A question came up in our community group recently that is worth exploring carefully: What are some of the positives about having experienced bouts of depression?
Most people assume there are none. That assumption is understandable — depression is genuinely painful, and dismissing that with talk of "silver linings" does real harm to people who are suffering. So let me be clear before going further: nothing in this article is directed at someone in the middle of a depressive crisis. That is not the time for this conversation.
The honest answer to this question depends almost entirely on where someone is in their journey with bipolar disorder and depression.
The Six Stages
The Bipolar IN Order framework describes six stages of growth, from disorder to order. Where someone is in that progression determines what they can realistically access — including whether they can find anything of value in difficult states.
Crisis Stage. For someone in acute crisis, the only "positive" may be the knowledge that they have survived before. That is not nothing — it can literally mean the difference between life and death. But it would be counterproductive, even cruel, to ask someone in this stage to look for meaning in their experience. The goal is safety and stabilization.
Managed Stage. Someone in the Managed Stage has enough understanding and enough tools to keep episodes from spiraling out of control. They may be able to look back at previous episodes and identify what they learned. But they generally do not experience value during an episode — only afterward, in reflection.
Recovery Stage. This stage carries a particular risk: people in recovery sometimes believe they will never face another episode. That belief is understandable but unsupported by research — the National Institute of Mental Health has found that recovery is typically a temporary condition, not a permanent state. People in recovery who believe otherwise are often poorly prepared for the next episode, and the only "positive" they tend to identify is the hope that things stay quiet.
Freedom Stage. Freedom Stage begins the process of actually experiencing value during mild episodes rather than only in retrospect. As someone's ability to function during difficult states increases, they begin to see that depression has things to offer — enhanced empathy, depth of feeling, creative insight — that are genuinely present in the experience, not just in looking back at it.
Stability Stage. At Stability Stage, the value of depression becomes more evident. When someone no longer suffers from an experience even as they are in it — when they can function during difficult states rather than being disabled by them — they begin to understand something that people in disorder cannot yet grasp: there is a significant difference between experiencing pain and suffering from it. This insight changes how they relate to every difficulty in their life. There are many more things to identify as valuable; the struggle is to identify what is not.
Self-Mastery Stage. At Self-Mastery, all experiences are understood as equally valuable, including very deep depressions. This is genuinely difficult for people in the earlier stages to comprehend — and that difficulty is appropriate. It is not a stage someone reaches by deciding to; it grows out of years of sustained work.
What to Take From This
The question "what are some of the positives?" is worth asking — but the answer should be calibrated to where you are. Asking someone in Crisis Stage to find value in their experience adds to their burden. Asking someone in Stability Stage to do so invites a conversation about genuine insight.
There are countless examples across spiritual traditions of people who found profound meaning within their most difficult human experiences. That is real. But it is also the product of sustained work, appropriate support, and gradual growth — not an insight that arrives on demand.
The path from disorder to order is a long one. Each stage has its own relationship to difficulty, including what can honestly be seen as gained from it. What matters is knowing where you are, and working from there rather than from where you wish you were.