Depression that doesn't make sense

It’s such a disorienting feeling. When you did everything by the book to become happy and yet find yourself struggling with your mental health. When you can’t pinpoint the reasons why you’re waking up depressed.

Maybe you started seeing a licensed therapist, and took some pharmaceuticals to suppress the symptoms, because for some people, that seemed to work … (but not for you).

Maybe you don’t like the way the meds make you feel … you’re a little numb and disconnected from the joys and sensualities of life, and the depression is still lingering there, in the corners of your soul.

Like it never really left or healed, that the meds just sent it to a temporary hiding place, where it occasionally peeks out, glaring back at you in the mirror in the morning, reminding you that it’s still a part of you, and on some rainy day, maybe when the business deal falls through, or when the kids’ activity schedule is too much to keep up with, depression will rear its head again:

Those thoughts of existential dread, of feeling adrift in a fast-paced world that doesn’t give you enough time with yourself, the guilt over feeling like something’s missing, although you have so much to be grateful for.

“Why are all of these feelings still here after all the therapy and medication?” you wonder.

Something’s off. This is not the right path for you, and your intuition knows it.

But what is? The wellness industry is saturated with overly generalized advice from all sorts of people ranging from fad-gurus, imposter healers, supplement peddlers, narcissistic coaches, armchair teachers, and bio-hackers … but their voices are so loud and their agendas are so forceful, do they really have your best interest in mind? Do they really want to listen and understand you? Or are they just trying to sell you?

I’ve been there – begging for life to show me the “something more” I was missing out on, the disillusioned professional desperate to end my depression, wondering if I was inherently flawed because mainstream therapy didn’t work for me, and as a health and wellness professional with a highly critical eye on the amount of self-interest and inadequate skill parading around in my industry, overpromising solutions to “transformation and healing by unlocking your most authentic self.”

And by “authentic” what a lot of these self-proclaimed gurus mean is that you’re not living the way they believe you should live. You’re not living the life they’ve chosen. They think they have the secret to your happiness, and if you pay them enough, they’ll reveal it to you…. my advice: don’t buy it.

Modern culture experiences life’s spectrum through a narrow lens. We crave happiness and we mask grief. But the myriad emotions in between are more nuanced and complex, and yet we’re so damn busy, that we rarely have time to feel and process them. That’s the problem. It’s called repression.

Where repression persists, depression exists … poking its tongue at you on your most tired and out-of-sorts days, but nuance, nuance can save us.

It’s what enables us to bring life and light to the unexpressed parts of ourselves. The roots of depression - the subconscious feelings and perceptions that we walk around in everyday without even realizing it.

(Before I go into the subconscious, I do want to acknowledge that depression can arise from bio-chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions, many of which can be harmonized through natural means. In fact, research from NIH has found that depression often links to dysbiosis in microbiome and deficiencies in minerals and nutrients. I collaborate with a licensed Chinese Medicine practitioner to help people identify and balance these biologic factors in depression. But our biology is just one piece of our human experience)…

As we venture into the psyche, beyond the conscious mind that most talk-therapists work with, we discover an inner world that we never knew we possessed. A world of nuance.

Each day that we wake up and handle the household to-do’s and head to work, we are walking around in a cloud of belief about ourselves and our place in the world. This is deeper than, “I’m Mark and I’m an accountant,” or “I’m Sophia, and I’m a software engineer.” It’s actually more archetypal… something like this:

“I’m Amanda, and early in life I learned that when I do things for other people, I get to be seen and validated by the world. I formed the subconscious belief that I’m a caregiver and a martyr. Not necessarily because I’m good at caregiving or that I enjoy it, but because if I didn’t take care of others, I felt invisible, like no one saw me, like I had no value. That’s why, as an adult, I take care of others more than myself. Because to take care of myself would mean that I may not be seen by others …That I may not get a thank you, or an ‘atta-girl’ …

And because these beliefs formed when I was a child (and a child’s survival depends on belonging), I now carry the subconscious belief that the only way to belong (and therefore survive), I must always care for others over myself … I am Amanda, and I am a martyr.”

But your subconscious mind doesn’t offer up these repressed beliefs that freely. They are the veil through which you experience yourself and the world … it’s the water you’ve always swum in, but you don’t even know it’s there.

In my holistic psychology sessions, we get there. We traverse your nuanced inner world, so you can see the repressed archetypal self, evaluate whether it’s making you “happy” or causing you suffering, and then you get to decide what to do about it.

Is it time to make peace with it? Or time to expand your archetypal spectrum?

What if you were the recipient of care as much as you give?

What if you said NO when you really wanted to?

What if beneath your professional role or the archetype of the “problem solver” or “people-pleaser,” you’re actually disillusioned by a life centered around problems and pleasing everyone else?

What if you could seed something different at the center of your life? More celebration? More assertiveness. Work that lights you up. Marveling over the miraculous…

How might this change the person you see yourself as?

And how would this nurture and radically change that depressed part of you?

I can’t answer these questions for you. But, when I’m in session with people, they discover the answers inside of themselves.

It’s not about nuking their lives or trying to become some ideal version of themselves. It’s about learning that we can be more dynamic as individuals than just playing the archetype that we defaulted to as a child, when we based decisions around survival and belonging.

We can mature, on a psychologic and social level … healing the root cause of “depression without a cause.” The first step is recognizing that depression is not your enemy. It’s a messenger, and it’s trying to help you.

Inside of your body are 10 million sensory neurons. Their job is to send you messages, to let you know when your environment or your habits or your relationship or your lifestyle are disruptive to your natural design.

Depression is often the result of missing multiple messages from your sensory neurons. Of saying yes when your body is advising you to say no. Of dedicating more time to your technology or professional life than your social life. Of operating too much in your task-executing brain than in your intuitive or creative brain. Of putting your needs on the backburner. Of acquiescing to the desires of your family instead of using your voice and going against the grain. Of staying when you want to run. Or running when you want to stay. Of living from fear instead of allowing yourself to be fully present with your inner truth, and fully alive as you show up to the world from that anchor of who you really are.

(Sometimes we have to learn that it’s safe to do that… not just through our minds, but inside of our bodies too).

Bio-psycho-social therapy is an approach that allows us to examine the biologic, psychologic, and social aspects of your existence so you can recognize what your neurons are trying to communicate. What are the hidden messages of depression that doesn’t make sense?

Maybe depression is not the enemy at all. But a loving messenger trying to bring you into alignment. And if that’s true … then may we be wary of approaches to our mental health that aim to shoot the messenger, rather than sit it down for tea, to listen to what it has to share.

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