Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 16

cont.

The Nature of the Conversion Process

Alcoholics Anonymous insists that having a belief in a "higher power" is necessary for its program to work. "If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take...you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer". (3) I have no data on the extent to which this is true, and the extent to which alcoholism is similar to depression in this respect. But in light of the vast experience of A. A., their opinion at least merits consideration. (It should be noted that in A. A., the "ideas" (their word) of faith, God, and spiritual experience are interpreted very broadly, seemingly to include almost everything beyond the mundane that elicits awe and wonder and mystery. Indeed, "belief in the A. A. group" to which one belongs apparently is a common form of such faith. (4)

All this has a physiological and psychological connection to the forces at work in meditation. A major difference, however, is that meditation is a voluntarily induced state that one reaches most easily with various learned techniques of breathing, concentration, body position, chanting, and rhythmic movements, whereas religious conversion is more likely to be spontaneous.

Some Christian ministers and religious communities try to foster conversions by inculcating the belief in its possibility, and by providing the conditions of personal acceptance that make it more attractive.

General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question whether they are to rise or sink.(5)

And a person may increase the likelihood of conversion or salvation from depression by participating in such religious groups. But more than that the individual cannot do, except perhaps to try "surrendering" his or her striving so as to be open to the conversion experience.

Though religious conversion differs from other modes of fighting depression because one usually cannot induce a religious conversion by one's own will and efforts, one may make the process more likely to happen by steeping oneself in the religion of conversion, by reading and discussing, and by hoping that one will be saved by religious experience; these are the key tactics of Alcoholics Anonymous (which also relies on mutual support, and group discussion which point out distorted thinking process). Yet the process of conversion can only occur when one is not trying to be converted, or trying to do anything else. Conversion is one of those many processes--like remembering a forgotten word, or a man having an erection--where trying to produce the event only prevents its occurrence.(6)

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After the conversion itself the person may continue to be "God-intoxicated," in religious terms. I take this phrase to mean that the person continues to hold the conversion experience and the idea of God in the conscious mind much of the time. The person perceives what seems to be the evidence of God in all aspects of the world about her. And almost anything--even, for example, the ugly bleeping sound of a warning device telling of a hole in the road as one walks by the way--can be heard as a reminder of God's presence in the world. In this manner, conversion can maintain a continuing barrier against negative self-comparisons and the consequent depression.

Summary

Some people's depressions--especially deep depressions-- disappear suddenly and miraculously, without systematic battles and often with great drama. Religious conversions are of this nature, but the phenomenon can occur without the intervention of theistic concepts, as Alcoholics Anonymous has proven.

There is an important similarity between religious conversion and meditation. The state of exhaustion that occurs prior to the radical religious conversions of some very depressed persons is, like meditation, a state of sudden relaxation from striving. It is a time when the person no longer has strength to strive, fight, or even flee, but rather simply falls into exhaustion. At such moments the mental processes of classification, evaluation, and comparison that lead to sadness for the depressive person cease to operate, and the person gets relief--which is then attributed to God, and a religious conversion takes place.

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