Tag: Major depressive disorder

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What creates an empath?

A lot of people are empaths, but what makes them one?

Here are some thoughts about that.

 

Some people are born very sensitive to those feelings around them. Others become empaths out of necessity. 

For instance, a child that has a very traumatic childhood will develop the ability to sense others emotions so they can try and avoid dangerous situations.

This could be from the horrors of sexual abuse, or maybe physical abuse. Perhaps you might have a had a victim type parent who would constantly turn to you to unload their problems on.

Perhaps the empath grew up in a dangerous neighbourhood and had to develop a sixth sense in order to avoid trouble.

If the empath has been borne from such situations, then healing tends to be required as such people will find their life an unending living hell.

There are certainly ways to heal these things. I’ve found that the most gentle and effective way is by using Bach Flower Remedies.

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Depression – You just can’t get over it but you certainly can be over it.

Depression is really is a major problem for so many. You don’t have to be an empath to suffer from it, but it certainly doesn’t help you if you are one.

The problem is that unless you have experienced  depression, it’s hard to understand what it’s like.

The other problem is that it’s not a one shoe fits all type thing. There are so many different forms and types of depression that it makes it hard to identify just exactly why you are feeling down, and what to do about it.

Talking is a good start, but unless the person you’re talking to doesn’t make it about themselves, then it may not be very useful.

The hardest part of being depressed is that you’re in a state of flux, where you feel like you don’t want to be here, yet unable to look at the reasons why.

There may be many reasons why that is, but often it comes down to finding out something that you afraid to find out about yourself, or remembering an incident that you can’t bear to face again.

For whatever reason, the pain and isolation is traumatic, and depression actually creates more depression, especially as you start to feel that you are being a burden to others, and you feel bad, or guilty about it.

There is also an odd phenomenon where someone who is depressed will sometimes make things worse by avoiding all forms of help and suggestion.

They go into a poor me / self-pity mode.

Typically this will take the form of:

–          Nobody cares

–          I don’t see what difference that will make.

–          You can’t help me or give me what I need.

–          You can’t understand the pain I’m going through.

–          I want to hurt me, by hurting you, and if possible, push you away so I can feel even more wretched.

So, you may say, well, why doesn’t the depressed person just stop doing this? But it’s not that easy. Once you are on this downward spiral, you almost become seduced into going further and further down, all the while thinking that the world would be better off with you.

So much more to say on this topic, and I will do so, but those who are depressed, take heart. Know that you are not alone. Know that there are those who understand what you are going through, and know that there are things out there that can actually help you without harming you.

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The signs of being an empath

This list is what many people may experience if they are highly emphatic. You may not experience them all, but some do. This list is not inclusive.

  • You may be very sensitive to noises. They may not be loud, but they feel like they go right through you.

 

  • You are sensitive to harsh lights, strong smells. The energy of these things can actually induce a state where you are experiencing strong feelings triggered by them.

 

  • It’s a real trial being at places such as parties, nightclubs where there are so many people that you can barely move, and the noise is so loud that you try to leave your body until it’s all over and you get to leave. An empath will often try and leave such places as soon as it’s politely possible. They cannot understand how people can go to these places night after night, or even how they could be enjoying themselves.

 

  • You may also hate crowded places such as shopping plazas, train stations or just too many people in the same room. Normally it’s a place where there is chaotic energy, and the people around you are stressed and just want to get what they are there to do over and done with.

 

  • You may experience periods of anxiety for no apparent reason. No matter what you do, you can’t seem to let it go, or get over it, and you have no idea why.

 

  • You are clinically depressed, or feel depressed for no apparent reason. Once again, no matter what you try, you just can’t ‘get over it’.

 

  • You carry a lot of guilt, even if it’s for another’s action or for something you have done that has been received in a way you did not expect or desire.

 

  • You feel over sensitive to whether people want to be around you or not. Indeed, if you sense that you are not welcome somewhere or by someone, you will hastily make the quickest retreat you can or become ungrounded.

 

  • You feel ungrounded. That is, you are all in your mind, rather than your body. When you are somewhere where you do not feel comfortable, or are bored, or just do not wish to be there, you will often retreat into your imagination, and travel to far off and distant places. Anywhere but where you are.

 

  • You can always tell how someone else feels, even if they tell you something else. This is often taken personally, though generally, it’s just the other person having issues, which have nothing to do with you. The closer you are to someone, the more you will fear it has to do with you.

 

  • You tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. You make extremely sure that someone has been given every chance, and more, before you act to stop them from doing something that may be hurting or putting you under pressure. Even if this person is acting like a complete jerk, you’ll still try to give him understanding and compassion. Sadly, in this current world, doing such things are often abused, or worse, you end up being the bad person.

 

  • You feel a great connection to animals and things of nature, including plants and trees. Indeed, you may sense the energy of an area very strongly, be it positive or negative.

 

  • If you see someone in distress, pain or who is suffering, you will automatically feel bad along with them, in order to show they are not alone. You may even feel their physical pain and certainly feel their emotional pain. You may actually feel guilty if you do not empathize with such a person and will often put aside your own needs, even if you happen to be feeling good. You cannot abide another’s suffering.

 

  • You may have an overwhelming desire to help, heal and save others from themselves. It is important for the empath to not jump right in and try to ‘fix’ someone who they perceive to be going through a rough time. This is a trap many empaths can fall into, but often their help is not always welcome, or worse, their help is abused, and the empath ends up being used and drained of emotional energy and resources. An empath has a way of discerning if they should be helping someone or not. I call them ‘Soul Calls’.

 

  • You have an inbuilt lie detector. Someone can be telling you a bare-faced lie, but you will know if it’s not true. The interesting thing about this is that you may not know right away, but you will know, and often quite soon. People will often have a window to try and fool you, but once you’ve had time to consolidate all those feelings, you will always know if someone is trying to lie to you, or manipulate you.

 

  • Many empaths are natural healers, and have the ability to heal others either with the laying of hands, or from a distance. Empaths are generally drawn to healing, or a profession that aids others in some way.

 

  • If someone find something funny or sad, or has a strong opinion about a certain subject, you may find yourself agreeing with them, in order to match their energies. Then you may find yourself doing it with the next person who comes along. You always find yourself in agreement with who you are with and you only feel your true feelings when you are along. This doesn’t mean you are wishy-washy or weak, it means that you are tuning in to who the person is and what they are feeling, and allowing their energies to overwhelm yours. Many empaths do this because they feel it will help build a rapport with the other, but all it really does is invalidate who you are, and no one thanks you for it either. Standing in your own space and power can be quite challenging for an empath.

 

  • You don’t feel like you belong to this world. Indeed, the empath will often feel like a fish out of water, and honestly believe that they don’t belong here. That’s because the behaviour of others are so strange and alien to them, they just can’t relate.

 

  • You may feel overwhelmed by too many people, energies or emotions happening all at once. Being an empath is like being a psychic sponge. If you do not have control over your abilities, and know how to purge, you will eventually go into toxic overload, especially when there is so much psychic pollution out there. Sometimes having a cleansing shower can work wonders.

 

  • You and others consider yourself a highly sensitive person. Even the smallest change in moods can be picked up by you. It can be very disconcerting.
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Depression series – Empaths and the holidays or Where has my holiday cheer gone to?

Holiday depression

The holiday season is very hard on empaths. This is especially true for the Christmas and new year period, where everyone feels they should be with family, out celebrating and just having a good time.

Problem is that so many people are alone. They feel like they are missing out on a party where everyone is invited but them. They feel as though they should be enjoying things, but they can’t because they have nowhere to go. No-one to turn to.

What should be a happy and blissful period becomes a wretched and miserable experience.

People get lost in the memories of the past, of better times, of loved ones lost and some view how it was with rose coloured glasses; remembering the good old days.

Multiply this by several thousand, and then by several thousand more, and you have an energy that knocks the empath for a loop during the holiday period.

They will pick up on this intense feeling of depression and hopelessness, and not know why. There will be a sense of loneliness and separation, even if they are with loved ones.

In the northern hemisphere, it’s even worse, as it is winter in many places, and the lack of sunlight contributes to depression.

Add to that the Solstices (either longest or shortest day of the year) which tends to have chaotic energies, you have a recipe for massive depression.

How do you heal such a thing? Not easily. You can’t go around to each person, and help them. Many have their pride, and many are stuck in their own dramas, and unwilling to shift.

I know, personally, I spent my fair share of birthdays, Christmases and birthdays alone. Once upon a time it used to bother me greatly, but I reached a point where I realized that it really didn’t matter. It just meant I got to do what I wanted to do, which works for me.

For the New Year, instead of feeling the need to go out and party, I’d use that as an opportunity to send positive energies to the world and hopefully help bolster it.

Perhaps that is all you can do for now. Have a group prayer. Send love and healing energies to those who need it, and know that it will reach those who need it, and are ready to receive it.

But be aware of the fact that it’s a miserable for many. This is very important. Otherwise, you will feel depressed and will have no idea why there is so much pain.

Bach Flower Remedies: 
Red Chestnut  – Concern for others
Walnut – Protection against external influences (link breaker)
Star of Bethlehem  – For shock / trauma

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Depression series – Empaths and Trauma or why am I clinically depressed?

Shock and trauma

Check list:

Do you feel depressed without any cause?
Does even the slightest setback send you spinning into depression?
Do you ignore traumatic events and quash them so they don’t bother anyone?
You feel dead inside.

This is an insidious type of depression. It is certainly a clinical depression and sometimes it may be identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

This is one of the worst types of depressions because on the surface, there is nothing wrong. Your life might even be going extremely well, but still you feel down, depressed for no apparent reason, and worse, the slightest setback will send you spiralling into a deeper state of darkness and gloom.

Onlookers will not understand. In fact, they will just dismiss this as someone in a drama, or someone who is just depressing to be around.

This is the type of depression that will power cannot overcome. Sure, you might be able to shift your mood for a bit, but the moment something doesn’t go quite right, you will come plummeting down.

What is actually happening here is an accumulation of shock and / or trauma over a long period of time. When something traumatic happens, we should process it, get support and validation, and do what needs to be done to resolve it.

The type of shocks and traumas we are talking about might be an accident, a death, separation, loss of a job, illness, near death experience, abusive childhood, rape, incest, or any one of countless life events.

Even the process of being born can be traumatic.

So, over time, we accumulate a backlog of these unresolved issues that become toxic and affect us on an ongoing basis and the chances are that we are not even aware of it.

Talking about how you feel can help and if you are fortunate, you will find a friend or a confident who will listen. If you’re really fortunate, they will know how to help you.

However, what seems to be more likely is that people don’t want to know about it. They will tell you to ‘get over’ it,  give you a pep talk, or worse, make themselves the focus, and make your problems all about them.

If you try to bring it up again, their response might be: Yes, I know it already, while they will go on and on about their own issues, thus making you more inclined to no longer discuss what is going on. This will compound the problem as there will be no outlet to discuss those feelings. It is not their fault, though. They just don’t have the knowledge or the tools to help you.

It’s not surprising that we get angry and frustrated with this from time to time, and then decide to supress those emotions, making things even worse.

But most of the time, apart from feeling depressed, you will just feel cold and dead inside, as if all the joy has been sucked from you.

Empaths tend to put their own needs last and often at their expense.

The accumulation of shock and trauma, especially over a long period, will produce clinical depression. What’s worse is that you may feel it’s somehow your fault and that by being depressed, you are inconveniencing other people. You might also be tired of the same thing happening time and time again, and so start to withdraw from others because you no longer wish to inflict yourself on them.

This really is one of the more insidious types of depression because the cause is not obvious. Most don’t know they have uncleared trauma. Most won’t remember much of it, because they have repressed it.

I’ve not seen too much out there on this subject. I hear a lot of reports about people suffering from depression, but not the reasons why, let alone how to really cure it.

There is a cure for this type of depression. (As I believe there is a cure of all things) and I accidently stumbled upon it around 2002.

For years, on and off, I would experience clinical depression. It would be debilitating, and it was as if all the life force was being sucked out of me. Emotionally, it was extremely painful and I had no hope for myself.

On my birthday, I experienced a really bad episode (brought on by my partner of the time attacking me on something that was not in my control).

One of my life’s missions is to find cures for those conditions that are said to be incurable. I think I’ve tried a good many things, but the one thing I keep on returning to are the Bach Flower Remedies, which are a an effective, safe and gentle healing system.

To that point, even though I had not found any that helped me for my depression on a long term, I would keep on trying different remedies in the hope I would hit upon something I had missed. For this particular episode, I took Rescue Remedy ™ to try and obtain some relief.

I noticed that I felt slightly better. Not a lot, mind you, but it was enough to make me wonder why. As the Rescue Remedy contains five Bach Flower Remedies, I ran through the list in my mind, and found that the only possible one that could have made any difference was Star of Bethlehem, which is the remedy for clearing Shock and Trauma.

At that point, I had never used it on its own because I believed that being part of the Rescue Remedy, there was no need.

I took out the bottle from my kit and placed a couple of drops on my tongue. The relief was instant. It was as though an enormous weight had been lifted from me.

It was then I realized that uncleared shock and trauma had caused my clinical depression. The key was that you needed to take Star of Bethlehem by itself in order to gain full healing from it. When it was mixed with other remedies, its effectiveness was severely reduced.

Initially, I kept on taking it every time I felt my depression returning. First it was every few minutes, then it lengthened to hours and after three days, it was gone.

I am now mindful that if I do experience a traumatic event, to make sure I take some.

I have duplicated this result with other people. One case was a lady who e-mailed me a few days later, saying she was considering going on anti-depressants, but asked if I had any last minutes suggestions. I told her my experiences. She bought a bottle of Star of Bethlehem, and wrote to me that night, saying that she had never experienced such a profound relief. In the morning, she wondered how she would get through the day, and that evening, she was at peace with the world and happy to be alive.

While this is not the only cause for depression, it is a major one and well worth looking into if you are experiencing such symptoms.

Nearly everyone suffers from traumatic events in their life. From their birth to the present and they are rarely cleared.

Bach Flower Remedy: 
Star of Bethlehem.