How poetry helped me recover from depression
Seventeen years ago, out of the blue, I suffered my first depressive episode: it was unlike anything I could have imagined. When I wasn’t heavily sedated I was in physical agony. I would howl like an animal, begging to be put out of my misery.
Mercifully, no-one listened. Slowly I recovered. I got back to work as a Times journalist and once again was able to look after our two small boys. I imagined I would never be ill again. But seven years later, I had a second breakdown, even worse than the first. This time, I was bed-ridden for a year.
For the last decade, I have been battling with the Black Dog. Thankfully now I seem to have the beast on a tight leash. Many different approaches have contributed to my recovery. I use antidepressants and therapy when needed, am careful what I eat, endeavor to exercise, and watch for the perfectionist tendencies that I now realise lay at the heart of both breakdowns. I wanted to be a good mother, wife, daughter and career girl. I’ve learnt to be more realistic about what I can manage.
In addition, one unusual approach has helped me enormously: the healing power of poetry. When I was first ill, it helped me articulate something of my despair. Then it provided solace and comfort and a sense that I wasn’t alone.
My mother or husband would read to me, the odd line at first, then as my concentration improved a verse. One of my favourite lines in the early days was this from Corinthians: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.’
When I felt at my most alone, when for whatever reason my husband or mother couldn’t be with me – either at work or in the middle of the night – I needed something to hold on to. Snatched lines from whatever I had heard, be that poetry or the bible, became mantras which I could repeat to myself in moments of fear and loneliness.
When the medication had started to take effect, and I could focus on short poems, my favorite became ‘Love’ by the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert. I found in his words the most perfect capturing of what it felt like to suffer depression.
The poem opens thus: ‘Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, / Guilty of dust and sin.’ It spoke of this inability to engage with positivity, to be in a way barred from love with which I identified. ‘Guilty of dust and sin’ accurately expressed my feeling of worthlessness, and also the sense of it being somehow my fault.
Herbert may well have been diagnosed with depression had he lived today, and his poems are only with us because he intended them for the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of others. Shortly before his death he sent them to a friend, requesting he publish them only if he believed they could ‘turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul.’ I would certainly count myself as among those dejected souls that his words have healed.
I later learnt more about the scientific evidence that poetry can help: Reading and comprehending poetry and its slight alteration of syntax has been proven to create new neural pathways. Personally, I have found that the concentration involved roots me in the moment, leaving less mental space for regrets about the past or worries about the future. This works in a similar way to certain mindfulness techniques, which require us to relax our judgmental nature while being fully alert in the present.
Consolatory poems put me in contact with a more compassionate voice, which counteracts the voice of judgment that may drown others out in moments of anxiety. For me, this is the effect of the later verses of Herbert’s poem, in which Love’s own voice accepts the speaker. This compassionate voice can often speak for you, too, when depression leaves you without your own words.
I hope my memoir Black Rainbow, as well as detailing my personal experience of the illness, gives people fresh hope about how to improve their mental health by including the 40 poems which were my friends as I recovered.
Rachel Kelly’s memoir Black Rainbow: How Words Healed Me: My Journey Through Depression
is published by Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99. Its accompanying app is available for £1.49 on the Apple App Store. All author proceeds of the book and app are being given to the charities SANE and United Response.
is published by Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99. Its accompanying app is available for £1.49 on the Apple App Store. All author proceeds of the book and app are being given to the charities SANE and United Response.
Follow Rachel @rache_Kelly or go to www.black-rainbow.co.uk. Rachel will be speaking about the ‘Healing Power of Poetry’ at the Idler Academy on 5th June www.idler.co.uk
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