Depression as a message that your hope tank needs a refill

Continuing with our series about the messages our emotions give us, today we are looking at depression as a message that we are in desperate need of refill of hope. Hope is such a vital substance for wellness, and there is so much we could explore on this topic. For today, I just want to hit on a couple ideas:

1. Firstly, locating the places in our life where we feel an absence of hope shows us the places where we are feeling powerless and in need of emotional first aid.

2. And second, once we are aware of these deficits, there are some things we can do to proactively feed our hope so it will grow over time.

What is hope? Dictionary.com defines it as “the feeling that what is wanted can be had,” or “to look forward with desire and reasonable confidence.” True hope is stronger than maybe. True hope has an expectation that what you expect in theory you will experience in reality. Hope is oriented from the present to the future. It is a forward-looking feeling of encouragement that things will not always be as they are now, but an assurance that you have permission to expect something new.

When we are depressed, we have often been driven to a place where our hope has eroded over time. Instead of living with an excitement about the future, we experience dread about what’s to come because we anticipate it will be more of the same. We feel so weighed down by the pain of the past, it’s become too difficult to imagine anything new. In this place, the idea of hope can seem like nothing more than wishful thinking.

When we are feeling hopeless, we often feel like a victim. We feel disempowered and unable to change things. This is the ultimate feeling of powerlessness, like life is happening to us and there’s nothing we can do about it. This powerlessness feeds our depression.

So what are we to do? The first step to healing and a revival of hope is becoming aware of the parts of our lives under the influence of hopelessness. In these places you are sure to find likely what feels like a fountain of pain. Are you dealing with disappointment that this chronic sickness might never go away? Grief about the passing of a parent? Bitterness from the betrayal of a friend? Blinding pain from years of buried feelings of self-hatred?

It’s important to explore these feelings and find the source. This requires courage. Maybe we are so used to burying painful feelings like this we don’t even know how to know where this is coming from. This is where working with a therapist can be especially useful to have someone to ask questions, hold space for your story, and gently help you locate these entry points in our stories where pain led to a breaking place of hope.

Once we find those places, the task before us to actually feel that pain, not run and hide from it. Really feel it. Allow it to exist. Validate it. This will help us begin to heal. Empathy and compassion (from both self and others) are the ointment and bandages in our emotional first-aid kit. The symptoms of depression can be the screaming signals from the nerve endings meant to lead you to the injury—”Here’s the wound! Help needed here!”

As we allow ourselves to feel our pain and validate that it’s real, we can start to understand how that pain began to warp our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Spiritual teacher Bill Johnson often says, “Any area of my life for which I have no hope is under the influence of a lie.” These lies are the vultures that feast on our pain and siphon off our hope. Lies like:

• “I’m too fat, no one could possibly love me.”

• “I’m so needy, I will always drain people and drive them away.”

• “I’m so stupid, I never have any good ideas, I should stay quiet.”

• “Everyone close to me always leaves me, I’ll always be alone.”

• “The best years of my life are behind me, it’s too late, why bother dreaming anymore?”

First you address the emotional wound, then you break-up with the lies that have been holding you hostage far too long. Through this process, we can gradually introduce ourselves to the truths that become our pipelines for hope:

• “I’m worthy of love.”

• “I’m enough.”

• “I was made to belong.”

• “I can trust again.”

• “Who I am inside and out is beautiful.”

In places where lies have been wreaking havoc for a long time, the truth is going to feel unfamiliar. But with past pain addressed and healed, we can absolutely change our mindsets and internal beliefs and becoming intimate partners with truth in these parts of our lives. And crazy enough, feeling hopeful will actually begin to attract into your life the positive experiences and relationships to start backing these new beliefs up. The process unfolds and now you have a positive feedback loop, gaining steam and feeding hope in your life.

So let’s take this into the practical—what are some things you can do to start refilling the hope tank in your life?

• Allow yourself to get honest about the places in your life where you feel hopeless. Pull out your journal and let yourself explore what you are feeling and why. Follow the feelings of sadness, disappointment, anger, resentment, etc. to their source.

• Let yourself feel. Cry, scream, rage—whatever you are holding in your body that needs to be expressed. Allow it to exist. Feel it, and validate those feelings as being okay.

• Open up to another human. Find someone safe—your friend, your therapist, your spiritual leader, and share your story. “What has been wounded in relationship, heals in relationship.” Whoever you share with, find someone who loves you and can give you the empathy and compassion you need to help you heal. This can be immensely freeing.

• Ask yourself, “What lies did I come to believe because of this pain?” It can be helpful to journal these out or talk with a friend. What are the lies about how you are seeing yourself? Other people? The world? Your future? Tapping into your intuition and/or your spiritual higher power is very helpful for this. Invite Love and Truth to come and guide you in this.

• Continue the conversation with Love and Truth and ask, “What is actually the truth in my situation?” Have a friend tell you what she sees in you: that you are beautiful, worthy of love, that you are more than enough. If you are a spiritual person, allow God, who is Unconditional Love, to cover you in love and speak these good things about who you really are over you. You can also work with a therapist to explore what the truth is in these areas and start applying that to your life.

• Be on the lookout for signs and circumstances in your life that point to hope. Be a detective for what in life is going well. Then take time to write it down, take a mental picture, or say a prayer of gratitude for it. Even the smallest things—a text from a friend, a moment of beauty in a sunset, a blue bird landing close to you almost like a friend, a random memory crossing your mind of a time you overcame something hard—pick up these as clues for hope and encouragement, see how many you can start to collect if you are looking for them.

• Feed on stories of hope from friends or whatever you can find online. Be discerning of the sources of information you are consuming. The news is really great at reminding us of everything we have to fear and be discouraged about in the world, and sometimes we need to turn that off. Take time to intentionally take in stories of hope, overcoming, goodness, beauty, and love in the world. Have coffee with a friend and share stories about times you have overcome pain, things you’ve come through that way back when you weren’t sure if you could. Feed off hope in the lives of those around you.

• Finally, I highly recommend journalling a lot about the idea, “what would my life be like if I was not depressed?” Especially when we have been dealing with depression or disappointment for a long time, we forget to ask the question, what do I want instead? Put energy into imagining how it will feel to experience joy—in your body, in your relationships, in an average day. You can even journal about an entire day, from waking up to going to bed, where you feel joyful and hopeful. What’s different? Hope do you feel in your physical body? What is your routine like? What’s it like to be full of hope at work? How do you enjoy your kids when you feel this way? Maybe notice who or what is not present in this exercise—habits or people you have let go of that makes room for more joy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when in comes to hope—there’s so much more richness to be explored in these things. If you’d like to delve deeper, give me a call to see how therapy can set the stage for you to make these kinds of shifts in your own life.

Depression as a message that your relationships are disconnected

In this series, we have been exploring how our emotions are messengers, giving us vital information on whether our internal needs are being met or not. Instead of negative feelings being enemies to conquer, we are learning to approach our emotions as friends trying to help us address the root of the problem internally. So let’s not shoot the messenger!! Tuning into our feelings instead of shutting them down is the path to thriving.

Today we are examining depression as a message that our relationships are disconnected. As humans, we are literally hard-wired for connection and belonging. Having healthy, meaningful relationships in our lives is not a “nice to have” option in our lives—it’s absolutely essential for mental, emotional and even physical health. Consider this evidence compiled by slate.com:

• “The increased mortality risk [of loneliness] is comparable to that from smoking. And loneliness is about twice as dangerous as obesity.”

• “Social isolation impairs immune function and boosts inflammation, which can lead to arthritis, type II diabetes, and heart disease. Loneliness is breaking our hearts, but as a culture we rarely talk about it.”

• “All of our Internet interactions aren’t helping and may be making loneliness worse. A recent study of Facebook users found that the amount of time you spend on the social network is inversely related to how happy you feel throughout the day.”

If you are feeling depressed, take a look at your relationships. How would you characterize the close relationships in your life—are they supportive and encouraging; or distant and full of drama? Are your people accessible when you need someone to talk to, or want someone to laugh and share life with? Or maybe do you find yourself drifting apart from old relationships, no longer able to find time to connect with once-close friends? When you are hanging out with the close people in your life, do they know the real you beneath the cleaned up exterior—the you that is messy and raw and full of imperfections? Or do the people in your life only interact with your carefully curated self, the part of you that you spiff up like a filtered Instagram photo?

It’s been said that you can define intimacy as “into me you see.” Real intimacy happens when the walls come down and we crack open the door and let others glimpse inside the rooms of our heart. I think the strongest human desire in existence is the desire to be loved, truly and deeply, exactly as we are. True human connection means I am fully known and fully loved for who I truly am. But if I don’t let anyone see the real me, all the messiness included, then how can I experience real love? If I am censoring the version of myself you see, whatever affection I feel coming back at me is going to fall flat and feel hollow.

When you are assessing the health of your relationships, to truly thrive, you must have at least a few close friends who know The Real You. Unfiltered. The good, the bad and the ugly. Because this is where it gets good—when we relate to one another as our true, authentic selves, this is where genuine love and acceptance flows into our life and produces joy. It can produce pain too—that’s why Brene Brown equates this vulnerability to the essence of courage. But the joy far outweighs the potential for hurt. All the things we really want in life and packaged up in these kinds of relationships.

It’s what you were made for. And it’s essential to be truly happy and healthy in life.

As a 20- or 30-something, figuring out how to make friends post-college can be a difficult code to crack, especially if you find yourself relocating to a new city or transitioning into a stage of life that makes it harder to get out socially (like becoming a new mom). So if you’ve found it challenging to make friends in your adult life, you’re not alone.

And honest relationships like these are scary for all of us. None of us have been spared from the pain of betrayal, disappointment, or loss when it comes to the world of relationships. Emotional vulnerability takes guts. And it’s virtually a guarantee that you will get hurt at least a little bit in the process.

But there’s hope—it can be done, and it’s worth it. There are so many people just like yourself wanting the same kind of connection that you are wanting. It’s my belief that as we put ourselves out there with the intention to get vulnerable and really create meaningful connections with others, you will find that Life wants to help you do just that. There’s a force of goodness in the world working with you on this one, helping you. So don’t give up.

In the next post, we will follow this up and explore some practical ways to make friends in your 20’s and 30’s, and also some ways to deepen the relationships you already have in your life.

Therapy itself is a relationship that is created for you to practice the brave work of vulnerability and authentic connection. It has been said “what has been hurt through relationship must be healed through relationship.” Counseling can be a safe place to work through issues of recurring relational dysfunction, fears of intimacy, or grief from relationships ended. Call today if you’re looking for a safe place to explore these things in your own life.

depression as a message that your heart is wounded

Today we are revisiting our series, “what is your depression trying to tell you?” in which we delve into understanding our emotions as messengers helping us interpret our unmet needs. Emotions (even the painful ones) are friends, not foes, trying to give us vital information about our internal world so we can fix issues at their source and thrive again.

Let’s explore one message that depression may be trying to get you to hear: that your heart is wounded. There’s great book about dealing with painful emotions called “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die” by Karol K Truman. Wow, that title paints a mental picture, huh? The truth is that we can’t outrun pain; we cannot stuff it in the closet and close the door and hope it disappears. The hard truth is that buried pain will be there waiting for us until we are ready to deal with. But if you stuff enough of it, it might start to pop up in your life in uninvited ways and crash your party. This stuffed pain may show up in the form of depression, chronic illness, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, low grade anxiety, or physical ailments like head aches, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.

Consider these examples:

• Somatic psychologist Susanne Babbel MFT, PhD writes about the connection between psychological health and chronic pain issues: “Often, physical pain functions to warn a person that there is still emotional work to be done, and it can also be a sign of unresolved trauma in the nervous system.”

• Johns Hopkins Medicine illustrates that chronic anger, resentment, and unforgiveness can increase your likelihood for suffering from depression, anxiety, heart disease and diabetes, as well as lowers immunity and increases chronic pain. But practicing forgiveness can improve your cholesterol, help you sleep better, decrease pain, and lower your risk of heart attack.

In my own life, I’ve experienced depression in different seasons and for different reasons. There was a season when I was stuck in a job where I felt overwhelmed, overworked, and like my passion was all dried up. During this time I was constantly fatigued, felt like I could never get enough sleep, and I was pretty irritable. To deal with the stress, I would overeat and over-binge on Netflix and social media to numb out the sense of frustration I felt, further adding to the feelings of depression. In this case, the depressive feelings were a helpful indicator to me that my work-life was way out of whack and causing all kinds of issues for me. The pain of the depressive symptoms forced me to stop and re-evaluate this area of my life and make the hard choices to leave that job and deal with the underlying fears that were keeping me stuck and giving me excuses not to chase after the dreams my heart truly craved.

Another time in my life I dealt with depressive symptoms that were coming from underlying resentment issues in my close relationships. I was constantly feeling like people were taking advantage of my kindness, like my time was all tied up doing things that I really didn’t want to do, and that I couldn’t say no. What it felt like in that season was a slowly building underlying anger, always being drained of energy, and a listless hopelessness that prevented me from connecting to a sense of joy in my present or excitement about my future. Where was this depression really coming from?

At the time I had no idea, but after digging deeper with the help of a therapist, I discovered this depression was trying to help me address on-going issues with not knowing how to set boundaries with people. As my therapist and I dug deeper into the boundaries issue, I discovered this was coming from a low self-esteem and faulty belief that I had to earn love in my life through being helpful to others. Going through this process with my therapist changed my life. Today I am so thankful for that period of depression because it alerted me to some huge issues under the surface that were sabotaging me and needed an overhaul. In place of this dysfunction, I started to understand that I am worthy of love simply for who I am, not what I do. I am still learning this in my life, and the journey has been LIBERATING! As a result of addressing those root issues, I started to thrive and come alive in ways I had not experienced before. It’s been a beautiful journey, and it’s still ongoing. And paying attention to what my depression was trying to tell me helped get me here.

Painful emotions such as resentment, rage, hopelessness, are not meant to wreck you—they are meant to help you. Just like the nerve endings that scream “PAIN! PAIN! PAIN!” when your hand touches a hot stove, those pain receptors go into alarm mode so you can take action and snatch your hand off the heat and treat the burn before any major damage is done. Same with our painful emotions—if we can learn to be really tuned into our emotions and follow the symptoms of pain to the source of the unmet need, we can return to a state of emotional health. It’s when we ignore the pain sirens and leave our emotions on the burning stove that we end up with bigger problems.

Therapy can help you dig under the surface of the depressed, anxious, numbed out, or overwhelmed feelings and find out what the roots are. It can help you find pain that needs comfort, shame that needs compassion, and lies about yourself that need to be upgraded into beautiful, liberating truths. Therapy can help you learn to live more self-aware and tuned in emotionally so you can catch little things before they become big things and learn the tools to care for yourself as life happens.

Call today for a free 15-minute phone session if you’d like to talk about working with me to take the next step in this journey for yourself.

5 min for a self-love upgrade

This week I've been delving in deep into the Youtube wisdom of Dr. Gabor Mate, physician and expert in the realms of addiction, stress, and childhood development.  I came across his 5 minute talk about ways to grow in self-love and found it to be a short but powerful message (video below).

To summarize, Dr. Mate offers three keys for growing in self-love:

1. Compassion for the self.  "Something else is possible and you are worth that possibility." Dr. Mate talks about learning to recognize self-love as not just a feeling, but an attitude and an action.  Many of us struggle with emotions of shame, but are we also celebrating the ways we are already partnering with healthy self-love?  Every time we take time to prepare healthy food for ourselves, go on a walk, take a moment to breathe and acknowledge our inner world, ask a friend for support--these are all actions of self-love.  Let's give ourselves some credit and compassionately come alongside ourselves and say, "I see the ways I am growing and I honor the transformation happening inside of me." 

2. Courageously looking at the truth.  "[Looking at life] not how you would like it to be, but how it actually is."  It takes courage to set aside denial and to be honest with ourselves.  Are we engaging in behaviors that we know aren't good for us?  Are we using substances, food, binge watching Netflix, pornography, you name it, to numb pain?  This is where having compassion is crucial--it helps us set aside judgment and self-criticism and kindly look at the reality so that we can start the vulnerable process of truly healing and growing.

3.  Dis-identify from negative experience.  "Language identifies us with experience, it says 'I am that experience.'  Well, you're NOT that experience."  Here's the truth: You are not an anxious person, you are a person who sometimes struggles with anxiety.  Do you see the difference?  If I am an anxious person, I have little hope for change because I have adopted anxiety as my identity.  Instead, I can use my language to distinguish that anxiety is an experience I sometimes have, but not a descriptor of who I am.  Better yet, I can start identifying myself with the opposite of anxiety, which is the transformation I am currently undergoing-- "I am by nature a peaceful person learning to quiet anxiety."

If this resonated with you and you'd like help walking out this journey, counseling can help you overcome the barriers to self-love and and connect with who you are in a deeper way.  Click below to learn more.

depression as a message that your body is craving health

In my last blog what is your depression trying to tell you?, I talked about emotions being helpful messengers informing us of what our unmet needs are.  For example, resentment might be an indicator that we are over-committing ourselves and needing to tighten up our boundaries with other people.  Pervasive boredom that leaves us doing that never-ending Instagram scrolling might be a messenger letting you know that you feel a lack of challenge or adventure in your life.  Whatever the emotion, you can usually trace it back to an unmet need.  In this way, our emotions are friends trying to help us be healthy and happy--not enemies that need to be conquered or stuffed down. 

We also have to take into account that humans are complex, holistic beings and the state of our physical body can have a big impact on our emotional and even spiritual health.  If you are struggling with depression, it's possible that one message your depression is trying to tell you is that your body is craving a higher degree of health.  I would encourage you to consider these thoughts about how your physical health may be contributing to your symptoms, as well as some self-care tips below that can help decrease your symptoms.  

• Get a physical: You may know some of the more classic physical symptoms of depression, such as changes in appetite (overeating or not being hungry), changes in sleeping (insomnia or oversleeping), and fatigue or lack of energy. But did you know that in some people, depression can manifest in the body as headaches, stomach and digestive issues, or pain in your back or muscles? A lot of the symptoms of depression are similar to other health conditions, and sometimes depression can be exacerbated by underlying health conditions, so it's always a good step to consult with your doctor and get an updated wellness exam to rule out any of these other conditions.

• Get some sleep: Problems with sleep and depression are intimately connected. Sometimes sleep issues can be a trigger that actually causes depression or exacerbates it, and other times the depression can be the trigger for insomnia or other sleep issues. If you are in a stage of life where you have interruptions to your sleep cycle, such as doing shift work at night or being a new parent, this could be a big contributor to depression or anxiety. If there are changes you can make to help promote 7-9 hours a night of restful sleep, let this be one of the first things you address in treating depression. For suggestions of how to get restful sleep, check out this helpful article with 21 ways of how to sleep smarter.

• Get good nutrition: Nutritional psychiatry is a field on the rise for good reason--the link between food and mood is a strong one. Research has shown that "An unhealthy diet might make us depressed, and depression, in turn, makes us feel even sicker." There are a million diets and eating plans out there and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by that. I would encourage you to start with what is undisputed: our bodies do well when we get balanced meals of real, unprocessed foods, including a lot of fruits and vegetables. If you are currently not eating whole, real foods or if you are eating irregular, meager meals, start with trying to get at least one balanced meal a day, and work your way up to three meals a day of mostly healthy food. Your food is literally the building blocks your body needs to produce the chemicals to help you feel good, so you've got to give it good materials to work with.

• Get some movement: This is another one you are probably familiar with, but that many of us (myself included!) can have a hard time putting into practice. It can be tough because when you are depressed, motivation can be hard to come by, and sometimes just doing things like getting in a shower or getting dressed can feel like they take all your energy. But the bang for your buck is huge for this one: for those with mild to moderate depression, studies have shown that exercise can be as effective as an antidepressant for some people. Other studies have shown that exercising for 20 minutes-a-day cut the risk of developing depression by one third. Does this mean that exercise is a cure all for depression. Not at all, but it is an important ingredient that can help you start feeling improvement fast.

The benefits to these self-care strategies are many.  Not only is this helping your physical body get its needs met to literally produce the feel-good chemicals your need, but doing these things will help you feel proud of how you are taking care of yourself, and giving you a feeling of accomplishment.  When you take the time to prepare healthy food for yourself, you are literally demonstrating to yourself that you are worth it.  When you go outside and walk down the block and back, you are cooperating with self-love and sending that positive message to yourself that you are valuable.  

These tips can be a great place to get started in changing your life and helping yourself feel better.  And reaching out for help can be another great place to start.  Counseling can provide the encouragement, accountability, and structure to help you get momentum to start seeing things change for the better for you.  Give me a call today for a free 15 minute phone chat to see if I might be a good fit to help you start feeling better.  

What your depression is trying to tell you

As a therapist, I know that usually by the time someone walks into a counselor’s office, their pain level is pretty high.  As a person who has struggled with depression myself, I know from my own experience that it took things getting pretty bad before I was willing to actually go seek out help for myself. 

By the time I picked up the phone to find a therapist, I was so depressed that I had trouble doing basic things to care for myself like eating regular meals or exercising.  At that time I was weighed down almost physically by my negative thoughts about myself, and getting through the day seemed to be so taxing, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up the effort. 

When I had my first meeting with my therapist, I was just ready for her to help me figure out how to make the depression stop.  And while I did get some relief from the pain, even from the first session, what she helped me to do was actually a lot more important than just making the symptoms go away.

She taught me how to actually hear the message my depression was trying to tell to me. 

All of our emotions are like lights on a car dashboard.  One light tells you that you need gas, another to check your tire pressure.  Without these lights alerting us to the needs of our car, we would end up broken down on the side of the road, well… a lot!  Because most of us have the tendency to go, go, go until we absolutely have to stop do some maintenance.

Our emotions are the same way.  They are lights on our dashboard letting us know something under the hood needs our attention.  All of our emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, boredom, shame, resentment—are important messages letting us know something in our internal world or in our outside environment needs attention. The type of emotion we are feeling gives us a clue about what action we need to take to meet the need connected to it.  In this way, our emotions are incredibly helpful friends, giving us guidance on how to meet our needs.

Imagine that one day you just got fed up with having to get gas.  You thought you would solve the problem once and for all by gouging out your tiny little gas light on your dash.  You see how that would backfire on your when you’re calling AAA and needing to be rescued a few days later.  The consequence of shutting off the gas light, which leads to a costly breakdown, is a lot worse than the perceived inconvenience of regular fill-ups.

The same with our depressive symptoms.  If we just want to alleviate the painful symptoms and just make them go away through numbing, avoiding, addictions, or whatever, then we are not addressing the root of the problem, and we pretty much guarantee that this isn’t the last time we will find ourselves in a breakdown.

But if we instead see the symptoms as helpful signals alerting us to look inside ourselves with compassion, to locate our unmet needs, and to give ourselves the attention in those areas that’s required… well, that’s where the real change happens.

In this blog series, we are going to address some of the messages that your depression might be trying to send you.  This list isn't exhaustive and it won’t be true for every person, but it will give you some food for thought.  Here’s some topics we will get into in future posts:

• Depression as a message that your body is craving health

• Depression as a message that your heart is wounded

• Depression as a message that your relationships are disconnected

• Depression as a message that your hope tank needs a refill

• Depression as a message that your spiritual life needs an upgrade

The good news is, once you figure out the message your body wants you to receive, it’s much easier to meet that need and the symptoms often dissipate easily once the root cause is addressed.

If you want some help figuring out the message that your depression is trying to get across to you, it can help a lot to sort through things with a counselor.  Call today for a free 15 minute phone consultation to see how I might be able to help.