Self-help for Depression
Many of my clients suffer from mild to severe forms of depression. While people get depressed for many reasons depression self-help is more straightforward than many people may imagine.
Many of my clients have experienced tragic experiences of abuse, loss and trauma in their past and most of them believe that it is those experiences that are to blame for their present depression. While I have the greatest empathy with the pain that they have experienced (being a survivor of child abuse myself) I do not agree that it is the experiences of trauma and loss 'as such' that is causing the depression. In my experience, it is the feelings of resentment and grudge that have arisen from these experience and linger on to the present day that is causing the depression. Let me explain:
I have found (in myself and others) that in most cases of depression people foster more or less conscious grudges against people from their past who they feel have harmed them. Some people are also angry at God for letting negative things happen or not giving them what they thought were rightfully their's. There is a strong belief that these past experiences of trauma and loss are to blame for one's present misery and it is causing some anger. And it is this anger that - over time - turns into depression.
So the first step to healing depression is to acknowledge our anger to the people (or God) we believe have harmed us. Once we feel the anger we are already less depressed because there can be only one emotion in us at a time.
Now we come to the next step: we need to let our anger go. We need to understand that we are only harming ourselves with our anger - we are making ourselves depressed and even physically sick over time. Our anger cannot put right what has been done to us. Our anger cannot punish the person who has harmed us and our anger cannot bring back what we has been taken away from us. Our anger will only make ourselves feel miserable.
How do we let go of our anger? Some people advocate to simply forgive. I do not agree with that. Nobody is in a position to simply forgive when someone has done terrible things like abusing a child, for example. Letting go of our anger does NOT involve condoning someone's behaviour, forgetting what they have done or taking away someone's guilt. People who have done awful things will have to live with their guilt for the rest of their lives.
Letting go of our anger only means one thing: sending the other person positive energy so that they would intensely regret what they have done and never do such a thing again. In other words, we need to send the difficult people around us love. Try it, it may be easier than you think. Simply imagine sending a beam of loving light to the difficult person, enveloping them with light and wishing them to be healed from all destructive impulses to do wrong and hurtful things. You need to send love in this way every day for a few minutes for at least two weeks. Doing this is the cure of all kinds of depression caused by traumas in our past.
What about people who are depressed for no specific reason? In this case the cure is even easier. First we need to send ourselves love and sincerely wish for ourselves to be happy like a mother would love an unhappy child. When we feel this love for ourselves we need to reinforce it by putting a smile on our face and focus on the positive feeling it produces. Over and over we need to go back to this positive feeling every single time the old depression threatens to take over. If you practise sincerely in this way your depression will be improved or completely gone within a matter of weeks or months.
How can I be so sure? I have worked many years with numerous clients in this way and also with myself. In every single case this approach has brought dramatic improvement even in the case of severe depression.
Many of my clients suffer from mild to severe forms of depression. While people get depressed for many reasons depression self-help is more straightforward than many people may imagine.
Many of my clients have experienced tragic experiences of abuse, loss and trauma in their past and most of them believe that it is those experiences that are to blame for their present depression. While I have the greatest empathy with the pain that they have experienced (being a survivor of child abuse myself) I do not agree that it is the experiences of trauma and loss 'as such' that is causing the depression. In my experience, it is the feelings of resentment and grudge that have arisen from these experience and linger on to the present day that is causing the depression. Let me explain:
I have found (in myself and others) that in most cases of depression people foster more or less conscious grudges against people from their past who they feel have harmed them. Some people are also angry at God for letting negative things happen or not giving them what they thought were rightfully their's. There is a strong belief that these past experiences of trauma and loss are to blame for one's present misery and it is causing some anger. And it is this anger that - over time - turns into depression.
So the first step to healing depression is to acknowledge our anger to the people (or God) we believe have harmed us. Once we feel the anger we are already less depressed because there can be only one emotion in us at a time.
Now we come to the next step: we need to let our anger go. We need to understand that we are only harming ourselves with our anger - we are making ourselves depressed and even physically sick over time. Our anger cannot put right what has been done to us. Our anger cannot punish the person who has harmed us and our anger cannot bring back what we has been taken away from us. Our anger will only make ourselves feel miserable.
How do we let go of our anger? Some people advocate to simply forgive. I do not agree with that. Nobody is in a position to simply forgive when someone has done terrible things like abusing a child, for example. Letting go of our anger does NOT involve condoning someone's behaviour, forgetting what they have done or taking away someone's guilt. People who have done awful things will have to live with their guilt for the rest of their lives.
Letting go of our anger only means one thing: sending the other person positive energy so that they would intensely regret what they have done and never do such a thing again. In other words, we need to send the difficult people around us love. Try it, it may be easier than you think. Simply imagine sending a beam of loving light to the difficult person, enveloping them with light and wishing them to be healed from all destructive impulses to do wrong and hurtful things. You need to send love in this way every day for a few minutes for at least two weeks. Doing this is the cure of all kinds of depression caused by traumas in our past.
What about people who are depressed for no specific reason? In this case the cure is even easier. First we need to send ourselves love and sincerely wish for ourselves to be happy like a mother would love an unhappy child. When we feel this love for ourselves we need to reinforce it by putting a smile on our face and focus on the positive feeling it produces. Over and over we need to go back to this positive feeling every single time the old depression threatens to take over. If you practise sincerely in this way your depression will be improved or completely gone within a matter of weeks or months.
How can I be so sure? I have worked many years with numerous clients in this way and also with myself. In every single case this approach has brought dramatic improvement even in the case of severe depression.
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