Episode 11: A Place of Truth- On Depression, Shame and the Courage to Return

Full Transcript: English

Hello again... my dear listener.
Just in case you've wondered — if I've given up... no. I haven't. I'm still here. Still breathing.

Literally. Breathing in and out of this idea — this pulsing, sensing organism I call Languages of Healing.

And I do want to call it an idea, not a project. A project sounds like another bullet point on a to-do list. Which is not exactly my way of experiencing life … And... well. I'm over fifty. And I guess, I've had enough of bullet points.

I've never begun from a place of calm.

It's always been a place of truth.

I've been gone since March. My last episode — the Sensory Pause — and then... silence.

I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

At the time I released that last episode, I was preparing myself for another journey — to visit my mum. Maybe you remember, from some of the earlier episodes... she is living with Alzheimer's. In its ever-changing phases. In a flat that has never been my home, — a flat that is, honestly, one huge trigger point for me.

We live about a thousand kilometres apart.
And when I visit... I can't relax there. I struggle to breathe there.
Not just because of her condition — but because of everything that flat holds. What its walls remember, even if certain people there have forgotten….. I came back depleted. More depleted than I expected.

And then I got tangled. Pulled in. Literally sucked in…. Into one of my episodes.

I'm not going to tiptoe around it. Depression. That's what it is. Chronic depression. My old companion. Knocking at my door every time I pretend to have lost it …. as you have to pretend for most of the time going out to meet the world just not to be judged.

Now — I thought about using a euphemism. A softer word….
But I wouldn't like to water it down. I wouldn't like to waffle.
So I'm calling it as it is…

Not because it's trendy — and it is, isn't it? Everybody talking about mental health now, which is definitely better than pretending we all cope without blinking. We don't.

But here's the thing that makes depression even heavier than it already is.

The voice. Your own, sometimes. The world's, often. The one that says —
this is just an excuse for failing, for not trying hard enough, hiding behind a victim’s mask …

Maybe I haven't tried hard enough. Maybe I find a kind of comfort in it. Maybe I just... haven't ticked enough boxes in life….

That voice. You probably know it. The monkey mind. The thoughts jumping in all directions, landing nowhere good.

And it's not just the thoughts. It’s the time when they’re most devastating …It's the evenings…

When you know — you genuinely know — that ten minutes with a book might help. That even ten minutes working on something you love might shift something. And still... you reach for the laptop. Find something to stream. Anything to get through the evening. Not seldom disguised as a listening exercise … You numb yourself.

And the worst part isn't the film. The worst part is what comes after. That quiet voice that says: see? You can't even do ten minutes. You disappointed yourself again.
This is what depression actually does. It doesn't take away your self-awareness. It doesn't take away your intelligence. It takes away the physical power to act on what you already know. The gap between knowing and being able — that gap is where depression lives….

And so you get ashamed. Ashamed of being depressed — again. Ashamed of the evenings. Ashamed of the gap. And the shame sits on top of the depression like a second layer of weight…
…. Like a kind of suffocating creature — sitting on your chest, reaching up towards your throat. Totally paralysing ….

I tried therapy. Three times, actually. Medication twice … Bad experiences with at least one psychiatrist I'd rather not describe in detail. And a very close friend of mine — she's tried everything. Different therapies, alternative approaches, different kinds of pharmacological support. Two hospitalizations. And she told me: nothing has really worked.

And I know how that sounds. I know what some people think when they hear that. 'If someone doesn't want to change, they'll always find an excuse.'

…..

Honestly? I've started to hate that sentence. Because it's not always true.
I'm not looking for an excuse. I just... don't see any sense in trying certain things again, when my whole life has been proof that they don't work.
At least not for me.

I've been in this body long enough to know the difference between giving up and knowing when something isn't working. And I've learned — to trust that knowing.
…

And there I was. Somewhere between March and now … And then — in the middle of all this — two small things found me. Not the other way around.
I wasn't looking. They just... arrived.

The first was a podcast. A conversation with a psychotherapist — Esther Perel. I'd never heard of her before…. Very interesting woman… And towards the end of this conversation, the interviewer asked her: can you get good therapy from AI?

And I was... all ears.

She said: yes. For certain kinds of therapy. For certain kinds of people. The best therapists, she said, are excellent for some — and utterly not for others.
Like an acquired taste. And that... that's not a failure. That's just how it is.

And she said something else that made me breathe out — deeply. That when a patient once told her they were also seeing someone else, trying something alternative — she used to feel a little threatened. And then she realized: this is not a danger. This is enrichment. These other people might be seeing things she, as a therapist, simply cannot.

I was so grateful to have heard that. Because it felt like a small flickering light.
A professional finally saying what I'd long felt:
that open minds heal more than closed systems.
A kind of acknowledgment — that there are other ways of healing.
That not everything works for everybody. …
And that's one of the main reasons why I started this podcast.
To name some of those other ways. The unspoken ones. The quiet languages that hold us when the prescribed ones don't reach far enough...
…. when pills and protocols fall short. Scent. Sound. Texture …
The deep meaning of words. Memory.

My second anchor was a short video. A clip from a podcast conversation featuring a Polish actor and artist I follow — Filip Cembala. A beautiful, sensitive human being … Someone with an extraordinary emotional intelligence and a unique gift for sensing his mother tongue ….

He said — and I'm translating from Polish:

"All my life I've been searching — as if my searching itself was my finding. And at some point I realized — I will always be like this. A seeker.
I was born a seeker. And I will die a seeker. That is my colour."

That last phrase — that is my colour.
In Polish, 'taki mój kolor.'
And if you know True Colours — Cyndi Lauper's deeply touching song, which came instantly to my mind — it's exactly that. The colour that is yours alone. The truest thing about you. Not a flaw to correct. Just... who you are…
And for me — simply my nature. My shade. The way I'm made….

When I heard that... something shifted in me.

Because I've spent so much of my life feeling ashamed of exactly that:
Of not having arrived.
Of still searching.
Of not having the answers I feel I should have by now — at my age..
…. after everything I've been through.

And then he said something else. Something that hit even closer.

He said — again, this is his personal view — that this idea that everything depends on us, that we have influence over everything, is so harmful. Because if you happen to be someone simply living the life you want, feeling comfortable in it — fine. But if you've spent fifteen years suffocating in a life you don't have the strength to change... and you still hear the words: it's up to you, you have what you have —

Well. I'm sorry. But that's not true.

I cried when I heard that. Tears just... flooded …. Not from sadness. From recognition.

Because that voice — the one that says you're not trying hard enough, that it's all up to you, that you just need to want it more — that voice has followed me for years. And hearing someone name it as harmful... I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear that. The relief was physical — like a weight lifting from my chest… Like that creature sitting on my chest... remember?... finally releasing its grip …

What if being a seeker is simply what some of us are? Not broken.
Not making excuses. Just — constitutionally unable to stop asking,
to stop looking, to stop trying to understand.

I’m sure I am a seeker. I always have been. And I'm learning that this doesn't need to be fixed….

And then Filip added also this: tomorrow smells of promise….
That image spoke to me completely —
because the sense of smell is THE language I speak when healing….

I'm not entirely sure why I'm telling you all of this today.

Or maybe I am.

Maybe this episode is a kind of double therapy. For me — because speaking it out loud, admitting the shame while knowing the shame isn't mine to carry — that does something. It loosens something.

And maybe — for you. If you're somewhere in this too. In the chaos. In the thick veil. In the place that doesn't feel like a place to speak from.

You don't have to reveal everything in order to sound honest.
You just have to say what's true.

What if the chaos is exactly where truth lives?

What if you don't have to be calm before you're allowed to be honest?

What if not having arrived... is not the same as being lost?

And yes, this can feel very lonely, quite often, it is a huge ocean of solitude…..

But I think we are together, you and me, in this loneliness.

Would you like to read this episode in German or Polish?
I’ll be glad to send it to you — just reach out.

Sound • Scent • Shade • Presence

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