Jung's Woman in Black
...the ultimate uninvited guest.
I recently encountered the following Carl Jung quote:
“Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.”
So what if she outstays her welcome? When you've had enough of her, you don't just offer her yet another 'one last' coffee, you don't resort to muted yet theatrical yawning, and you don't offer to call her a taxi. She is impervious to your desperate desire for her to be gone.
When my particular woman in black has come calling, my response has been to suffer her as the most unwelcome of guests, or to sometimes attempt to medicate her away. Yet still she persists in visiting, regular as clockwork, or rather as regular as some time in October/November.
Right now I'm aware of her at the garden gate, and although she moves glacially, she will soon have travelled the garden path, her black lace gloved hand momentarily suspended in a gentle fist, before she raps it slowly against the wood of the door, in a dull, dull heartbeat.
I'd love to be able to trust Jung's advice, but she's crossed the threshold too many times before, hanging around like a stationary weather front that refuses to break, all mist and drizzle, the muted monochrome of an abandoned concrete playground.
Jung suggests we engage with her, and that she may have something to say, but my lasting impression of her is usually nothing more than an eventual dead-eyed silence. And if she does speak, she can't help but lie.
Pop psychology books and self-help articles advise that to see depression as a guest to be welcomed in, may result in a kind of self-acceptance. However, is your line manager going to accept that you won't be able to come in to work that day because you're engaged in some kind of fucked up tea and biscuit ritual with a mysterious, spectral, black-clad woman? Hardly.
If only she'd turn her dial down from eleven, dilute herself and present as pleasant melancholy. In fact, she's not averse to this ruse. She arrives bearing cinnamon cake, hot chocolate, and beeswax candles, in her warm and bewitching autumn guise; give her a couple of weeks though, and she'll turn your world ashen grey with her empty unbearableness.
She’s a destroyer. She’s selfish. She’s a narcissist.
To court depression, to entertain it, and to welcome it in, is a warped luxury. It costs, and the price is too high.
Do not let her darken your doorstep.
STOP PRESS: There’s a term for the kind of weather we’ve been having this past week and it’s Anticyclonic Gloom. “UK has had average of just three hours of sun over past week…”
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Julianne, your words capture the heavy, unrelenting presence of depression so vividly, and reading them feels like sharing a quiet moment of understanding with someone who truly knows.
Jung’s advice may sound wise, but when this “visitor” arrives uninvited and overstays, it’s hard to welcome or learn from her. I can feel the weight of your struggle in every line—the sense of helplessness, of hoping for something lighter yet finding only grey.
Please know your honesty and bravery in expressing this brings comfort to so many who feel the same. You’re not alone in facing her, and in sharing your experience, you’re helping others feel seen and understood too. Thank you for trusting us with this piece of your journey.
The description of the woman at the gate to the point she knocks on the door is a wonderful bit of writing - i could clearly see her while reading it.