S1 EP32 – What Depression is Telling You

Transcript

Hi, everyone. This is a lot Dr. Margaret Paul with the Inner Bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about What Depression tells you, you know, Dr dealing with Depression requires a multidimensional approach, and it’s important to understand that Depression is not caused by a lack of drugs, nor do drugs heal the underlying causes.

And today I want to talk about some of the underlying causes of depression and what you can do. We do about them. So in our, in our current system, well, there’s many factors that can cause or contribute to Depression. Now, certainly it is like money and work problems or relationship problems, family issues, illness, and loss of loved ones. These are major contributors to situational depression.

Now, unhealed trauma from childhood abuse or adult traumatic experience answers may also be a cost Depression is really very, very different than grief is that, you know? Yeah. And it’s important not to confuse these two feelings. Well, we’re going to feel grief in situations such as loss loss of a loved one loss as a job loss of financial stability, loss of food security, other major losses.

Now it’s important to compassionately embrace the grief as a natural feeling that occurs in the face of loss. It takes time for grief to move through us, but trying to stop the grief with antidepressants, which is really you not appropriate. Only delays the expression and the release of this normal pain of life. And our society is often focused on an instant fix.

Just take a pill and everything will be fine, except it won’t not only are there huge negative side effects from drugs like antidepressants, but they don’t address the real causes of depression. But obviously different question is a big business for the drug companies. And I’m often asked, can drugs be helpful? It’s a little for Depression. And the answer I give is yes and no.

Yes. Sometimes drugs may be useful for short term help. No drugs are not a good long-term solution. Like I said, Depression, isn’t caused by a lack of drugs, but when drugs are temporarily used to give a person a window of relief to do the inner bonding work necessary to heal the underlying causes, they might be useful.

Although in, in this really excellent book by dr. Irvin Kirsch called the emperor’s new drugs, he pretty much proves that antidepressants have primarily a placebo effect. However, some people do seem to be helped by them. Now Depression generally has two major underlying causes. One is physical and one is emotional.

So first I want to talk about the physical causes of depression, and then I’m gonna address the emotional causes. The drug companies tell us that depression is caused by an imbalance in the brain, but this actually is not accurate. There is an imbalance, but it doesn’t originate in the brain. Our bodies go into imbalance when we don’t eat well. And when we don’t have enough healthy exercise, our bodies are not made to handle the unnatural substances found in processed foods.

So when we overload our bodies with chemicals or pesticides, sugar, and devitalized foods, our bodies become depleted a vital nutrients and Depression can be the result. There’s a direct line called the HIPAA access, which stands for hypothalmic, but due to a dairy and adrenal access, that goes from the gut to the brain, through the crosstalk between HIPAA access and the gut brain access. When the gut microbiome is out of balance, which means that there’s more bad bacteria in the gut, then good bacteria.

The toxicity from the bad bacteria goes directly into the brain. And this can cause Depression as well as other brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, you can learn more about this in a really great book called brain maker by dr. David Perlmutter, our bodies are designed to thrive on the natural food and water that are wonderful. Mother earth gives us pure, clean, organic unaltered food and water.

If you take drugs for depression and you don’t clean up your diet and you don’t get the proper exercise and sleep, then you’re actually just using a bandaid to cover up a gaping wound. And you can address the emotional causes of depression. But if you continue to eat junk food and you don’t exercise, you might still feel depressed.

Depression needs to be dealt with on both physical and emotional levels. Now, unfortunately, most people don’t really notice that what they put in their bodies affects how they feel. They might notice it if they sugar out because they might crash emotionally, or if they drink too much alcohol, they might notice that they feel on over. But they’re often on aware of how other foods may be creating Depression now.

And the many years that I’ve been a facilitator, I’ve frequently encountered individuals who is Depression completely cleared up by tuning into how food was affecting though. So for example, Marnie discovered that pasteurized dairy, as well as wheat and industrial seed oils, such as safflower, sunflower, soy, corn, or canola oil and sugar kept her up at night. She would wake up at around 3:00 AM in the morning with intense anxiety, and then she’d be tired and depressed the next day by experimenting around and cutting out different foods.

She discovered that she slept fine when she stopped eating pasteurized, dairy weight, and processed foods containing the vegetable oils and sugar. And you can look on the, on the shelves in supermarkets. And I doubt even in inorganic foods, you’ll find any that don’t have sugar and the processed vegetable seed oils or the industrial seed oils, which are really, really bad for the body Now because she was sleeping.

she is, she didn’t feel Tired and she didn’t feel depressed anymore. Here’s another example, Joel discovered that his sleeplessness and resulting depression was a direct result of caffeine from coffee, tea, droplet, and soft drinks. You hadn’t realized how much coffee, how much caffeine actually he was consuming until I suggested that he cut out all caffeine and see what happened to asleep. And, and you know, of course he had headaches.

So, but a week after a caffeine withdrawal, when the headaches went away, he started sleeping and really well for the first time in years. And he no longer felt depressed. And here’s another example. Adrian discovered that her depression that had been with her, most of her life disappeared after she started eating only organic foods. Her system was so sensitive to the pesticides and food additives and the non-organic food that she couldn’t eat them without feeling depressed.

So, you know, it took time. It took time for her to tune into that. That’s what we need to do is tune into our bodies, see how food’s affecting you. There’s another idea. The sample Alex he’s, he struggled sometimes with Depression, but he accidentally discovered that drinking raw milk from an organic dairy had a completely different effect on him than pasteurized milk. He was visiting Los Angeles and he went into a health food store where he discovered that he could buy raw organic dairy products, which are unfortunately outlawed and most States.

He found that the, the organic raw milk gave him more energy and elevated his mood. He also found out that while he was lactose intolerant and with pasteurized milk, you didn’t have any problems with the raw milk. So now, like I do, he owns a cow share in his state and has access to the raw milk and the cheese and the butter with none of the Depression that he felt with pasteurized dairy. So over and over, my clients have chosen to tune into how food was affecting them have discovered how much their feelings were being affected by food.

So many of my clients have learned that even a little bit of sugar or a little processed food with the vegetable oils, the, the industrial oils brings them down sugar and industrial oil is concerned, consume so many vital nutrients as the body attempts to process them and has such a disastrous effect on cells that they can actually be considered poisons process, industrial vegetable oils, which are high in Omega six, cause an M balance in the Omega threes, which we all need.

A lot of this process, fat ends up replacing the natural fat that the brain needs to function well, which is one of the causes of depression. And they also be a cause, like I said, of other neurological disorders, even things like ADHD, the, the brain needs Omega three. But when you, when you consume these ubiquitous industrial vegetable oils, which like I said, are everywhere, the brain picks up on them and it causes that’s one of the imbalances that the, that the food causes, the, these oils are disastrous for the brain.

So 200 years ago, when people naturally ate non-processed and organically grown food, they were getting all the nutrients they needed. But now most roots and vegetables and grains are being grown on devitalized soil and over processed on top of being grown on devitalized, soil, cows, and sheep that were once grassfed on, on grass, that hadn’t been sprayed with anything or being fed pesticide space as a pesticide sprayed grains and given hormones to fatten them up so that they can get more money for them.

So as a result, much of our food, not only contains yeah, as a little nutrients or not, you know, not, not much nutrients, but has many toxins as well with it. How about the vitamins minerals in many other factors that natural organic. Yeah. And it can be grassfed food contains many people suffer deficiencies that can cause Depression as well as cause many other illnesses.

When I discovered that the fat of raw organic dairy products, especially butter, which I love contains natural anti-inflammatory nutrients. I wondered if the huge rise in authorizes and asthma and other inflammatory conditions is related to the pasteurizing of milk. Any inflammatory condition can also contribute to depression. I remember when that, when those oils came in and, and, and we were told not to eat butter, and I think that’s been a big disaster for our health.

So food is certainly a major factor on the rise of depression, as well as the rise of the illness. And only you can do something about this, but learning how you’re being effective by the foods you eat, being a devoted Inner Bonding practitioner will help you access the desire and the Inner discipline necessary to consistently eat well.

So now, well, I want to address the emotional causes of depression. How do we feel about ourselves? How we treat ourselves as well as like I said, unhealed past or present trauma greatly contributes to how we end up feeling emotionally Depression is often caused by ignoring our feelings and needs. If you don’t speak up for ourselves when we don’t advocate for ourselves speaking our truth, even when it’s scary, we’re squashing ourselves down.

Yeah. Which can often result in feeling depressed when we’re unseen and unheard by the important people in our lives. And we become victims of this, right? Other than hearing and seeing ourselves and speaking our truth, not, not to convince other people, but to advocate for ourselves, the result might the Depression when you caretake other people as a covert form of control, well, ignoring your own feelings and needs Depression is often the result.

If you have a child whom you ignore and, and maybe judge that child would likely be depressed, the same occurs on the inner level, on the Inner level. When we ignore and judge our own Inner trial, putting yourself last and taking care of everyone else. But yourself is likely to cause you to feel unworthy and depressed. There’s a little point and taking drugs for depression without attending to yourself, abandonment.

However, if you take drugs for a short time and give yourself the opportunity to do your Inner monitoring work, that can be helpful. Like I said, many of the people I work with find that as soon as they start taking loving care of themselves, they don’t like the effect of the drugs. They don’t like the fact that the drugs take the edge edge off their feelings. They find that rather than wanting to be numbed out, they want to feel all of their feelings deeply, both the highs and the lows.

The more they learn to take responsibility for their feelings, by attending to their thoughts and needs, the more they want to feel all their feelings. They discover that while drugs may take the edge off the pain, they also take the edge off the joy. Most of the people, well, I work with actually can avoid drugs completely by practicing Inner Bonding and learning to love. I love themselves rather than continue to abandon themselves both physically and emotionally.

Many of the people who practice in her body find this process to be far more powerful in healing Depression than drugs are. So if you’re a person who doesn’t want to learn to love yourself, if you’re resistant to that resistant to taking personal responsibility for your own pain and joy, then drugs may be a way out for you. But if you want to feel true, peace and joy drugs are actually not a long-term answer.

Even in the worst of times, if we’re treating ourselves with compassion instead of self judgment, we may be able to manage big challenges without feeling depressed and, and being able to turn to an inner source of spiritual guidance and comfort is vital to weathering. The hard times my client Kendra had been depressed on and off for the last three years before she consulted with me, she is said, I’ve tried various medications and they help somewhat, but I still feel depressed.

I’ve tried psychotherapy. And it also helps a little bit, not enough for me to feel happiness and peace inside. I hate feeling this way. And I just don’t know what to do. The first thing that I did to start Kendra on her Inner Bonding journey was to help her create a personal source of spiritual guidance. I asked her to make up who is a very loving wise and powerful to whom she could turn to the inner imagination for help and guidance.

And so Kendra made up an older Indian medicine woman whom she called elder one. No, sometimes it also works for people to imagine an older, wiser aspect of themselves. So then I asked Kendra where in her body she was feeling the Depression in my heart and stomach, my heart and stomach often feel so heavy and sad. So Kendra, I said, imagine that you’re feeling so the part that’s feeling depressed right now is the child inside.

How old does this child? She told me she thought that John was around six. Now imagine that you’re sitting in a beautiful place in nature with elder one. Imagine that elder one is surrounding you with love so that you feel safe. Now imagine that that little six year old depressed Kendra is also with you. You asked her how she feels about you as her Inner parent, you as her mom and dad.

That’s great how you’re treating her. That’s causing her to feel depressed. So Kendra asked silently inside, and then I said, now, now go inside the, imagine that you are a little Kendra and that you’re talking to you as the adult, the Inner mom and dad, what are you? He was a little Kendra. I want to say to adult Kendra, how does adult kind of a treat you? What is the adult Kendra doing? It causes you to feel so bad.

Now, obviously a little Kendra was really ready to tell adult Kendra what she was doing before I go into what she said. It’s important to understand that little Kendra is not really is not really a child. She is actually our inner source of guidance. And like I said, she has a lot to say, here’s what she said. I barely exist for you. You don’t care about how I feel.

You never stand up for me with other people, the sign on things without even asking me how I feel about it. Like having dinner with Kathy tonight, I don’t want to have dinner with Kathy. All she does is talk about herself and I just ended up feeling drained. But you don’t care about how I feel. You don’t want to say no or tell Cathy the truth, because maybe she is going to feel hurt or angry. But what about me? You never speak up for me with Harold. Harold was her, her husband either.

I just feel like I don’t exist in this marriage. Just like with moms. Do you treat me just like mom treated me, like what I want and feel doesn’t matter. Other people are always more important to you then do you constantly tell me when I’m I’m not doing things right? And then I have to it’s the perfect. And then you eat junk to not feel me. Of course I’m depressed. How else would you expect me to feel treating me this way? So at this point, Kendra started to cry and then a little Kendra continued.

I’m so mad at you when you’re going to care about me. So I said to Kendra, you’re a caretaker with your husband and your friends you’d take care of them, but you neglect yourself. You allow them to control you without standing up for yourself. Can you see how this would lead to Depression? Now, Kendra was quite shocked by this information. She had believed like so many people that her depression was caused by either a brain imbalance or by outside events, rather than by how she was treating herself.

She thought it was a chemical imbalance, or she thought it was about her husband’s behavior. Her husband was in fact very controlling, but it was her response to him and others. That was the cause of her depression rather than her husband’s behavior or her friend’s behavior. So Kender began to see that until she had the courage to take care of herself, both physically and emotionally, rather than continue to abandon herself, she would continue to feel depressed, but she was willing to practice in her bonding and by practicing in their body.

And you learn to open to the elder one for guidance about loving behavior toward herself. And as she began to take loving action for herself, for her inner child, which is her feelings of her soul self, her Depression gradually diminished until she able to get off the medication now. And she feels the Depression coming up. She knows that there is some way she’s not taking care of herself. She speaks with a little Kendra to find out what it is.

And with elder one, to discover the loving action when she has the courage at take the loving action. And sometimes it does take a lot of courage. Her Depression goes with it. The way Kendra’s learned that practicing and her bonding is truly a powerful method for healing her Depression. Now, sometimes Depression might be called that dark night of the soul. Many of us Through at least one and made me more experiences of the dark night of the soul.

Understanding why you might be going through this can be a big help in moving out of it. Now, a major challenge on the spiritual path is to let go of controlling behavior and to allow our higher self to guide our thoughts and choices and behavior. When we come up against a deeply entrenched aspect of the wound itself is designed there for a control. We may go into the dark night of the soul in the dark night.

You’re in the struggle between your wounded self and your higher self. And in this state, do you may last days or weeks or months, you feel profoundly alone. And without hope you feel totally cut off from yourself and from others and from your spiritual guidance, because your wounded self has a blocked off, off all connection. Well, this is really hard to go through.

It is helpful to understand that it may be necessary in order for the wound itself to let go of another layer of false beliefs. Yeah. And controlling behavior. Strange thing may be happening during the dark Knight. While you may have believed that you, as a loving adult, that you were the ones seeking spiritual connection, it might be that it was your wound itself seeking spiritual identity, the action as a way to have more power and control over others and circumstances.

Right? Well, and it’s helped often becomes motivated to seek spiritual connection as another way to control. Like if I’m really good and I’m really connected, then I can control how people feel about me or how God feels about me. But it, as long as the seeking is ego, and for me, we are based within the agenda attached. You are on a collision course since true spiritual connection is about surrender, which obviously is the opposite of control.

So the two dark night of the soul can be seen as your wound itself, rising up and blocking you from connection with yourself. Others in spirit becoming a formidable obstacle to connection and joy. I’ve had numerous dark night of the soul in my life. That’s a scary life sucking place to be. But I also learned that it’s a time of transformation of transcending my wounded self, my ego on an ever deeper level.

I learned to hang in with it when it happens. Fortunately, it hasn’t happened very much recently because of my inner bunny practice, rather than trying to get out of it or get rid of it. And instead I do inner bonding and open to whatever it is I need to learn. I learned to embrace the dark night as an important learning time for my spiritual development. I’ve discovered the sense that the wound itself is all about control.

The dark Knight is often triggered by coming face to face with a new level of a helplessness regarding others and outcomes and events. Helplessness may be the most difficult of the existential painful feelings of life, helplessness over a loved one, dying or getting killed, especially a partner. A child is extremely challenging. We want to show you damn. I want to get an angry blame, someone or something.

Tell ourselves if only I do it at anything to not feel the complete helplessness over the situation. If only I had not let them go out that night, if only I had spoken up, then maybe it wouldn’t of happened on a less extreme level. When a person important to us is harming themselves or as cruel or attacking or raging at us, we might suddenly be hit with the realization of our helplessness over them.

And this might be a shock because our wound itself might’ve believe that we were succeeding in getting them to change is really hard to come face to face with our helplessness concerning others and outcomes. Now, this understanding is the way out of the dark night of the soul, which is why I wanted to share this with you. There is a way out for me when I get that this is what’s happening, that my wound itself is having to let go of yet another level of beliefs about control.

I can more quickly move through the dark Knight. My wound itself, of course hates having to accept the lack of control over others in events. But once I, once I accept it and I surrender, then I move into a new level of connection and peace and joy. So what happens in our bodies is not separate from what happens in our minds. Yeah, so, so for example, if something bad were happening to you, such as getting mugged, your fight or flight reaction would kick in to help you fight or fleet the adrenaline and cortisol, coursing through your body would be utilized for your survival, but your body doesn’t know the difference between when something bad is actually happening.

And when you think something bad is happening or will happen when you think a scary thought, like something bad is going to happen to me, your body might go into the fight or flight reaction, adrenaline and cortisol. When they are frequently present, they take a toll on the body and they cause stress thinking about something bad happening, judging yourself, ignoring your feelings, numbing out your feelings with addictions or making others responsible for your feelings can eventually result in depression.

The more you think thoughts that caused stress, the more chronic the stress becomes often resulting in chronic Depression. Now you can certainly take a drug that massive depression, or you can start to become conscious of the thoughts from your wound itself that are causing the depression. If you choose to consistently practice Inner Bonding, you’re going to gradually become more and more aware of the connection between your thoughts and your feelings.

And you can slowly stop thinking and behaving in ways that caused depression. You will develop a spiritually connected, loving adult who will think and behave in ways that create inner peace and joy. In my many years of working with people, I’ve often seen countless times and learning to love yourself, which is what gradually happens when you practice Inner Bonding heals depression.

Now also I’ve I’ve often been asked how to handle, how to manage a depressed family member. Being able to help a family member depends on whether or not he or she is open to being helped by You. You can’t take responsibility for our, how others are treating themselves and you can’t make others want to take responsibility for how they’re treating themselves. You are powerless over other people’s intention.

So what can you do? Well, you could be a role model, buy learning to take a loving care of yourself. You consistently practice inner bonding and move into your peace and joy, your family member. My, I started to wonder what you’re doing. That’s making you feel happy and you can be compassionate with your family member, letting them know that you care about them, that you’re available to help them. If they want help.

If you’re a family member does want help, or you can refer him or her to the free Inner Bonding course to the inner bonding books, courses, workshops, intensives to Inner Bonding village and to an inner bonding facilitator, which will be a huge help for their Depression. What’s not helpful to your family member is for you to join them in their Depression, which you might do. If you take responsibility for their feelings, you have to make sure that you’re not blaming yourself or judging yourself or in any way, allowing yourself to believe that you’re the cause of another is Depression.

I hope you can now see that depression is caused primarily by how we treat ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If your family member is too depressed to practice in their body, then he or she may need medication, which as I said, can create a window of opportunity to learn, to take loving care of themselves. So while meds don’t solve the problem, they may reduce the depression to the point of being able to learn self care.

If you’re a family member has no intention of learning to take care of themselves, then you need to accept this and take care of yourself in the face of their choice to continue to abandon themselves. I know it’s heartbreaking to witness this and someone you love, but taking loving care of yourself, we’ll get you through the heartbreak. I hope you can see that Depression can be healed when you are willing to do your Inner work.

So I want to encourage you to spend time on the Inner Bonding website. If you haven’t taken our free seven day course, please do. So. The love yourself 30 day course is powerful in helping people heal their depression. As are my books, my recent books, the inner bonding workbook diet for divine connection. And we have many, many well-trained Inner Bonding facilitators.

We have a wonderful training program. Any of you are interested in training to be an inner bonding facilitator, visit our site and look at what’s necessary to become an Inner Bonding facilitator. I hope if you’re a depressed that you can see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, you can heal your Depression. I’ve worked with so many clients that have healed their deep long-term clinical depression with Inner Bonding.

I send you my love and my blessing.