DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE: WORKING WITH THE TOTAL PROCESS
DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE: WORKING WITH THE TOTAL PROCESSIn the midst of a depressed episode, Frau R. is identified with the process of being angry and hopeless about life for not giving her the youthfulness, pleasure and mechanical abilities she once had. Though there are fleeting moments in which she switches and seems to want help, by and large she is against life.As long as we are unclear about the structure of her process, we are bound to take the unoccupied part in her pattern. In Frau R.’s pattern, the unoccupied part is the healer who is trying to get her to live. In her depressed and nasty state, the more she hears about help, the more she rejects it. The more she rejects it, the more she splits off her secondary request for help and the more the social worker, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, hospitals and police are trapped into trying to be helpful.This is a vicious and dangerous cycle because if we constantly act like helpers, she never gets the chance to help herself and is constantly in the position of the depressed one who wants to die. But this situation can be reversed by knowing the process structure well enough to flip the two processes.After trying for about twenty minutes to be the helper and attempting different approaches, I decided to side with the dying process since everything else resulted in negative feedback. Thus I played her primary process better than she could, hoping that she would take on the social worker’s process of being helpful and hopeful. I looked down and spoke slowly and in a depressed voice:Amy: I am now ready to go. Nothing worked, nothing helps. I want to go off alone and think it all over. Nothing can be done here anyway. Too bad.Frau R.: No, I am happy that you are here.I noticed that this was her first positive response and I was genuinely surprised to see that my plan had actually worked.Amy: Really?Frau R.: Yes. For me you are a stranger and it was a great help and a good thing that I could talk about such intimate things with you. I am even getting good at talking about myself [she giggles].Social Worker: Frau R., that is the first time I have ever seen you laugh!Amy: Give me a coffee, I have had enough here and want to go.The social worker did not notice what I was doing and said:Social Worker: Amy, do you not see any chance for helping her? Stay!Frau R.: Yes! Do you see any possibility of helping me? Now I would be really interested if you could tell me something helpful!*91\227\8*
