not make the mistake of believing that you really know them. You do not! Nobody does! Beware of stating the most asinine piece of advice you can give them, “Snap out of it!” The only thing of which any outsider can be certain is knowing that their depression is real, it is valid, it is insidious, it is debilitating, it compounds daily, it saps their hope, it drains their energy, and it destroys all prospects of mental and physical health. And while it continues to live in the mind of the tormented, it plagues their body with a condition that cannot be captured on an x-ray or medical scan.
Please be aware that only a sustained change in behaviour and lifestyle will bring about improved health and functioning in the mind of the depressed person. Years and decades of experiencing depression cannot be realistically expected to vanish overnight, as recovery takes place in its own time, and is not a competition between one depressive person and another.
Love and peace Bill xxx