Depression and Mindfulness: Reclaiming the Past,Present,and Future

Abstract

This article explores the temporal disturbances experienced in depression and the potential effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions in addressing these disturbances. Drawing upon a Husserlian framework, this article examines the three temporal phases of experience: retention, primal impression, and protention. These phases constitute the temporal fusion that allows us to perceive an event as a temporally extended event, encompassing the past, present, and future. In depression, the sense of anticipation and the belief in the potential for positive change are diminished, leading to a perception of the future as static and unchangeable, hence resembling the past. Depressed individuals also encounter disruptions in their experience of the past, as past thoughts resurface in consciousness at the present moment, further hindering the individuals’ ability to conceive of an open future where things could improve in meaningful ways. Mindfulness-based interventions offer a pathway for detachment from rumination and restoration of the perception of the present and future as contingent and filled with possibilities. By focusing on the present moment and cultivating awareness of experiences in each present “now,” individuals can experience the present as fused with the past and the future.

Introduction

According to the Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network (2019) study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, about 280 million people worldwide have depression. This figure corresponds to 3.8% of the global population, and to 5% of adults. Depression has a wide range of consequences that affect an individual’s mental and physical health, and one’s daily functioning and interpersonal relationships. Depressed individuals often experience a loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities, persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and meaninglessness, disturbances in appetite and sleep patterns, an increase in fatigue and restlessness, and difficulty concentrating. In addition, in examining first-person depression accounts, one can witness disturbances in time-consciousness that disrupt one’s ordinary sense of the past, present, and future. The experience of depression is often described as lacking anticipation, expressed as a loss of contingency—that is, as a loss of the sense of how things could change for the better in the future. In depression, the future is not experienced as something that includes the possibility for improvement and positive change, but as something static and unchangeable, hence also resembling the past. Rumination of past thoughts as well as a sense of the future as devoid of meaningful possibilities make it difficult or even sometimes impossible for the individual to actualize worldly possibilities at the present moment.

This article starts by setting the phenomenological framework on which an understanding of temporal disturbances in experiences of depression will be developed. Following Husserl, any current moment in experience has three temporal phases: (a) retention (as the just-past phase of experience), (b) primal impression (as the “now” moment of experience), and (c) protention (as the just-about-to-happen phase of experience). What makes it possible to experience an event in any present moment as a temporally extended event is the fact that the now-point of experience in the present extends over the past, present, and future, expressing a temporal fusion that constitutes the temporal arc of the three phases of time-consciousness. Temporal fusion makes it possible to experience an object in consciousness as a “unitary temporally object” (Husserl, 1928/1991, p. 40/38), even though we only perceive a brief slice of time-duration (i.e., a present “now”). As such, an event in the just-elapsed phase of experience (i.e., retention) does not disappear from consciousness as soon as it becomes past but retains its modificatory role in the present as it is temporally extended from the past to the present, and is thus represented in the “now” as past. Finally, one’s anticipation of what is just-about-to-be-experienced in the future (i.e., protention) becomes part of the “now” moment of consciousness as future and instills one’s current experience based on what one anticipates to happen in the future.

One’s ordinary experience of time-consciousness, then, can be described as an “openness of the self towards the future in developing given possibilities of the past” (Svenaeus, 2013, p. 98). In these terms, this article will explore one’s ordinary experience of the future as open to actualizing different kinds of possibilities, and thus as offering the opportunity for meaningful and positive change in the future. In addition, in line with Wyllie (2005), this article will explore one’s ordinary experience of the past as a “no-more”—that is, an event that can “no-more” be experienced due to it being a past event, and of the future as a “not-yet”—that is, as a change in one’s world-experience that has “not-yet” happened.

Based on the above structure of time-consciousness, temporal disturbances in depression will then be examined. In particular, in experiences of depression, one’s experience of time-consciousness is disturbed as they experience the future as devoid of the possibility for positive change. In this effect, the future comes to resemble the past as something static and inescapable. In addition, as certain first-person reports that will be discussed demonstrate, it is common for depressed individuals to experience time as slowing down or as dragging, thus resulting in the desynchronization of lived experience (Fuchs, 2005). Depressed individuals also face disturbances in their recollection of the past, as they ruminate on previous thoughts that resurface in their conscious experience at the current moment. In this regard, individuals experience the past as dominating the present, inhibiting their ability to progress or advance in their lives.

This article will then investigate the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in facilitating individuals to detach themselves from the past and from ruminating thoughts while also restoring their perception of the future as an open realm where the individual can anticipate things changing for the better.

In effect, by focusing on the present moment and paying attention to one’s experiences in each present “now,” one can experience the present not as being detached and separated from the past and future, but, following Husserl, as being layered, incorporating retention of past “nows” and protention of future “nows.” In this way, the present and future can be experienced as open, contingent, and imbued with possibilities, allowing the depressed individual to regain their sense of belongingness in the world.

Husserl’s Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness

According to Edmund Husserl (1928/1991), any current moment in conscious experience has three temporal phases: (a) retention (as the just-past phase of experience), (b) primal impression (as the “now” moment of experience), and (c) protention (as the just-about-to-happen phase of experience). Husserl argued that these three temporal phases are not separate and disconnected from one another, but are experienced as a unified whole, expressing a cohesive and continuous temporal flow within our conscious experience. Each phase of protention, primal impression, and retention will now be examined in turn to understand their fusion and the resulting unified whole, followed by an examination of how this unified whole is disturbed in experiences of depression. In effect, this article will also examine how depression disrupts not only the immediate past or the immediate future but also one’s experience of the past and the future in their entirety.

Primal Impression

For Husserl (1928/1991), the starting point of producing an object in consciousness is impression—that is, what is present as a “now” in consciousness. As he puts it, “primal impression is the absolute beginning of this production, the primal source, that from which everything else is continuously produced” (p. 106/100). At any present moment, following Husserl, what is present in consciousness is a fusion between past, present, and future. In The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins), Husserl explains how it is possible, at any current moment, to be conscious of an event that has a temporal continuity and extends over the past, present, and future. Husserl uses the example of listening to a melody: Upon hearing a note at any present moment (primal impression), that note is interpreted through the note that occurred in the immediate past (retention), and in anticipation of the notes that are going to follow in the immediate future (protention). For example, in listening to a piece of jazz music, a single note in the piece is interpreted not only through consciousness of a note at the current moment but also through earlier notes in the song (i.e., earlier “nows”) and through considering the notes that are anticipated to follow in experience. In this sense, our experience of a melody is not provided through any “now” moment in experience but, following Husserl (1928/1991), is a “unitary temporally object” (p. 40/38) which extends over the past, present, and future. As he puts it,

the extension of the melody is not only given point by point in the extension of the act of perceiving, but the unity of the intentional consciousness still “holds on to” the elapsed tones themselves in consciousness and progressively brings about the unity of the consciousness that is related to the unitary temporal object, to the melody. (p. 40/38)

In Husserl’s view, it would not be possible to experience anything as temporally extended if all we were perceiving was a brief slice of time-duration (i.e., a present “now”). ¹ As Husserl emphasizes,

The immanent thing could not be given in its unity at all if the perceptual consciousness did not also encompass, along with the point of actually present sensation, the continuity of fading phases that pertain to the sensations belonging to earlier nows. (p. 290/280)

One’s perception, such as of a melody, does not only refer to perception of the now-point of experience but extends over the past, present, and future, hence making it possible to experience an event or object in consciousness as a “unitary consciousness of the whole temporal object” (p. 239/231). What takes place in primal impression, then, as Bernet (2009) describes, is a “‘fusion’ of non-self-sufficient phases, each of which already points beyond itself and overlaps other phases” (p. 127), hence pointing toward a fusion between past, present, and future. In this regard, Husserl’s account of primal impression reveals its role in fusing past events and future anticipations at the present moment. This fusion allows us to perceive temporal objects as unified and coherent, and not merely as separate “now” moments.

Retention

In Husserl’s (1928/1991) terms, retention refers to the just-elapsed phase of experience. As time passes, a past event—which was previously a present “now”—does not disappear, but it is retained in consciousness as it is fading away. For instance, as Husserl puts it, when hearing a clock chime,

one stroke of the hour has just died away and a new one sounds; the past stroke [is] still in consciousness as fading away. (p. 159/155, emphasis added)

Upon hearing a melody in any “now” moment, past tones do not disappear from consciousness, but retain their modificatory role in the current moment, despite the fact that as physical entities, as air vibrations, they are now past. Following Husserl (1928/1991), past tones retain their modificatory role in the present as they are “unities in time” (p. 24/23) that contain “temporal extension in themselves,” (p. 24/23) thus allowing them to extend from the past and be represented in the present.

In this sense, according to Husserl, what is present in consciousness at any present moment is an adumbration (Abschattung)—that is, an experience of the “now” not only through what is perceptually experienced at the current moment, but additionally through retention of what is just-past (and protention of what is just-about-to-be-experienced, as will be discussed further). In this sense, the appearance of an object or an event transcends what is currently present in perceptual awareness. As Husserl notes,

If we focus reflectively on what is presently given in the actually present now with respect to the sound of the postilion’s horn, or the rumbling of the coach, and if we reflect on it just as it is given, then we note the trail of memory that extends the now-point of the sound or of the rumbling. (p. 290/280)

According to Husserl, then, the extension of the “trail of memory” demonstrates the adumbration of an event in consciousness and its representation in the present “now.” In this way, Husserl explains how a past tone is temporally extended to primal impression through retention. As he explains it,

The tone begins and “it” steadily continues. The tone-now changes into a tone-having-been; the impressional consciousness, constantly flowing, passes over into ever new retentional consciousness. Going along the flow or with it, we have a continuous series of retentions pertaining to the beginning-point. Beyond that, however, each earlier point of this series is adumbrated in its turn as a now in the sense of retention. Thus a continuity of retentional modifications attaches itself to each of these retentions, and this continuity itself is again an actually present point that is retentionaly adumbrated. (p. 31/29)

Therefore, by virtue of adumbrations, an event is “exhibited” (Husserl, 1966, p. 17) in its entirety in consciousness, as the apprehension of the object allows the “merely immanent content of sensible data, the so-called data of sensations or hyletic data . . . to exhibit that which is objectively ‘transcendent’” (Husserl, 1966, p. 17), thus presenting more than what is the content of primal impression in consciousness. As Gallagher (2017) puts it, when listening to a piece of music, “my retentional awareness of the just-past note is not itself just past; it is part of the present structure of consciousness” (p. 92). However, this is not to be interpreted as meaning that past tones are present in consciousness unmodified. In the words of Wyllie (2005), when listening to a melody,

if the previous notes were somehow retained unmodified in the present, then one would be unable to hear the melody at all. Past notes cannot be in the present, because they would not then be past. (p. 176)

In these terms, past moments are neither unmodified objects of primal impression nor simply past memories, but they are represented in the “now” moment and constitute experience at the current moment precisely as past. As such, although Husserl uses the word “memory” to describe retention, he does not claim that the past is present in the “now” moment through memory of the just-elapsed phase of experience but, instead, it is present as a representation.

As Husserl puts it, “the past would be nothing for the consciousness belonging to the now if it were not represented in the now” (p. 290, emphasis added). In being represented in the “now” through retention, a past event actually exists in primal impression. For instance, as Husserl (1928/1991) further says, when listening to a piece of music,

the tone-now present “in person” continuously changes . . . into something that has been; an always new tone-now continuously relieves the one that has passed over into modification. But when the consciousness of the tone-now, the primal impression, passes over into retention, this retention itself is a now in turn, something actually existing. (pp. 30–31/29, emphasis added)

In this regard, Husserl’s examination of primal impression and retention reveals the fusion of past and present within our conscious experience. As discussed above, retention allows past events to be retained and represented in consciousness, as temporally extended events.

As discussed above, retention enables past events to be retained and represented in consciousness as temporally extended events, thus revealing the unity of our conscious perception at any present “now.” Building upon the discussion of retention’s role in the fusion of past and present, the next section will examine the concept of protention and its contribution to our understanding of temporal consciousness as a unified whole.

Protention

In Husserl’s terms, protention refers to the anticipation of what is just-about-to-be-experienced in the immediate future. For example, in the context of listening to a melody, what one anticipates to hear in the immediate future can influence their experience of the melody at the present moment. As such, in accordance with Husserl’s perspective, primal impression is closely intertwined with the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of what is anticipated. As Husserl (1928/1991) puts it,

Every process that constitutes its object originally is animated by protentions that emptily constitute what is coming as coming, that catch it and bring it toward fulfillment. (p. 54/52)

In this regard, Husserl continues, protentions are “not only there in the process of catching what is coming: they have also caught it” (p. 54/52). In this effect, protention actively grasps and brings forth what is anticipated, shaping our experience of the object or event. Husserl emphasizes that protentions are not only present in the process of apprehending what is to come, but they have already apprehended it, suggesting that they have a significant influence on our conscious experience at the present moment. In other words, protention is not just a passive anticipation but an active engagement with what is anticipated.

For example, when listening to a song and hearing the melody that we anticipate, then our experience matches our anticipation and the music “flows.” For instance, in listening to an electronic dance piece of music, there will often be what is called a “drop” in the song track, where a change in rhythm, pace, and bass intensity takes place following a build-up in the song. The very purpose of the increase in tension and intensity is to make the listener anticipate an upcoming “drop,” and the build-up is thus interpreted through the fulfillment (or non-fulfillment) of what is anticipated. In case there is no “drop,” then one’s anticipation has not been fulfilled and this can negatively affect one’s experience of the song at any “now” moment.

Thus, protention, following Husserl, highlights the role of anticipation in shaping our experience at any “now” moment. The anticipation of what is just-about-to-be-experienced in the immediate future significantly influences our perception of an object or event. Protention, as an active engagement with what is anticipated, actively grasps and brings forth the anticipated elements, thereby shaping our experience of the present moment.

Finally, building on Husserl’s account of temporal consciousness as incorporating the present moment, the immediate past, and the immediate future, we can further develop Husserl’s account in encompassing the past and the future in their entirety. In these terms, following Wyllie (2005), we ordinarily experience the past and the future as absences—that is, the past as a “no-more” and the future as a “not-yet.” In his words,

the absence of the present-just-past (no-more) and the absence of the immediate present-yet-to-come (not-yet) . . . are synthesized into the present. (p. 176)

As such, a past event can “no-more” be experienced in the same way that an event is currently experienced in primal impression. A future event is experienced as a possibility that could be actualized in the future, but which has “not-yet” been actualized.

Ordinarily, then, the future is experienced as open and imbued with different kinds of possibilities, which additionally means that the experience of the future is uncertain. As Svenaeus (2000) puts it,

There is always something more to come in the future, something that I live towards and that I do not yet know. This is . . . the openness of life, a positive homelessness of wonder . . . But to this openness, to this being towards the future, also belongs uncertainty. (p. 8)

As such, one’s ordinary experience of the future involves uncertainty about whether something will happen or how long it will last. In Husserl’s (1928/1991) words, protention “leaves open the way in which what is coming may exist and whether or not the duration of the object may cease and when it may cease” (p. 297n). In this sense, following Ratcliffe (2012, 2018), our experience of the future is ordinarily characterized by a sense of contingency—that is, as involving an “anticipation of significant change” (p. 9) as well as “a sense that things could change for the better . . . in ways that matter” (p. 7). In what follows, the structure of temporal consciousness as it manifests in experiences of depression will be examined. As will be discussed, in analyzing first-person depression accounts, it becomes evident that depression can disrupt the temporal fabric in a profound manner that involves not only the immediate past or immediate future but also one’s experience of the past and future in their entirety.

Temporal Disturbances in Experiences of Depression

In experiences of depression, temporal consciousness undergoes significant disruptions, causing profound disturbances in depressed individuals’ lives. The past, instead of being a coherent and retrievable collection of memories, becomes clouded with a sense of emptiness, where recollections lose their vibrancy and emotional resonance. The future, once filled with actualizable possibilities and anticipatory excitement, transforms into something bleak and inescapable, characterized by hopelessness and a distorted perception of time passing. Finally, the present moment itself loses its vividness and becomes enveloped in despair and detachment. These temporal disturbances in depression contribute to a pervasive sense of timelessness or time distortion, where the individual feels desynchronized or even detached from the concept of time as a whole.

In examining first-person accounts of depression, certain themes seem to emerge. For instance, depressed individuals often report an experience of time slowing down, where moments stretch out and minutes feel like hours, intensifying the sense of heaviness and stagnation that characterizes depression. As several participants said in response to Matthew Ratcliffe’s and Achim Stephan’s Depression Questionnaire (DQ), ²

Time goes so slowly when I’m depressed. Painfully slow. Yet at the same time when I look at my past it seems to have passed me by without me noticing. (8)

Time seems so slow, especially at night when I can’t sleep. It seems that when I want the day to end it takes forever to do so. (15)

[Time] drags interminably. i wish for the night to come just to be able to black out life. (253)

As a result, following Straus (1928), there is an experienced discrepancy between the ego-time of temporal experience and the world-time of temporal consciousness - that is, between the depressed individuals’ temporal experience and other people’s temporal experience. As Fuchs (2014) explains it, in depression, “the ‘ego-time’ of the movement of life gets stuck, whereas the ‘world-time’ goes on and passes by” (p. 409). As another individual said in response to the Depression Questionnaire,

[In depression,] the world appears to move faster, as if you are moving slowly and they are moving more quickly. It is difficult to keep up with it. It is as if there is a barrier between you and the rest of the world. (118)

In effect, Fuchs (2013b) argues, there is a felt desynchronization between the depressed individual and the world that can be understood as “a retardation or acceleration of inner time in relation to external or social processes” (p. 75; also see Fuchs, 2001, 2005, 2013a, 2014). As such, temporal disturbances in depression, conceptualized as the uncoupling of the “ego-time” from the “world-time” are to be understood as a desynchronization which affects not only the individual but also manifests as “an uncoupling in the temporal relation of organism and environment, as well as of individual and society” (Fuchs, 2005, p. 112). Consequently, in depression, the individual feels lagging behind world-time, with some individuals even reporting that they are detached from their own projects, the world, and also from the concept of time in its entirety:

Although depression alters perceptions in multiple ways, the social world seems to lose its normal temporal dimension for most sufferers. Their present bad feelings so thoroughly capture them that the sense of hope and security normally framing images of a future is destroyed. For some, the world loses its very dimensionality, appearing flat, lifeless, and colorless. (Karp, 1996, p. 27)

Time slows down. I lose my sense of place. It’s like I’ve been walking along a flat surface with the horizon stretching out effortlessly in front of me. But then comes the incline, the slope growing steeper with the time. All of a sudden i don’t know the where or the why of my destination. (Manning, 1996, p. 170)

When Im depressed for the most part there is no time. The concept of time no longer exists. Its like living outside of time. There is no concern or even awareness of schedules, day or night, normality, commitments, birthdays, events—nothing. Its like being in a box with no holes or light—time just disappears. (DQ, 271)

In these terms, the inhibition of inner time, experienced as a slowing down of lived time or even a detachment from the concept of time as a whole, hinders their ability to move beyond their past experiences. In the words of Straus (1928), “the more the inhibition increases and the speed of inner time slows down, the more the determining power of the past is experienced” (Trans. Fuchs, 2014, p. 180). As a result, the past re-emerges in one’s experience in the present, thus distorting one’s experience of time-consciousness as they are ruminating over past thoughts. As another individual said in response to the Depression Questionnaire,

all i can think about is the past all the horrible things that happened—but when i’m happy i don’t think about those things at all i think that my life was pretty good so far and that i survived a lot of things and i’m really strong but when im depressed all i can think about is the horrible things that happened and i exagerate [sic] them so much. (199)

Depression thus involves a disproportionate emphasis on the past, and particularly on negative aspects of the past that relate to previous depressive episodes. As such, as lived time is experienced as slowing down, there is a shift in focus from the protentional to the retentional aspects of experience (Lenzo & Gallagher, 2020). As a result, following Minkowski (1933/1995), one’s experience of the present feels stagnant while their attention is restricted to past experiences. In addition, as the experience of lived time is disrupted in its entirety, the future is experienced as blocked, with the individual feeling that they cannot progress toward the future.

In health, at any present moment, one’s future is imbued with possibilities, and this constitutes experiencing the world as offering the possibility for positive change in the future. In contrast, in experiences of depression, the ordinary “openness of the self towards the future in developing given possibilities of the past” (Svenaeus, 2013, p. 98) is lost as the depressed individual cannot conceive that they will ever be able to fully recover from depression or of how things could improve in the future. As Ratcliffe (2018) puts it, “drained of the prospect of positive change, the world can offer up only more of the same or something worse” (p. 7). To use Wyllie’s terminology above, in depression, the future does not stop being a “not-yet”; however, the difference is that what has “not-yet” arrived is not a positive and meaningful change in one’s world-experience, but a sense of doom or emptiness. As Thompson (1996) puts it in her depression account,

There is a deep, gnawing sadness at the core of everything, everything, and on afternoons like this I feel it most. I am empty inside. There is something in the future which is coming . . . I am afraid that it will suck out my core and I will be completely empty and anguished. (p. 47)

With temporal fluidity being disrupted, the natural drive toward the future diminishes, resulting in a rigid existential state in the present moment that hinders the emergence of future possibilities (Minkowski, 1933/1995). Subsequently, the distortion of the future inhibits the creative impulse originating from the present moment, as the individual’santicipations become fixated on an unavoidable episode that is about to come in the future.

In other words, there is still a future, but a future that lacks contingency and which does not offer the possibility for positive change. As Smith (1999) emphasizes in his account of his own experience with depression,

We breathe and walk, we just don’t live. We are detached and hollow. Under our blanket of suffocating darkness, we pretend that everything is fine, yet, we rot away from the inside. At times it spews bits out. At times it swallows us whole. At times both. No warning, bang! We move from pain to pain. We have only one future. (p. 265, emphasis added)

Therefore, in contrast to the future being experienced as an uncertainty—as discussed above—the future in depression is instead experienced as a certainty. The future in depression, following Thompson (1996), is something “which is coming” (p. 47) butwhich will “suck out [one’s] core” (p. 47) and make them “completely empty and anguished.” In this regard, as Binswanger (1960/2005) puts it, the depressed person “knows that foreseen loss in the future is already a reality” (p. 48)—that is, it is a certainty. The individual is unable to progress toward the future as the future becomes closed and is experienced as being determined by the past. Instead of the future being experienced as contingent and as an uncertainty—thus opening the individual to an array of different possibilities—the future does not entail the possibility of positive change in one’s life. In these terms, the past and the future adopt similar characteristics. As Wyllie (2005) puts it,

When the future is experienced as static, then one longer has the possibility of “things getting better,” nor does one have any possibility of relinquishing or escaping from the past because a static future does not allow openness to change and movement. In short, both past and future become static. (p. 173)

It is worth noting, however, that in depression the past does not become static. Rather, the past already is static. What changes when we refer to the restructuring of one’s temporal experience in depression is that the future comes to resemble an already static and unchangeable past. In the realm of our experiences, the presence of meaningful possibilities is intertwined with a sense of uncertainty, acknowledging that life holds more than the current reality or what seems feasible. However, when the perception of potential meaningful changes in the future diminishes, the usual anticipation that shapes the present moment fades away. As such, the belief in the actualization of future possibilities, which propels us from the present into the future, vanishes. Consequently, the future becomes monotonous, devoid of novelty, and fails to bring forth anything new in one’s experience.

The future openness and uncertainty that ordinarily characterizes one’s being-in-the-world at the present moment is lost. In these terms, the experience of depression can be experienced as being directed toward a “futureless future,” as the English actor and writer Stephen Fry (2006) puts it in the documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, where Fry talks about his own experience with manic depression

There comes a time when . . . the blankness of [the] future is so extreme it is such a black wall of nothingness. It’s not like there’s a cave full of monsters that you’re afraid of entering, the future is just nothingness . . . It’s horrible to contemplate a futureless future—if that isn’t too impossible—and so you just want to step out of it, to step out of the whole race, the whole business. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.

In this extract,Fry captures the profound sense of emptiness and bleakness that permeates one’s perception of the future in depression, as the future appears as a vast expanse of nothingness, devoid of meaning or purpose. In effect, as Wyllie (2005) puts it, the individual’s experience in depression becomes akin to “eternal suffering” (p. 181) as contemplating the future in the way Fry describes it evokes a profound sense of despair and a desire to escape something which is at the same time experienced as inescapable. In this effect, depression is experienced as prolonged and eternalized with no anticipation for future recovery, as indicated in numerous first-person accounts:

I thought, at that point, that I would be mentally ill for the rest of my life. The episode lasted for more than a year. It seemed better to float with the down than to fight it. I think you have to let go and understand that the world will be re-created and may never again resemble what you knew previously. (Solomon, 2001, p. 75)

I have absolutely no faith, in fact, in anything. In a muddy way, I see that depression manifests itself as a crisis of faith. Not religious faith, but the almost born instinct that things are fluid, that they unfold and change, that new kinds of moment are eventually possible, that the future will arrive. I am in a time-locked place, where the moment I am in will stretch on, agonizingly, for ever. There is no possibility of redemption or hope. It is a final giving up on everything. It is death. (Lott, 1996, pp. 246–247)

I can’t see any future at all. I can’t really draw a picture because I can’t really see one. Everything seems black. [I’m] struggling to get out. I don’t know where I am and I know I am trying to get out of it. I want to get better and then I think that I can’t get better. It’s impossible and I just can’t get better . . . Whichever way I turn I can’t get out. I can’t explain the blackness but I’m in a hell of a mess and I want to get out. It doesn’t matter which way I look I can’t get out—it’s impossible. (Rowe, 1978, p. 23, emphasis added)

The overwhelming sense of emptiness and despair that accompanies depression experiences leads to a profound loss of anticipation and hope for the future. As captured in the above accounts, depression is experienced as an eternalized state, characterized by a pervasive feeling of being trapped and being unable to escape what is coming.

Taking into consideration the above accounts, Husserl’s understanding of protention as anticipation of what is about to happen in the immediate future can be expanded to not only involve the anticipation of what is about to happen in the immediate future but also encompass the individual’s future in the long-term or in its entirety. Similarly, past thoughts that re-emerge in depression experiences in the present do not only re-emerge from the immediate past, but from the longer-term past as well.

In this effect, as the individual ruminates over past experiences and can only anticipate suffering in the future, the individual is not present in the current moment. As Solomon (2001) describes it in his depression memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, “in depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all” (p. 29). The temporal structure of one’s experience of the world is thus restructured in a way in which, following Svenaeus (2011), the experience of depression can be “conceptualised as an alienation of past and future, whereby my past and future appear alien to me, compared with what was the case before the onset of illness” (p. 342). In this effect, as Solomon (2001) further describes it, “when you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment” (p. 55). As depression fundamentally alters one’s temporal consciousness, the individual becomes consumed by the anticipation of future suffering and the weight of past experiences. As a result, the present becomes overshadowed by the overwhelming burden of depression. The individual’s temporal orientation becomes confined to the present moment, perpetuating a sense of entrapment in the present, in what Madeira et al. (2019) call “presentification”:

the illness experience entails . . . the reorganization of the temporal structure, with the autobiographical narrative now built over a form of “presentification” (understood here as the hegemony of the present). This means the subject now visualizes his healthy past as unrecognizable and his prospective future as impossible. (p. 279)

What the depressed individual experiences, therefore, as she “visualizes his healthy past as unrecognizable and his prospective future as impossible” is the restructuring of one’s temporal world-experience as a whole. In these terms, the experience of depression cannot be solely understood as a formal loss of retention or protention, but rather as involving alterations in the temporal associations between past, present, and future, which ultimately affects the way temporal contents are subjectively experienced (Lenzo & Gallagher, 2020). In this regard, certain temporal notions, such as “forever” and “never” continue to influence the individual’s temporal consciousness. As Stern (2003) and Karp (1996) note,

Though the present is all there is, forever and never continue to be active temporal constructs applied regularly to the particular beliefs of the characters in the depression story. Forever is how long the depression will last; never is when the sufferer expects to feel better, to see a favorite place again, or to experience desire or pleasure. (Stern, 2003, p. 97)

The word “never” often came up in my conversation with respondents as in “I can never get back to the plateau of feeling on top of everything” or “I’m in it. I can’t believe I’m really in it again. It’s here, it’s back. It always comes back. And I don’t know when I’m going to get out of it. And maybe this time I’ll never get out of it.” (Karp, 1996, p. 99)

What Karp describes here is the experienced impossibility of regaining positive emotions or escaping the grip of one’s depressive state. This highlights the pervasive sense of hopelessness and uncertainty regarding recovery that characterizes the temporal experience of depression.

Therefore, there is a core distinction between one’s experience of the world before depression, and one’s experience of the world during depression. Prior to the onset of depression, the world is ordinarily experienced as accessible and open, hence offering the possibility for meaningful change in the future. During depression, however, as indicated by the aforementioned first-person reports, temporal consciousness is disrupted, as the future becomes bleak, the past re-emerges as threatening, and the present is enveloped in despair as the individual experiences eternal incarceration. In what follows, this article will discuss ways in which mindfulness-based interventions can reduce or stop ruminating thoughts and re-establish the experience of the future as offering possibilities for meaningful change.

Mindfulness: Reclaiming the Past, Present, and Future

As discussed above, in depression, the individual ruminates over past thoughts as the past re-emerges in experience, while the future is no longer experienced as an open space of actualizable possibilities. However, by practicing mindfulness the individual can reduce or stop ruminating thoughts and reclaim their experience of the future by offering meaningful possibilities for positive change. Mindfulness can be defined as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to things as they are” (Segal et al., 2007). With respect to practicing mindfulness for psychiatric disorders, the primary focus of mindfulness is, as Groves (2016) explains, on “deliberately attending to internal experiences, such as body sensations, thoughts and emotions” (p. 289). In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of mindfulness-based approaches in healthcare, such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which comprises elements of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). MBCT has been applied successfully in healthcare settings in the treatment of both mental disorders (Böge et al., 2021; Hofmann & Gómez, 2017; MacKenzie et al., 2018; Parsons et al., 2022; Shapero et al., 2018) and physical illnesses (Davenport et al., 2017; Hughes et al., 2023; Majeed et al., 2018) As MacKenzie et al. (2018) explain,

The combination of mindfulness and CBT used within MBCT is thought to help individuals recognize the automatic activation of dysfunctional cognitive processes, such as ruminative and negative thoughts, and to disengage from these dysfunctional processes with the goal of reducing depressive symptoms and future risk of depressive relapse. (pp. 1599–1600)

What the individual can achieve through mindfulness-based interventions, such as MBCT, is to start “noticing direct experience, rather than getting caught up in the stories about the experience” (Groves, 2016, p. 289). This can be effective in experiences of depression in which individuals struggle more than healthy individuals to view their thoughts as mere thoughts, perceiving them instead as unquestionable truths (Teasdale & Barnard, 1995; Teasdale et al., 2002). In increasing awareness of one’s own thoughts and the presence of mental events, one can enrich their experience of the present moment by interrupting “the continuation of disruptive thinking by shifting the individual’s attention to the present moment” (Li et al., 2022, p. 2; see also Segal et al., 2002). Mindfulness-based interventions have shown promising results. For instance, McKim (2008) reported a decrease in ruminating thoughts in individuals with depression following mindfulness therapy. As participants reported decreasing ruminating thoughts, they also reported lower scores of anxiety and psychological distress. as evidenced by Rimes and Wingrove’s (2011) findings that mindfulness therapy led to significant reductions in rumination among depressed patients. In their study, Rimes and Wingrove found that using mindfulness therapy in depression patients was associated with large decreases in rumination which, as the authors note, are consistent with certain key aims of mindfulness-based therapy for depression, such as “greater acceptance of thoughts and feelings [and] greater awareness of thoughts/feelings/bodily sensations” (p. 239).

As Li et al. (2022) further note in their systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based therapy on rumination among depressed individuals,

Awareness and control over attention are strengthened, which further lowers the degree of repeated thinking . . . Patients can then better devote themselves to their daily life and pursue their own goals. (p. 10)

In this effect, the decrease in rumination through mindfulness-based interventions can result in positive changes in regard to how one experiences the present and the future. By being more present in daily life and being able to pursue their own goals, individuals can regain a sense of the future as open and as offering the possibility to actualize different kinds of possibilities. As Mark Rice-Oxley (2012) describes in his depression memoir, Underneath the Lemon Tree: A Memoir of Depression and Recovery, following mindfulness therapy he was “relieved” because he was now able to actualize worldly possibilities that were previously closed:

I am so relieved because I can read again. Not just pulses of the internet blinking in and out of my life. Not just emails. Not just putting one eye in front of the other and marching through simple news stories. I can actually take in information, retain it, hold it in my memory, recall it where necessary. I can follow plot and argument and character. I have a degree in reading books and making sense of them. At least I can do it again. (p. 203)

Such accounts are consistent with certain findings from research studies that have demonstrated that mindfulness-based interventions decreased rumination levels and enabled the individual to distance themselves from the content of the ruminating thoughts (Cladder-Micus et al., 2019) and thus be more mindful in the present in order to direct their attention to completing certain tasks (Bostanov et al., 2012). These findings are in line with other accounts where individuals report regaining access to worldly possibilities, following recovery, which also involve the feeling of detachment from the past and of a return to the present moment. As Gwyneth Lewis (2006) puts it in her memoir, Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book About Depression,

Life in the present was suddenly vivid. I started listening as I cut vegetable and enjoying the different degrees of crunch. I hadn’t been aware of these sounds for a very long time. It was as if they could, at last, get through to my body. A layer of plastic between me and the world has dissolved. In the supermarket, I walked past the freezer section twice, just to feel the cold pressing on me from both sides. I was back in the present, not living in the past, with its hall of mirrors. I was coming back to my senses. (pp. 111–112)

Recovery from depression through mindfulness-based interventions can imbue one with a sense of the present moment as something that is not determined by the past through previous experiences of depression episodes but as living in the present while being open to the possibilities of the future. Through mindfulness practice, individuals with depression can reduce or stop ruminating thoughts, reclaim their experience of the future by offering meaningful possibilities for positive change, and be more present in their daily lives, enabling them to pursue their own goals.

Conclusion

This article examined the temporal disturbances that manifest in depression and explored the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in tackling these disturbances. Drawing upon a phenomenological framework, the analysis has delved into the three temporal phases of experience, namely, retention, primal impression, and protention, which contribute to our perception of events as temporally extended within a unified whole. As discussed, in depression, the anticipation of positive change and the belief in a malleable future are diminished, resulting in a static and unchangeable perception akin to the past. Furthermore, as past thoughts resurface in the present moment, disruptions occur in the experience of the past, impeding the formation of an open future. Mindfulness-based interventions offer a pathway to disengage from rumination and restore the perception of an open future with the possibility of positive change for the individual. Through such interventions, individuals can effectively integrate the past and future into experience, perceiving the present as fused with temporal dimensions. This perspective facilitates an understanding of the present and future as contingent, offering a multitude of ways in which there can be meaningful improvements in the individual’s life.