Tag: Mental health

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Depression series – Empaths and the dark night of the soul or My world is falling apart and nobody even seems to notice.

The dark night of the soul.

Check list

  • You feel there is no hope. You’ve tried everything and nothing has worked.
  • There is no yesterday no tomorrow, just a desperate and empty now of desolation and anguish. 
  • The emotional pain is overwhelming.
  • You feel pushed way beyond your limits of endurance to the point of breaking. 
  • You feel all that you believe in is coming apart. 

The dark night of the soul, as it is called, is a very traumatic and severe type of depression.  It feels like your entire world is coming apart. Whatever hope you once held has been lost and all you can do it hang on for dear life, and try and survive.

No matter what you do, you are overwhelmed by waves of negativity, even when you are trying to be positive.

This is a terrible state of depression.  There are no obvious solutions and chances are those around you will not understand what you are feeling, because you can’t explain it to them. Some may even choose to take offence and make it about themselves.

I remember when I hit this stage. I found the people around me had varying reactions to me.

Many were oblivious that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A couple asked me what was wrong and tried to help, but I truly felt there was no hope left, so they stopped trying after a couple of days. One took offense and made it a reason to have a vendetta against me, even long after the event passed.One chose to use this information against me when I confided in him.One first denied I was having any issues, and then used it was an opportunity to talk about themselves.

I had a mixed response to my dark night, but regardless, while I was in it, I didn’t feel anyone could help.

The dark night of the soul is something you can’t understand, not really, unless you’ve been through it.
But what is really going on? Why do we arrive at such a point?

What is happening is that this is our last, desperate attempt to hang onto a belief system that no longer serves us. One that has ceased to work for us for a while now, but we refuse to acknowledge it.

We hang on with all our might to what we believe should be, but really, we need to let go, and embrace a new line reality.
There are many old belief systems that might no longer be valid for us.

This could be in regards to a relationship that needs to end.

Maybe it’s time to change your lifestyle or belief system. In my particular case, I believed that I would never be loved, have a partner or find someone and I was destined to always be alone.

Today, such thoughts seem inane to me, but at the time it seemed like a very real concern. I felt I had tried everything, and everything had failed on all levels.
I was stuck in a set of beliefs that no longer were relevant to the direction I had to go. Until I was prepared to accept something greater, I would be unable to move on. However, I was so convinced I had worked it all out that I was no longer allowing growth to continue.

The dark night of the soul is actually a blessing in disguise. It heralds the start of new spiritual growth. Some say it is the doorway to true spiritual growth.
A new way. A new start. It means that it’s time to let the past go, and accept that there are things you do not know, and let new ideas come into your life.

It’s a purging. It’s a breaking of energies. And that’s what makes it so painful.

This was just before I was introduced to the Bach Flower Remedies, and so I had to get through this alone. When I finally emerged, I found that I had new hope, and things were shifting and my life was never going to be the same.

Remember, at its most extreme, Yin will become Yang (and visa versa). They say it is darkest before the dawn, and this is true.

If you are experiencing your own dark night, know that things will get better and it may herald a much greater and amazing journey.

Bach Flower Remedy:

Sweet Chestnut is the remedy for this state. It allows you to embrace a new belief system, and let go of the old one, without breaking you.

It works well with Walnut, which is the remedy for change.

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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.

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Depression series – Empaths and Anxiety or Everything is great! So why do I feel like it’s not?

Anxiety

Checklist.

Do you feel anxious without any reason?
Do you feel something terrible is about to happen?
Do you suffer from anxiety attacks?

Anxiety, though closely related to feelings of guilt, tends to be a different kind of depression.

It’s the feeling that something is wrong or the sense that something horrible it going to happen. It could be a feeling of impending doom, or problems which you are ignoring, but still are eating away at you beneath the surface.

Indeed, one of the causes of anxiety is us refusing to look at, or acknowledge something that we feel needs to be done. It might be as simple as cleaning your home while you’re choosing to chill out or perhaps that homework you’ve not done, in spite of the fact may be due the next day.

It could be that exam you’re going to take soon, or the job interview that you are about to have.  Maybe it’s that pretty girl you’re about to ask out, or that stunning fellow who you want to look your way. (To be sexist J )

One might also feel anxiety about their personal lives. Especially if they are insecure about their relationships, or feel they should be in a relationship but aren’t.

Both can cause enormous distress, as it’s often due to our self-image, and the belief that something is wrong with us, or we are doing something wrong.

Some of us are experts at avoiding looking at things that we don’t wish to do, but know we probably should. This is different to procrastinating, as with that, you are making a deliberate choice to put something off as opposed to something that should be done, but has not been. This produces a feeling of great unease which is disruptive to our normal harmony.

It could also be due to something we think we should be doing, but are not. This might be as simple as calling someone (such as a parent) or stopping what you are doing in order to placate someone else. This kind of anxiety borders on feelings of guilt.

Empaths also have the extra burden of picking up anxiety from others. You may well be picking up on the emotional distress of another, or even a sense of fear on a global scale.

Some psychic empaths will often pick up impending events some weeks before they happen. For instance, there are some who picked up 9/11 before it happened. They did not understand why they felt what they felt, only that they felt a sense of dying and incredible grief.

Such things are already out there, in the collective consciousness, well before they happen, the greater the probability of them occurring, the more the empath will feel such things.

Is it said that this type of anxiety is us sensing things from the astral levels (that is, that levels which are not the physical realm) but not being able to bring the information fully down, so we know what is going on.

Anxiety is frustrating to live with, and some live with it on a daily basis, never quite knowing the reason why. Many hide it well, but they just can’t seem to get over it.

Bach Flower Remedy: 
Aspen