ABSTRACT
Our long-suffering volunteers sometimes wrote to comment on what we were doing, to tell us what they thought we should do instead or to tell us how old age was changing their lives. Most of their letters were cheerful and positive, but one anonymous poem was so articulate and touching that someone pinned it to a notice board in our computer room where I watched it yellow and crinkle for three years. It seemed to be an eloquent act of contrition by a male, retired academic for his hurtful remarks and sarcasm to others throughout his entire life. He now desperately regretted that he could not forget, forgive himself or make amends. If he had not chosen anonymity, there were things we might have said to him: the most banal is that as the view ahead closes in, backward glances become frequent and for any decent person retrospection without remorse is impossible. Clearly our sad poet was disabled by cycles of repetitive and extremely painful thoughts that he could not suppress. These poisoned his feelings about his current life and his value as a person. He would have been greatly helped by an introduction to a work by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others who have researched, clinically validated and published very effective ways to escape from distressing cycles of self-blame and self-disgust that are typical of depression.
