It is often true that depression and anxiety is linked to trauma, unmet needs and attachment wounding. If we have unprocessed hurt and we are not meeting it directly, depression, anxiety and panic attacks tend to show up as symptoms. It is very common that folks come to my practice to deal with depression or anxiety and we discover that it's actually an unprocessed hurt. Once the hurt is met with loving kindness and grounded presence the depression and anxiety ease up.
It is also often the case that depression and anxiety are linked to patterns of avoidance.
For example, if I have feelings of sadness or anger, but I don’t feel able or willing to meet these feelings directly, I feel depressed. Depression can be a physical manifestation of avoiding difficult feelings.
Anxiety on the other hand is usually centered around thinking patterns, stories and planning. These thinking patterns and habits are a coping mechanism to avoid difficult feelings.
For example, let’s say I feel a sense of fear in my body in reaction to something. Instead of meeting the fear directly, I bypass the feeling and go into “worrying/thinking/planning” about the catastrophic future and imagine the terrible things that will happen, so that I can be prepared. Even though these thoughts are set up to help me be prepared, they are actually creating anxiety in my body. Futuristic thoughts are typically worse than the actual truth or feeling in the body.
When we meet our feelings and sensations with grounded presence, and refrain from repetitive thinking and stories, symptoms and diagnoses of depression, anxiety, panic often cease to exist.
There are cases where a person has a medical imbalance that causes symptoms of depression or anxiety. In these cases meds may be necessary. But for many people depression and anxiety are centered around habitual thinking patterns.
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Anxiety and Panic Attacks often are connected to repetitive thinking patterns that take us away from the present moment, bringing us into a fantasy "terrible" or "disastrous" future. Once we recognize that we are caught in a thinking pattern, we can practice cognitive behavioral techniques to unhook us from our mind-movie and bring ourselves back into the present moment. When we connect with the present moment we find more space and peace.
Depression
Depression happens when we don't meet our feelings directly with grounded presence. Feelings are like waves in the ocean. They want move through. If we block them through various avoidance patterning, we become depressed because the feeling has nowhere to go. It bogs us down. Once we learn how to give space to feelings they move through and we find ourselves feeling free and open. It sounds simple and it actually is. Our patterning makes Being more complicated than it needs to be.
