HYDERABAD: The roots of almost all chronic depression lay in extremely powerful stored-up emotional stress from dysfunctional conditions and experiences, early childhood and youthfulness. The deadening impact of what we did to cope and survive as children in a wounded family-- which was to suppress our primal feelings of grief, fear, anger, sexual aliveness and the longing for comfort and love -- is the real cause of almost all chronic depression.
Seeking approval, seeking appreciation, comparing oneself, and competing with things on the outside arise from feelings of unworthiness and lack of self love. The more we shut down our feelings and their free and lively expression the more depressed we become. Years and years of living in this state makes the deadness and the tendency to fall into depression permanent.
If we live in the past and in depression, or the future and in anxiety we won’t be so good. It’s a time to realise that the relationship you were clinging to like a crab, being whipped around in all sorts of ways, is no longer possible. People will finally realise that the relationship with the partner, friend, job, themselves is just no longer working and it’s time to let go and fly.
To be truly and permanently free of depressive tendencies and be capable of experiencing blessed inner peace and real happiness, a person has to become aware of and compassionately make conscious and process the buried pain that drives their depression. Unhealed issues get stored in the body, until we release them. The body obliges as a storehouse for emotional wounds but it does take its toll, especially if issues are accumulated for long periods of time. Storing wounds in the body eventually weakens the body and invites illness and disease, as well as causing depression, fatigue, stress and weight gain.
The good news is that the body is ready to release issues, the moment you are. When an unhealed issue is re-activated, don’t just push it down - take the time to heal it. This means creating intentional space to feel your emotions and allow the issue to process through to healing. Once you allow yourself to fully experience these emotions for the first time, without resistance, you will innately know what path to healing is right for you. Wounds are meant to be healed.
We are not meant to spend our lives carrying around past issues and hurts. Unhealed issues weigh us down, keep us asleep and prevent us from consciously creating. It is only our personal issues that stop us from experiencing our greatest potential. Holding onto issues keeps us limited and unable to reach that mountain top.
Primarily this becoming fully alive and expressing the powerful anger and deep sadness we had to numb and bury as children to cope and survive.
Every single time one of my clients does this they tell me that their depression lifts and that they feel much light and better!
(The author runs a spiritual healing centre Energy Matrix in the city.)