DEPRESSION & ISOLATION
It's the season of change. From vibrant green to beautiful color as the life force of the trees retreat to the roots - below ground.
Are not depression and isolation two feelings that can overtake us personally, our lives in general and replace joy and enthusiasm with emptiness and hopelessness?
This time of this particular year 2020 can bring on both these uncomfortable guests, uninvited and sometimes overpowering - they can actually move in and remain steadfast.....silently jump on us when we are actually having a day that feels like a good day - that everything is working out for us.
Does anyone notice that despite all the ads and memes on social media, all the everything touting the suicide hotline number to call, encouraging friends to reach out to someone who they know suffers from clinical depression or bouts of same tend to NOT CALL even when you ask them to because the darkness is just too much to take on a particular day or worse.....for several days. They all seem to be too busy - I got a text from a caring friend, one of the less than a handful of friends I DO have - that simply said, "stay sane" - when I asked for him to call me as I was having a particularly dark time & I needed the laugh I knew he would bring within two minutes.
A wise woman and spiritual mentor that I love and respect called me once after my best friend died here at my sanctuary and I had a bout of depression that was overpowering - indeed an aspect of grief - and I never forgot her words - "ask the depression what message it has for you, then sit quietly and allow it to come forward and speak to you" - she called me more than once to counsel me, but this stood out the strongest. Depression IS anger turned inward onto oneself. Depression robs energy where anger fuels energy. Anger is one step higher on the 'graph' of emotional levels. One can work with anger - with depression, one is empty and it's damn hard to act on what the "guest of depression" might say.
When the healer is feeling the weight of some wounds, the empath is feeling the suffering of the collective of all species - which ALL are currently suffering for the most part.....it is the most difficult for the healer to heal her/himself....even if we go through the motions that we give to our clients with our love and intention. Why cannot we give this to ourselves? Maybe it's time to look at that.
