Escaping Depression: Profound Healing Insights

By Dr. John A. Snyder

Escaping Depression is rooted in 55 years of a
psychotherapist’s clinical experience and adds a fresh
perspective on the nature of joy and sadness. It challenges
what most people have been persuaded to believe about
“negative feelings,” the nature of depression and that certain
emotional experiences constitute mental illnesses which can
be cured by antidepressant medications.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798823025003

Dr. John A. Snyder

Dr. Snyder received his doctorate in 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania. He was subsequently appointed an Instructor in Psychiatry in the School of Medicine to train psychiatric interns and residents in relational psychotherapy, using an approach developed under grants from the National Institute of Mental Health. For fi fty-fi ve years, Dr. Snyder devoted his professional life to the independent practice of clinical psychology. He helped hundreds of people overcome depression, the pain of estrangement in relationships, and to live more rewarding lives. In the capacity of supervisor, John shaped the practices of many psychiatrists, psychologists, and family therapists. His innovative approach to relational dynamics is outlined in his 2005 book Flying Lessons: The Psychology of Intimacy and Anxiety. A second book, Overcoming Depression explores how music helps us access our feelings. It retells the life story of composer Gustaf Mahler and recommends musical selections. A licensed pilot and avid sailor, Dr Snyder lives in the Chesapeake Bay town of Annapolis with his wife, Carolyn Mills. He owns a pair of dancing shoes.

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© 2024 Dr. John A. Snyder. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  06/21/2024

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2501-0 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2502-7 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-2500-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907612

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Forward

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

PART I

OBJECTING TO FEELINGS

Chapter One: A Short History of Depression

Chapter Two: Bad Feelings Become a Disease

Chapter Three: Objecting to Feelings -The Antidepressant Fix

Chapter Four: Objecting To Feelings -Agitated Depression

PART II

MOVING TOWARD FEELINGS

Chapter Five: Listening to Feelings

Chapter Six: Introversion And The Feeling Life

Chapter Seven: Joy And Angst

Chapter Eight: Regression In The Service Of The Ego

Chapter Nine: Death and The Preciousness of Life

Chapter Ten: The Eternal Feminine

Works Consulted

Dedication

This book would not exist without the encouragement and dedicated and sustained assistance of Carolyn.

WARNING

Many psychiatric drugs can be dangerous to take and can also be dangerous to stop taking. They can produce withdrawal symptoms that are emotionally and physically distressing and sometimes can be life threatening. Tapering off psychiatric drugs should usually be done gradually and always be done under the supervision of an experienced physician. This book is in no way intended as a substitute for individualized medical care in the use of antidepressant medications. If you determine that it is important for you to discontinue an antidepressant, you will require the intervention of a physician. You must then find a physician who will be supportive in taking the steps needed to escape that addiction.

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge that my primary teachers have been the thousands of men, women, and young people, sometimes called patients, more often clients, who have trusted me and taught me how to be a resource as they move from patterns of relating to themselves and others that are troubled and estranged toward an experiencing of life that is filled with satisfaction excitement and love.

I also wish to recognize two men who have been there for me for a long time, supporting the more creative vein of my psychotherapy: Gerald Evans of the Men’s Resource Center of Philadelphia and Richard Kagan, renowned Philadelphia artist.

The manuscript of this book would not have been submitted without the help of my daughter, Kat. She served as technology and editorial support for previous books and projects.

Finally, I acknowledge Carolyn who would say we have been truly ‘there for each other’ for over fifty years and, in many hidden ways, is co-author of this book.

Forward

By William Packard, M.D.

Escaping Depression could save your life and the lives of your patients! Dr. Snyder offers a radical departure from the current trend in how depression is understood and treated. He offers alternatives for understanding human emotion and for treating people in psychic distress. He forcefully challenges what is currently being taught in medical schools and conveyed to the public about feeling states. His insights are invaluable for any person interested in the most human of experiences—how we understand, process, and ultimately integrate feeling into our daily lives. I especially recommend this book to any professional who works with people suffering from depression. By the time you finish reading Snyder’s heartfelt and passionate arguments, you will feel empowered to guide your patients to feel the feelings they often are working so hard to escape.

In Escaping Depression, Dr. Snyder begins by challenging the prevailing biopsychiatric views of depression put forth by the psychiatric community. He is especially troubled by what he calls the pathologizing of normal human variance through the ever-expanding definition of what constitutes clinical depression. Snyder elegantly documents a fifty-year trend during which psychiatric leaders and scholars have reduced complex human processes to simple disease states. Most disturbing is the section of this book that documents the equivalent of a medical/industrial complex. In collaboration with the academic psychiatric community, the pharmaceutical industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars from antidepressants. The net of what their medical collaborators define as clinical depression" has been enlarged to include normal states of feeling. As Dr. Snyder demonstrates, psychotropic medications are being over prescribed. At the same time, institutions are training new generations of nurses, doctors, and psychologists in a disease model in which sadness, grief, anxiety, and other normal feeling states are treated as pathological and similar to severe depressions. All of us should be concerned about this trend, not just health professionals. We need to be much better informed about what only a few have been brave enough to say. This is the only way that we can make informed decisions.

Snyder has integrated beautifully the history of antidepressants, their dangers, and misuses. He chronicles convincingly the way the public is being sold the idea that all feelings of sadness or anxiety are bad and should be medicated. He is appropriately alarmed by this development. People are being taught that it is better not to feel. Our humanness is being taken away from us; we are being taught that feeling too much is dangerous to our well-being. Snyder is equally forceful in reminding us of a little-known truth about antidepressants. SSI’s and SNRI’s, the most prescribed of the antidepressants, suppress sexual desire, cause impotence, and flatten normal range of feeling permanently. I have had many patients say to me, I don’t feel depressed anymore, but I don’t feel much of anything. I miss the normal intensity of feeling I used to have.

The most fascinating and profound part of this book is John Snyder’s ideas on what makes us human and what we need to do to be fully sentient beings. He passionately believes that to experience our feelings is the essence of being human and at the heart of existence. He embraces the Buddhist view that life is full of uncontrollable ups and downs (of feeling and experience) joined together in a continuous flow. He encourages us to acknowledge when we feel helpless and to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable.

After reading Escaping Depression, I feel rejuvenated in my approach to my own life and to the care of my patients. In my role as psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I am no longer afraid to ask the question, "What are you trying not to feel? Some years ago, I treated a fellow psychiatrist for depression. He was a deeply wounded man struggling to feel whole and good. He was my first patient to emphatically reject SSRI’s. He said that he felt tortured by not being able to feel normal intensity of emotions" caused by the medication, feelings of grief and helplessness that he had experienced as a child. The experience saved his psychic life. Reading this book may save yours.

Dr. William Packard is a psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in the treatment of young adults. Earlier in his career, he was Director of Psychiatry in two hospitals, where he taught family practice residents and medical students.

Foreword

By Judith D. Fisher, M.D.

I have known John Snyder over half my life. Late in October 1982, my father had died. I hated my job, and my love relationship needed CPR. Once I realized I was succumbing to overwhelming anxiety, fear, and grief, I made an appointment with John. You see, I am a psychiatrist, and I naively thought my professional training would inherently make me immune to all these feelings or, at the very least ensure my ability to handle any neurotic stuff that came along. No one could convince me otherwise, at least not until late October 1982.

I sometimes wonder if John remembers how I ruined the beautiful gray suit he was wearing that day I came to his office. I spent the entire session crying, sobbing, and speaking the unintelligible language of pain onto his shoulder. My tears and makeup stained his shirt, his lapels, and his tie. Even though no words passed between us, I got exactly what I needed. I’ve always felt John knew what to prescribe from the start, for he has perfected the art of listening for the noise inside others by remaining perfectly still inside himself.

Over time, John has become more than a therapist to me. He is my friend. We have had lots of conversations about the way psychiatry has changed. We have confessed our frustrations about, and our resistance to, the practice of cosmetic psychiatry, that is to say, better living through chemistry. As a community psychiatrist, I serve populations that society throws away: the homeless, the drug dependent, and others who are, ala Frantz Fanon, the wretched of the earth. Since 1992, these folk have been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD and PTSD in alarming numbers at even more alarming rates. They have been prescribed every antidepressant, anxiolytic, mood stabilizer, and antipsychotic medication on the market. Even worse, they have embraced these psychoactive drugs and become their diagnoses while remaining just as fearful of experiencing their emotions as they were before. In spite of the medications and the DSM-IV labels, their lives remain functionally unchanged, if not worse.

In response to this appalling situation, John began this book, a labor of love in every sense of the word. His profound, healing insights, formerly available only to the fortunate few who know him personally, are now available to everyone. The book’s lively and straightforward style makes even subtle concepts easy to grasp.

When new patients enter the Addiction Treatment Center where I work, I try to simplify the process of treatment for them by asking one crucial question: What have you been trying not to feel in all these years of drug addiction? Some look at me askance as if I were from blue space. Others connect the dots and after a few days come back with the beginnings of a new understanding of their behavior. They don’t know it, but the dot connectors have Dr John Snyder to thank for this new start. I just passed the concept on.

When John asked if I would write the foreword for his book I was thrilled and humbled at the same time. His asking me told me that he respected the things I have to say and that he trusted me to say them to you. I have tried to do that by sharing these words, and a bit of myself. For the really good stuff, read this book. Your life song lies within.

Psychiatrist Judith D. Fisher received her degree from the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC, and did her psychiatric residency at Howard University Hospital and Hahnemann Hospital, where she was trained as a community psychiatrist. Currently, she practices in New York, where she is the psychiatrist for the Bronx Addiction Treatment Center and a psychiatric consultant for the Visiting Nurse of New York’s AIDS Family Support Team.

Preface

Anyone living in the world today has a right to feel a little bit crazy given all of the craziness around us. What drives me especially crazy right now is the irrational decision of the mental health profession to attribute virtually all forms of emotional distress to brain dysfunction, obliterating more than a century of clinical knowledge about the complexities of human experience. There has been a wholesale selling out: suffering men, women, and children have been persuaded to believe that there is a quick drug fix for their supposedly troubled brains that will solve any and all emotional difficulties.

I have devoted my professional life to helping people in emotional distress. I know as surely as I know day from night what is helpful and what is not helpful in guiding them through dark feelings into the bright light and joy of being alive. It is clear to me that prescribing pills leaves troubled people in a Hades of grayness. The alternative is equally clear: troubled people need to be supported and encouraged to embrace all of their feelings, especially those feelings they most abhor and are inclined to deny.

Unfortunately, the availability of skilled professionals to aid in this process has radically diminished over the years. Indeed, most people have no access to psychotherapy at all. The mental health professionals at the top of the ladder, to whom desperate people with means are invariably referred—the psychiatrists—get little or no training in understanding feelings, either their own feelings or their patients.’ They know only about psychotropic drugs. Crazier still, psychiatrists themselves are often bypassed in the treatment process. These days, any physician can prescribe psychiatric medication, regardless of whether or not he has the time and expertise to assess the nature of his patient’s emotional distress or the appropriateness of the drug he is dispensing.

I have felt compelled to write—not just to describe this horrible turn of events, but also to put something before you that has been hidden in plain sight. It is strikingly simple. We need to feel whatever we feel, all of it, however painful or sad or scary. Otherwise, we invariably become depressed, pushing down all feelings in order not to feel the