Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression
By James S. Gordon, MD
Penguin Press
Paperback 428 pp $16

James S. Gordon was sailing along in medical school, enjoying his usual "easy, confident, forward progress," when he crashed. Six months into a fellowship and following a breakup with his girlfriend, he awoke one morning in a state of anxiety and hopelessness, feeling worthless and forlorn.

"It felt like the end," writes Gordon. "It was actually the beginning."

Between the bookends of those two sentences lies the territory of depression, the subject of Gordon's book Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression -- a subject that Gordon has looked at from just about every possible angle.

Despite his despair, Gordon managed to resume his medical studies, with a specialty in psychiatry, and went on to serve as chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He subsequently founded and ran the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., training other physicians in alternative approaches to nutrition, cancer treatment, and trauma recovery. Gordon's work has ranged from seeing individual clients in an office setting to working with victims of trauma in Kosovo and other zones of tragedy.

In Unstuck, the author outlines a seven-stage program that makes use of alternative therapies, body work, and guided imagery to help others through the dark hours he experienced firsthand. Gordon's conviction, expressed at the outset, is this: "Depression… is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we're stuck. It's a wake-up call and the start of a journey that can help us become whole and happy, a journey that can change and transform our lives." In short, while fully cognizant of the pain of depression, Gordon sees it not as a black hole but as the beginning of a walk toward the light. He's been there himself. So have his patients, many of whose stories are recounted in Unstuck.

Gordon's book is both thorough and empowering, encouraging people who've fallen down the rabbit hole of despair to face the challenges that depression brings, inviting them to work with their physician and Gordon's suggested guidelines in order to heal. What are the seven stages? Getting the call, finding one's guides, surrendering to change, dealing with demons, experiencing the dark night of the soul, finding the blessings of spirituality, and becoming able to fully enjoy life.

The clients Gordon profiles show us both their vulnerabilities and their hope. As the author points out again and again, the best way out of depression is not to escape its clutches but to go deeper. Some doctors, however, would disagree with Gordon's advice for those in depression to simply "go deeper." People grappling with depression should consult a doctor as part of their treatment. Still, he skillfully leads people through, providing practical, accessible tools that nearly anyone can use, whether further professional help is available or not.

There's ample practical information for body, mind, and soul, from nutritional suggestions to instruction in meditation and guided imagery. One substantial chapter looks at the pitfalls of the modern American diet, considers such areas as food sensitivities, and assesses the benefits of supplements and micronutrients. An expert in mind-body medicine, Dr. Gordon also explores the effects of various "demons" such as procrastination and perfectionism, loneliness and lethargy, resentment and anger, and their effects on mental and physical health.

About anger, he writes: "The mind-body connection is what gives the long-held anger of hostility the power to raise our levels of the stress hormone cortisol and, with it, our blood sugar and cholesterol; to elevate our blood pressure, close our arteries, clot our blood, and stop our hearts." Enough said?

Gordon draws on numerous spiritual traditions as well as the benefits of yoga, meditation, and acupuncture to ease the pain of despair. Traditional Chinese medicine, says Gordon, is an integral part of his work with every depressed person he sees. And he honors the spiritual component in moving through and beyond depression. There are compassionate directions for writing exercises that will help reveal inner wisdom and deeper information, for instance, and instruction on how to perform a meditation on forgiveness. He encourages the reader to write his or her own prescription for self care.

Rather than the oft-quoted, by now clichéd prescription of "take two tablets and call me in the morning," Gordon is apt to prescribe a regimen that goes like this: "15 minutes of fast deep breathing, followed by 15 minutes of emotional catharsis [shouting out feelings, letting the body be moved by them, pounding pillows], 10 of jumping up and down, 10 of silent, still watchfulness, and finally, 10 of dance."

The chapter devoted to "The Dark Night of the Soul" includes a section on adolescent suicide -- with good reason. Gordon points out that suicide is now the third leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 44. For college students, it ranks number two. The good news, he notes, is that children have an even greater ability to use many of the book's techniques than do adults. Gordon also offers specific help to elderly people.

"If anything," he writes, "old age should signal a more pressing need to care more lovingly… for our bodies and minds, and to share ourselves more fully with others."

After the Dark Night of the Soul, Gordon sees a blessing. Through the patients profiled, he shows what is possible: "to move from being terribly, chronically depressed to feeling blessed every day."

In addition, there's a large resource section at the end of the book offering everything from assessments of natural remedies to information about 12-step programs and retreat centers. With such chapters, the book is also an excellent aid to those who are not themselves depressed but are dealing with someone who is.

-- Karin Evans has written for WebMD and Health and Hippocrates magazines. She is the author of The Lost Daughters of China: Adopted Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past, recently rereleased in a revised edition by Penguin Putnam.

First published June 18, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Consumer Health Interactive