Flatness and loss of meaning following an opening — the contrast effect
About one in eleven accounts describe depression as part of the integration process. Often following an initial opening, the return to ordinary life can feel crushing — the contrast between what was glimpsed and ordinary consciousness producing profound flatness.
This is often described as different from clinical depression — it's less about biochemistry and more about contrast: having touched something, and then finding oneself back in ordinary experience, with the gap between the two producing despair.
When we're talking about that kind of existential depression that you don't have a reason for living, that's why you're depressed.
Um when it comes to existential depression, meaning you're not depressed because you don't get enough sunshine.
It was more of an animal awakening than a spiritual awakening. I returned to my body in a way that I never had before. But what it was for me was I wasn't depressed anymore. I didn't feel like shit anymore.
I can't live hating myself so much. It's just not sustainable. It's just too dark of a depression, too dark of a feeling.
Experience types that appear most often alongside this.
Other integration challenges that co-occur most frequently in the same accounts.