The difference between cure and care.

“I commented that once individuals realize that medical treatment is unlikely to fix their problem, their thinking moved away from the medical language of cure and toward the spiritual language of transformation. With that interpretation I was speaking only as a sociologist trying to see patterns in data. Several weeks later I read a nearly identical idea in Moore’s book.
“A major difference between care and cure is that cure implies the end of trouble..But care has a sense of ongoing attention. There is no end. Conflicts may never be resolved. Your character will never change radically, although it may go through some interesting transformation…” (Care of the soul. Thomas Moore.)

” Moore sustains the argument that we ought not become pathological about our depression. He makes then interesting point that the word “depression” itself shapes the way we think about the human condition it describes. Today, consistent with a medically dominated view of emotional pain, we prefer the more clinical and serious word depression to the more human words “melancholy” or “sadness.” This observation is entirely consistent with labeling theory in social psychology that ties the construction of our identities to the labels others apply to us and that we ourselves ultimately adopt.” Karp, David A (1996) Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection and the Meaning of Illness. Oxford University Press. NY.
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A comment:
“One of the major indicators of depression is how it permeates our soul with that desire for isolation and being disconnected from life around us.”
Yes, I agree fully with this reality of getting ourselves isolated and disconnected from that world which we once inhabited. The solution is to take charge of our lives –get out the “toolbox” of our fellowship, Depressed Anonymous, and roll up our sleeves and get to work. How tom do this is all contained in our group manual Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. And if we get the Depressed Anonymous Workbook and start to answer the questions contained there, we will begin to see that we have started on a journey of not only understanding the nature of the depression experience but we will begin to understand ourselves.
Hugh

SOURCE: I’ll do it when I feel better.(2014) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Pages 88-89.

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