Depression ... in OotP

[Kate Harding]

No: HPFGUIDX 110723

Del:
> If this reminds me of anyone in OoP, it's Cho, not Harry. She's the
> one who's always brooding, who doesn't seem to be able to get out of
> her grief, who doesn't seem to find a way out of her sadness, who
> keeps falling into pieces all over the place, and who seems to feel
> better only when she's kept occupied. Harry isn't like that at all.


psyche:
I think the difference between them boils down to this: Cho is more 
obviously upset, so *seems* to have taken it worse, because she is 
more comfortable expressing her emotions. Harry seems extremely 
uncomfortable showing emotion. For example (sorry I don't have time 
to locate the quotes) the times when Molly or others hug him and he 
feels a welling up of something that he can't identify and isn't 
prepared to give into. He doesn't understand his emotions and can't 
express them. For this reason, while Cho *looks* like a worse case, I 
think she's healing just fine - crying is a coping mechanism after 
all. But Harry is supressing, not dealing. He expects emotion to be 
logical (which is why he can't understand Cho's behaviour) and this 
shows how little he understands his own emotion - anyone in tune with 
their emotion knows it's not logical.


Del:
> And the rest of the year, the only
> thing that seems to disturb his sleep is those obsessive dreams 
> about the Door at the end of the Corridor.


psyche:
Yes. At this point I think he's going through an active patch, where 
he has plenty to distract him, and so his depression is going through 
a hiatus. I'm especially talking about the early parts of the book, 
and a few relapses later. As others (apologies, no time to check who) 
have said, these feelings come and go in many cases.

I won't respond to your other points, because I think others have 
already done so better than I could!


Del:
> And I suppose what you suffered from was anxiety attacks, right ? My
> husband has those, it's not nice.


psyche:
Yes, anxiety problems were part of my depression, though thankfully I 
never had a full blown panic attack. Closest I came was one time when 
I got the feeling of the walls closing in, at which point I realised 
I was about to have a panic attack and got myself a paper bag to 
breathe into! My anxiety mostly took the form of horrible nameless 
dread. I feel for your husband - what I went through was bad enough, 
and as I say, I was only a moderate case.


Del:
> I can perfectly be wrong, of course. I'm just expressing my 
feelings,
> as we all do, right ?


psyche:
Absolutely! And ditto.

psyche