Platek: Other societies seem to have ways of acknowledging the dark emotions. Hindu images come to mind, in which Kali, the goddess of death and rebirth, is sometimes depicted with her mouth dripping blood. Why do you think we are so unwilling to face the dark side of life here in the U.S.?

Greenspan: We have lost our connection to the dark side of the sacred. We prize status, power, consumerism, and distraction, and there is no room for darkness in any of that. Americans tend to have a naiveté about life, always expecting it to be rosy. When something painful happens, we feel that we are no good, that we have failed at achieving a good life. We have no myths to guide us through the painful and perilous journeys of the dark emotions, and yet we all suffer these journeys at some point. We have high rates of depression, anxiety, and addiction in this country, but we have no sense of the sacred possibilities of our so-called illnesses. We have no god or goddess like Kali to guide us. Instead we have a medical culture. Suffering is considered pathology, and the answer to suffering is pharmacology.

Platek: So instead of Kali we have Prozac?

Greenspan: Exactly. Our answer to serious pain is a pill that will take it away as quickly as possible. We have no sense that death and rebirth are parts of life. Rather than let suffering expand our consciousness, we succumb to feelings of victimization or treat ourselves as sick. For example, psychiatry has no concept of “normal” despair. We speak only of "clinical depression,” an illness that can be reduced to a neurotransmitter deficiency. Even grief after a major loss is diagnosed as a mental disorder if it lasts more than two months. Our culture tells us to get over our pain; to control, manage, and medicate it. Contrast this with the Jewish practice of “sitting shiva” after a death. For seven days following the burial (shiva means “seven” in Hebrew), the mourners stay at home and sit on low chairs and receive visitors. People come to comfort and console them, to bring food and drink, and to give the mourners a chance to remember their dead and express their grief. Mourning is then gradually stepped down. The seven days are followed by a thirty-day period of mourning, followed by an eleven-month period in which the mourner’s prayer is said twice a day. After that, the dead are remembered once a year.

Instead of making us feel we must “get over it,” these types of rituals allow us to stay open to our grief. Rather than being directed to jump back into our routines, we are given permission to move more organically through the grieving process. After my father died, for example, I sat shiva with my mother, brother, and aunt. When the shiva was over, the rabbi told us to go outside and walk around the block. This was to remind us that the world still turns and life goes on. After the intensity of sitting with our grief for days, there was a sense of renewal, of gratitude for the continuity of life. I was struck by the emotional intelligence of this process. It’s very different from the notion that grief is something we suffer in private, by ourselves, and that it becomes an illness when it goes on for too long.

Platek: A recent Forbes article named cognitive-behavioral therapy as the most effective treatment to date for depression and anxiety. By changing our thought patterns, the article suggests, we can eliminate our negative feelings and free ourselves from “long-winded wallowing in past pain.” How would you respond to this?

Greenspan: I think there is great value in becoming more aware of our thoughts and the ways in which they trigger our emotional states. If I am always thinking that I am a horrible person, chances are I will feel depressed. If I think instead, I am a human being, and I am not perfect, and that’s fine, it will inspire more compassion for the self. On the other hand, there are certain experiences that slam us with emotion. People we love die or suffer illness or trauma. We need to learn how to tolerate the emotions that accompany such experiences. We can’t — nor should we try to — simply eliminate these feelings, because this will just entrench them further. Cognitive therapy is great for becoming more aware of our self-destructive thought patterns and how they affect our emotions and behavior, but it doesn’t really address how to befriend intense emotions in the body. If I am awash in grief after my child has died, I need to go through that grief journey; I can’t simply think my way out of it.

Platek: Is there an appropriate amount of time for a person to grieve? When do we cross the line into “wallowing”?

Greenspan: It’s always a mistake to designate an “appropriate” time allotment for grief. Everyone has his or her own way of grieving, and the important thing is not to be afraid of grief and to let it unfold, to open up and allow it to bring you on its journey. “Wallowing” is not healthy grief but something else altogether. It’s when we get grandiose about our suffering, get caught up in a victim story, or indulge our emotions without awareness.

Platek: What suggestions do you have for people struggling with depression or anxiety?

Greenspan: Well, first of all, they need to accept the fact that they are feeling depressed or anxious. That may sound simple, but it is actually quite hard. It goes against the grain. We are taught that we should not accept these states but rather do whatever we can to put an end to them. But we need to become friendly with the beast, so to speak. We need to be curious: What are these states we call “depression” and “anxiety”? What do they feel like? How do we experience them in the body? This allows us to be moved and transformed by them. It is not the same as “long-winded wallowing in past pain.” I think that depression often eventually lifts of its own accord when we let it be. Most people don’t know this about depression. When we fight depression, it becomes entrenched. There are forms of entrenched depression that are life threatening and do require medication. I am not against medication when necessary; I just believe we too often overuse or abuse psychopharmacological substances for so-called mental disorders, and we don’t search for other ways to deal skillfully with these afflictions.

As for anxiety, we are probably all suffering from heightened anxiety right now if we’re the least bit aware of the problems in the world. I’m not saying that we should allow ourselves to be constantly anxious. We need to know how to soothe ourselves and our loved ones without avoiding the darkness. A simple daily practice of conscious, relaxed breathing is often an antidote for anxiety. Some kind of gratitude practice is also helpful: that is, bringing to mind all that we have to be grateful for every day, and feeling thankful. Even if we don’t feel thankful at the time, it helps to be aware of our blessings.

Platek: How would you teach someone to “befriend” his or her suffering?

Greenspan: Emotions live in the body. It is not enough simply to talk about them, to be a talking head. We need to focus our attention on emotions where they live. This willingness to be present allows the emotion to begin to shift of its own accord. An alchemy starts to happen — a process of transmutation from something hard and leaden to something precious and powerful, like gold.

This is a chaotic, nonlinear process, but I think it requires three basic skills: attending to, befriending, and surrendering to emotions in the body. Paying attention to or attending to our emotions is not the same as endless navel gazing and second-guessing ourselves. It is mindfulness of the body, an ability to listen to the body’s emotional language without judgment or suppression.

Befriending follows from focusing our attention and takes it a step further: it involves building our tolerance for distressing emotions. When I was giving birth to my first child, my midwife said something that has stood me in good stead ever since: “When you feel the contraction coming and you want to back away from it, move toward it instead.” The feeling in the body that we want to run away from — that’s precisely what we need to stay with. A simple way to do this is to locate the emotion in the body and breathe through it, without trying to change or end it.

The third skill, surrendering, is the spiritual part of this process. Surrendering to suffering is usually the last thing we want to do, but surrender is what brings the unexpected gifts of wisdom, compassion, and courage. Surrendering is about saying yes when we want to say no — the yes of acceptance. This is what really allows the alchemy to happen. We don’t “let go” of emotions; we let go of ego, and the emotions then let go themselves. This is “emotional flow.” When we let the dark emotions flow, something unexpected and unpredictable often occurs. Consciously experienced, the energy of these emotions flows toward healing and harmony. I’ve found that unimpeded grief transforms itself into heightened gratitude; that consciously experiencing fear expands our ability to feel joy; and that being mindful of despair — really entering into the dark night of the soul with the light of awareness — renews and deepens our faith.

Platek: If someone is feeling deep depression or despair, it might feel dangerous to them to “surrender” to what they’re feeling. Is there ever a danger?

Greenspan: “Surrender,” as I’m using it, means a radical acceptance of our emotional experience. We can simply say, “I’m feeling despair right now.” How can that be dangerous? If anything, this acceptance makes it less likely that we will act out of the emotional intensity. The danger comes when we can’t tolerate the discomfort of an emotion and so lose our awareness of it. That’s how emotions overwhelm the mind or impel some kind of impulsive, destructive behavior. It’s not the emotion per se that’s destructive; it’s the behavior that comes from not being able to bear it mindfully.

It sounds odd to us, but what we call “depression” can be a creative process and not just a destructive one. My sense of this probably started to develop when I was a child. My parents are Holocaust survivors, and they were grieving the genocide of their people when I was growing up. Psychiatry would, no doubt, have diagnosed my mother as “depressed.” But, as I see it, she was doing the active grieving she needed to do in order to find a way to live after the enormous trauma of being the sole survivor of her family. She is now ninety-five years old and the most resilient person I know. She’s legally blind and mostly deaf but goes about living her life with an almost Buddha-like acceptance. My father, who died five years ago, came through the Holocaust and still had this amazing and innocent zest for life. I’ve learned a lot from both of them.

Platek: You speak of an “alchemy” by which grief can ultimately be transformed into gratitude, fear into joy, and despair into faith. How does that work?

Greenspan: Let’s begin with grief. There is a kind of shattering that happens with, say, the death of a child, or any death, but perhaps most of all violent death. Not only is your heart shattered; you lose your sense of who you are and what your life is about. So reconstruction is needed. But first we need to accept that we are broken. This initiates the “emotional alchemy.” If we can hang in there with grief, it changes from a feeling of being “hemmed in” by life to a feeling of expansion and opening. We will never get back to the way we were, but eventually we reach a new state of “normal.” I’m not talking about the mundane kind of “getting back to normal,” in which we find ourselves doing the laundry again (although that is important too), but the deeper kind, which is a process of remaking ourselves and how we live.

Grief is a teacher. It tells us that we are not alone; that we are interconnected; that what connects us also breaks our hearts — which is as it should be. Most people who allow themselves to grieve fully develop an increased sense of gratitude for their own lives. That’s the alchemy: from grief to gratitude. None of us wants to go through these experiences, but they do bring us these gifts.

The same is true for fear. We think of fear as an emotion that constricts us and keeps us from living fully. But I think it’s really the fear of fear that does this. When we are able to tolerate fear, and to experience it consciously, we learn not to be so afraid of it — and this gives us the freedom to live with courage and enjoy life more fully. This is the alchemy of fear to joy.

We are all living in a heightened fear state now, and being able to tolerate fear is a true gift. Those of us who can live mindfully amid the chaos are doing something for the world as well as for ourselves. It’s essential to be able to bear fear and not go off the edge with it — not allow it to impel us to engage in one form of aggression or another. 

Platek: It sounds as if you’re saying we need to metabolize the fear somehow.

Greenspan: Yes, that’s a great way to put it. Fear that is not metabolized threatens to destroy us — and perhaps the planet. I’m not saying we need to be in a constant state of anxiety, but we need to know what it is that we are afraid of and not turn our fear into destructive power. My third child, Esther, was born with numerous physical and mental disabilities of unknown origin. She is at risk for all sorts of physical injuries and is in pain a good deal of the time. One day she severely dislocated her knee at summer camp due to her counselors’ neglect, and she came home in a wheelchair. She said, “Summer camp was great — up until the knee-dislocation part!” When I marveled at her cheerfulness and asked what her secret was, Esther said, without missing a beat, “The secret of life is ‘Love people.’ ” She is an amazing soul who lives with fear every day. And every day she has the courage to laugh and love. She teaches me that it’s possible to live fully with pain and fear — which is what courage is all about.

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