S2 EP230 – Dancing Your Way Through our Depressed Society

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Many of us know that the rate of depression for children, adolescents, and adults has risen alarmingly since COVID. Many people are afraid to be social for fear of getting COVID or are afraid of going to schools and malls and other places where people gather for fear of mass shootings, or in the case of minorities, fear of getting killed by the police or by people driven by fear and hatred. It’s very understandable that many people feel trapped and depressed.

While there may not be much we can do about the major challenges of our society, there is a lot we can do internally. Some of what creates misery and depression are what I call junk – such as junk thoughts, junk food, and junk drugs.   

Junk thoughts are any thoughts that create anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, blame, resentment, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy, envy – any thoughts that create misery.

We all have junk thoughts at times, but many people never connect their junk thoughts with their depression. They may think their depression is coming from other people, or from events or circumstances. Yet research on happiness and unhappiness shows that only about 10% of unhappiness comes from outside circumstances, while fully 50% of happiness or misery comes from your own thoughts and actions. The other 40% is genetic – that is, some people are born with sunny dispositions while others are more serious or morose. However, the research also shows that even those who are born more serious or morose, have the choice to be happy by developing the habit of thinking thoughts and taking actions that bring them joy.

What kinds of thoughts do you have most of the time? What kinds of thought do you have as soon as you wake up on the morning? Do you think, “Oh no, another day to face. I’m too tired to do this day,” or do you think, “Thank you for this great day! I’m alive and vibrant and ready to passionately embrace this day!” The first thought is a junk thought, guaranteed to bring you misery, while the second is energizing and likely to create feelings of happiness.

Are you tuned in to how food affects your feelings? Do you know how sugar, too much coffee, processed devitalized pesticide-and-chemical-laden foods affect your mood? Do you know which foods allow you a good night sleep and which ones keep you up at night? Do you know which foods give you tons of energy and which rob you of energy?

Just as you need to start to get conscious of how your thoughts affect your feelings, you also need to attend to how food affects your feelings if you want to feel peaceful and passion for life most of the time.

While some people are more sensitive to foods than others, everyone is affected by junk food. And even healthy foods can have a bad effect if they are not right for your body. I’m very sensitive to carbs, even healthy fruit and vegetable carbs. If I have too many fruits or vegetables in the afternoon, they keep me up at night. So each of us needs to be aware of how what we put into our bodies affects us if we want to move out of misery and into inner peace. 

One of the things that can occur with many drugs, both recreational and prescription, is what is called a rebound effect. A rebound effect is when the drug ends up causing the very symptom it is geared to suppress. For example, I can’t take any antihistamines because, while they work for the moment, they end up causing me to be highly allergic. It is well known that many antidepressants can cause suicidal feelings, making the person even more depressed than they were before taking the drugs. For some people, drugs for relaxation can case the very stress they are meant to heal.

It is vitally important to be conscious of the effect of anything you put into your body. Trying to put a lid on feelings rather than addressing the junk thoughts and actions that might be causing them can keep you stuck in misery. And this is especially important right now in our society where there are so many challenges and so much uncertainty. Few people feel safe externally so we need to do all we can to feel safe internally.

Many people believe that blaming others will make them feel safe, and there are many well-known people in our current society who like to blame others for their feelings or for their situation, rather than being accountable for the choices they’ve made that have led to their circumstances. This is common globally as well as individually. 

While you might believe that blaming others gives you a feeling of power, what it may really doing is causing you to feel depressed, stressed, and physically sick. Research shows that negative mental states, such as resentment and blame, can cause heart problems. In fact, negative states can affect health just as much as smoking.

Blame ignites the body’s fight or flight stress mechanism. If we actually fight, then the stress hormones will dissipate, but if we are stressed with anxiety, depression, anger, blame, and resentment without releasing it, this can take a toll on the heart and other parts of the body.

It is now well known that 90% of illness has its source in stress – and blame, resentment, bitterness, and the resulting depression certainly cause much stress.

Our ego wounded self is the part of us that wants to control everything, and blaming others for our feelings is a very common way of trying to control. However, like anything we do that avoids taking responsibility for ourselves, the consequences can be disastrous for our wellbeing.

Blaming people for COVID or for mass shootings doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere regarding resolving these current problems in our society and can even lead to more depression. Taking responsibility for our feelings of depression, and for all other miserable feelings, is what’s necessary for change to occur.
 
To move beyond blaming and being a victim, and the resulting depression, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, “Am I ready to let go of seeing myself as a victim of others’ choices and learn how to take responsibility for my own feelings and needs?”

The answer to this question might not be at all obvious to you. One part of you might be saying, “Of course I want to let go of depression and blame and being a victim. Why would I want to be a victim? Why would I want to stay depressed?” However, another less conscious part of you might be deeply invested in the belief that others and circumstances cause your feelings. You might not want to know that you are the captain of your own ship, and that you are the one keeping yourself stuck feeling angry, resentful, victimized, anxious or depressed.  

So, the question to ask yourself is, “Do I WANT to learn how to take responsibility for myself – both for causing my own pain, and for managing the pain caused by others and circumstances – or do I want to stay stuck in blame and resentment and victimhood?”

Think about this carefully, as it is very easy to fool yourself. Since the identity of our programmed mind – our ego wounded self – is based on trying to have control over getting love and avoiding pain to feel safe, it is not easy to want to give up this control.

If you decide that you really want to let go of trying to control through blaming others or blaming yourself, then practicing the Six Steps of Inner Bonding will train you in taking responsibility for yourself.

Start with tuning in to the anger and depression and resentment that gets expressed as blaming others or as self-blame. Breathe into these feelings and embrace them, as a loving parent would embrace an upset child.

Now go a little deeper. Tune in to the difficult feelings of helplessness, loneliness, and heartache that might be underneath the depression or anger or resentment. Breathe into these feelings with kindness and caring toward yourself. These are hard feelings to feel. It takes courage to feel them, so congratulate yourself if you have the courage.

See if you can accept that you cannot have control over getting the person or situation you believe is causing your pain to change. Paradoxically, accepting your powerlessness over others is what opens the door to personal power – to taking loving care of yourself.

Once you can find a place of acceptance of your lack of control over others and situations, open to learning with your higher self. Ask, with a deep intent to learn about loving yourself, “What do I need to do right now to create an inner sense of peace?” Stay open to ideas popping into your mind.

Then take the action that seems most loving to you. Perhaps it would be a prayer for the person or situation you believe is causing your pain. Perhaps you need a good cry or a walk in nature. Perhaps you need to reach out for help from a friend or therapist. The loving action is the action that brings a sense of peace and fullness inside.

If you try this each time you find yourself depressed, anxious, angry, blaming, or resentful, you will move out of pain and into the peace of taking personal responsibility for your emotional wellbeing, even in the face of external challenges.

Elizabeth Lesser, in Broken Open, p. 256, wrote, “Something I didn’t want to happen, happens. I feel the resistance build within. I feel the pressure to control what is obviously out of my control. I become aware of what I’m doing – I become aware of the choice either to break down or to break open.” 

How aware are you that when bad things happen or something that you didn’t want to happen, happens, you have a choice of whether to break down or break open? This is what Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open, is about. It’s about using all our challenging life situations to open, on deeper and deeper levels, to our true, core essential self. Unfortunately, many people do the opposite when deeply challenged – they numb out, or hide and avoid, or abandon themselves in other ways that lead to depression. They are afraid that if they let themselves break open to their deeper, spiritual self, they will not be able to handle the painful feelings of heartbreak, loneliness, grief, and helplessness over others and circumstances.

When we don’t allow ourselves to break open, compassionately embracing our emotions and discovering the huge spiritual reservoir of strength that lies within, we break down. We become anxious, depressed, angry, or numb and frozen. We may turn on those we love in an effort to not feel so helpless, or we may numb out with alcohol, drugs or food. We may vegetate in front of the TV or turn to Internet pornography – something, anything, to distract from the pain of life that we don’t want to face.

In making this choice to abandon ourselves rather than compassionately embrace our emotions and allow them to release in healthy ways, we not only break down into misery, we also break down our bodies. The repressed and unexpressed pain of our heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over the situation eats away at our immune systems, eventually causing illness.

Consider allowing deeply challenging life situations to break you open – over and over. Through breaking open and having the courage to compassionately embrace and express your heartbreak and grief, you also break open to the love, peace and joy that occupy the same place in your heart. If you close your heart to pain, you also close your heart to love, peace, and joy. Today, the world very much needs your peace and love and joy to counter the frequency of the darkness of violence and other forms of control.

When you allow yourself to compassionately embrace the pain of life, you find that you are not alone. Breaking open with a deep desire to learn about what is most loving to you and others, is an invitation to spirit to fill you with the strength you need to manage the challenges.

Imagine the freedom you would feel if you no longer feared the deeper painful challenges and losses of life. Imagine the freedom you would feel if you knew that by opening to compassion for yourself, you could find the deeper knowing, strength, worth, and wholeness that lies within your own heart and soul.

I have broken open many times and I’m sure I will many more times. Each time, I emerge on the other side with a greater appreciation for this journey called life, which challenges me to open my heart more and more – to break open my heart to the depth of the love that is here for me and for all of us, and to stay fully present for the sharing of that love. This is especially important now with the polarization on our planet

I don’t look forward to the challenges that break me open, but I also no longer avoid them. I know they will come, for this is life, and I also know that each time, I will choose to fully feel the pain so I can continue to fully feel the love and joy and be able to share love.

Do you believe that you can run out of love or that love is limited?

Some people believe that love is scarce – that there is only so much to go around. Yet love is one of those things that the more we open to it and share it, the more we have. And the more we open to it and share it, the less anxious and depressed we are. If more people were learning to love themselves and share their love, we would not be experiencing the mental health crises that we are currently experiencing.

There is a Chinese proverb that states: “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Love never decreases by being shared. 

And that’s because we live in a universe that IS love.

1 John 4:8 states that “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

1 John 4:16 states that “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”

It’s so sad to me that many so-called religious people are coming from their controlling wounded selves rather than from the love that is God. There is no hatred in love. There is no violence in love. There are no lies or threats or judgments in love. There is no racism or misogyny or revenge in love.  

God is love, and is the infinite source of love, but in order to tap into the infinite source of love, embodying it – abiding in love and sharing it – we need to be open to it. But when the wounded self is in charge rather than the loving adult, fear, greed, and the desire to control are what’s operating. If you think about it, this is very clear regarding why there are the current wars, and why there are so many dictators, and why the political arena in the US is in such turmoil. Those controlling people who are coming from their wounded self rather than from their loving adult are wreaking havoc, and those following them in a cult-like fashion, as happened in Hitler Germany, are hoping that someone else will take responsibility for them. 

As very small children, we closed our hearts because life was too painful for us to manage. The only way we could manage it was to close down and stay in our head – shutting out the deeply painful feelings in our body from rejection, abandonment, shaming, humiliation, smothering, engulfment, invasiveness, physical and sexual abuse. I have never known anyone who got through their home life, or their school life, or their religious life, or their peer life without wounding.

Since most of our parents had no idea how to manage their own painful feelings, they too were shut down. With closed hearts, they could not bring through the love to us that we needed. This is how we came to believe that love is scarce, and to confuse approval with love.

Now, as adults, many people still believe that love is limited. Jealousy, possessiveness, and anxious attachment all indicate the belief that not only is love limited, but it has to be earned or controlled.

When your heart is closed to protect yourself from pain, then the love that is God cannot enter your heart and fill you with what you are seeking. When you can’t experience the infinite love that is always available to you, then you believe that others need to be your source of love. This is when you make others or another your higher power, and this is when you try to earn or control getting love. And, of course, this is why it feels like it is scarce. And this is why there is such a mental health crisis.

My friend Dr. Ray Blanchard, master trainer and peak performance coach, recently said in a diversity group I belong to, (Quote) “As my mom used to say, ‘You can never get enough from others to fill what is missing in you’”. (Unquote) I love this. What a wise mom he had!

What’s missing in many people is that they are not filling themselves with love. Instead, they are abandoning themselves, which is what causes most mental health issues.

In order to know that love is infinitely abundant, you need to open your heart. But in order to open your heart, you need to learn how to manage the painful feelings of life – the loneliness, heartbreak, grief, and helplessness over others and outcomes that are part of life.

The conundrum is that we cannot manage these feelings without opening to the love and compassion of spirit, but we will not open as long as we are too afraid to feel our pain. So the key is to be willing to feel your pain and to want responsibility for it, which is Step One of Inner Bonding. However, often the pain of the past is way too big to manage alone. This is when we need to reach out for help – to be held in love by another who is not afraid to stay with us through our pain.

You will discover that once you go through deep pain while being held in love by another and are able to open and bring love and compassion to your own pain, the fear of the pain gradually goes away. And as it does, your heart opens more and more to the infinite love that is always here for all of us. This is what healing is about.

The challenge for all of us is to do the inner work to become our own best friend. Practicing Inner Bonding and learning to take loving care of your own feelings is what heals the anxiety and depression that are currently causing much of our mental health crisis.

As you learn to become mindful of your feelings in Step One of Inner Bonding, and you want to learn from them rather than get rid of them, you gradually create new neural pathways in your brain for being a loving adult – in the prefrontal cortex which didn’t fully develop if you didn’t receive the love you needed as a child. As a loving adult, you become your own best friend.

Inner Bonding is all about becoming your own best friend. However, as powerful a self-help and self-healing process as it is, sometimes we can’t do it on our own. Even if we are deeply connected with our spiritual source of love and wisdom, sometimes we need to receive help from others as well – others who can be very loving, accepting and tuned in to us. It’s good to know that we can receive the help we need to heal and finally receive what we may not have received as children. 

One of the heartening things that recent research shows is that the brain can always learn and create new neural pathways.

This is called neuroplasticity, and it is very good news. Just because we didn’t receive the love we needed as children to feel whole, safe and secure, and to fully express our love to others, doesn’t mean we are doomed. In one of my favorite books ‘Mindsight’, by Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Siegel gives an example of a ninety-two-year-old man who was completely shut down and unable to express love to his wife of many years. Within less than a year of inner work, this man experienced love for her and others and was able to fully express it. It brought tears to my eyes to read scientific validation that it is never too late to heal. 

Caring about our own feelings is what makes us feel safe, loved and valued. We feel anxious and depressed when we abandon ourselves. We need a strong loving adult to be resilient enough to handle the big challenges we currently face on our planet. Without this, the wounded self takes over, creating the depression and others forms of mental illness that we are currently facing.

As we become open to learning from our feelings about what we might be doing to cause our pain, and as we learn with our spiritual guidance about the truth regarding our false beliefs, and as we learn to manage the pain of life, and as we learn to take loving actions on our own behalf, we gradually learn to love ourselves and become our own best friend.

Loving ourselves and becoming our own best friend is so powerful, not only in terms of creating inner peace and joy and in healing addictions, but in creating loving relationships. The more we love ourselves, the better we are treated by others as well.

This is the antidote to the anxiety, depression, and despair that so many are suffering from. You CAN learn to love yourself rather than abandon yourself. You CAN learn to heal your pain and move into love, peace and joy.

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

And, I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my new book, “Lonely No More: The Astonishing Power of Inner Bonding” and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.