(This is an account of a fictionalized client, whose traits are drawn from many individuals.)

My new client, Toni, had the classic signs of an ongoing depression:  she was sleeping more than usual, she ate too little, and she lay in bed many mornings trying to talk herself into getting up and starting her day.  Her world looked bleak and dark;  as an artist, she was particularly aware of how colors were washed out and her sense of space was flattened.  And, most painfully, her relationship with her boyfriend felt dry and unsatisfying.

Toni had been through this before, several times.  In her teens, when her father died and her mother withdrew emotionally, Toni sunk into a deep depression.  Then, upon graduating college, she sunk again.  She was stressed about what to do after school, but as she said, not that stressed.  This current descent into depression had even less trigger--an ongoing struggle with her boyfriend around whose house to move into.  (Depression tends to fuel itself after several major episodes, requiring less and less in the way of outside events to set it off).

Now, Toni, when not depressed, was a pretty empathic, related, "people" person.  She enjoyed her friends, liked meeting new people, and loved her boyfriend deeply.  So one of the hardest parts about these depressions were the loss of love.  Not that love abandoned her;  her friends and partner stuck it out with her and let her know repeatedly how much they cared.  It was, she said, "as if love gets hidden."

The experience of depression has so much to do with a sort of forced estrangement from our own lives.  We may want to connect, to feel close to the world around us and the people in it, but it's as if all the bridges have been burned. We can see the other side, but can't cross over.

This was Toni's experience.  Her body and mind had gone into a state of withdrawal that circled in on itself.  Again, in her words:  "I'm stuck in this glass bubble, seeing what I can't feel or touch, and as I try to run out, it just rolls around with me."

We decided to try a couple different ways of rebuilding those bridges which depression had burned.  First, she agreed to get assessed by a psychiatrist for possible prescription of anti-depressant medication.  For years she had refused this option, feeling that she had to muscle through the depression without such a "crutch."  But this time, she could see how entrenched the depression was, and was willing to take any support that was available. 

I explained two things:  one, that depression over time changes the way the brain works (hence the increasing ease of triggering depression), so that at times medications that addresses the physical reality can be essential.  Second, I described how the medications don't at all solve the problem, they just give you somewhere to stand while you do the work of unlearning the mind and body's habits of depression.  (Try learning to surf if you have a tiny board and keep getting dunked:  you need enough "up" time to learn something new.)  She wasn't happy about it, but she was willing.

Then the second bridge-building exercise was something that, as a woman of deep integrity, she balked at.  "When you're driving to work this next week, every car that passes you on the highway, try to spot the driver, and in your mind tell them you love them."  I suppose something like "sputtering disdain" might describe her first reaction, which I could empathize with since it's about how I reacted the first time it was suggested to me.

Toni had what I see as a pretty common, and culturally based, tendency to think of love, of "heart connection," as almost a gift of the universe, precious, mysterious, and not to be manipulated (listen to a pop radio station if you're skeptical...).  Intentionally trying to evoke this emotion is seen as a degrading of the feeling and relationship, a cheapening if not an outright manipulation of oneself and others. This is part of why the loss of the ability to feel love was so painful to her when depressed:  she was losing access to something sacred.

So to start, I simply asked her to keep a journal that recorded several times a day, on a scale of 1-10, how loving she felt.  This only raised a cocked eyebrow, so I knew she was, mostly, willing.  And she did do it, despite the lethargy of the depression, and came back a bit quizzical.  I asked her what she had noticed.

"Well, the feeling of love fluctuated a little bit over the week--well, actually, during each day as well."  I asked about a peak of 4 recorded mid-week, and at first she shrugged, but when we looked at what was actually happening at that time, we saw a connection with her boyfriend's making her a bath when he came to visit.  She agreed there seemed a connection.  So then I asked her to rate her loving feeling right then, and she said maybe a 2.  Then I asked her to imagine that evening with her boyfriend, and helped her to bring out the details of the memory...at which point she said, "Huh!  I'm feeling close to what I felt then," and she began misting up.

"Toni, does the feeling of love that's coming up feel phony to you?"

"No, it's real."  As we talked more, she started opening to, and seeing, that love--authentic, genuine love--can be experienced both spontaneously, and intentionally.  I described the ancient Buddhist practice of Metta, the meditation on "loving kindness," a formal practice in cultivating the capacity to feel love for (ultimately) all beings and all things.  We agreed there is certainly bogus love, some emotion or thought which is not accurately named--but that was not what she was experiencing.

After this, Toni was willing to try the freeway exercise, and at my encouragement, played with the language to see what specific way of expressing a loving intent actually brought up the feeling.  It changed a bit from day to day, but circled around, "You driver there, we are both sacred beings, in pain and joy together."  In engaging this "commuter Metta" practice, she found that at times when she wasn't in her car, she noticed a shift in what we began to call her love-o-meter.

She came to see, because of her own direct experience, that love hides for a reason (whether neurological, chemical, emotional, or mental), and therefore that love can be found "for a reason," i.e., intentionally.  Metta practice (by whatever name) clears the brush and vines off the edifice of love:  it becomes much more distinct and easily felt. 

Toni took on this practice quite diligently, and in combination with medications and work on changing certain depressive ways of thinking, was able to come out of her depression and stabilize herself at a satisfying place of connection and empathy with her loved ones, and people in general.  The value of regular practice became apparent to her, both because it provided structure when she does veer towards depression, as well as authentically showing her that despite what depression says, she does have influence in her own life. 

Love may go hidden from time to time, but she was learning how to whistle in such a way that it would come running back.

(A good book about Metta practice, written by a contemporary Buddhist teacher, is Loving Kindness by Sharon Salzberg.)