Depression & Presence [PODCAST]
[*Automated Podcast Transcript. Typos likely.]
Hey everybody, it’s Amber Desmond with Emotional Medicine Coaching. I’m your Emotional Awareness Coach. And today is July 24th I believe, summertime and I’ve had a very strange day. I had a very busy day scheduled and then my day just sort of fell apart as far as scheduling and everybody just sort of canceled or rescheduled. So it ended up being a very chill day and I was sitting around my house getting some things done. I did have work for a little bit today. My other job as a massage therapist, I went and did a massage this morning. And during the massage high was having a lot of different thoughts and feelings and ideas as tends to happen when I’m doing a massage and a, it’s a regular client. So we’ve a very good flow and rhythm and easy and I know her body really well and so it just kind of opens my mind up and allows it to think, feel, expand to some of my most creative and inspirational ideas come when I’m giving a massage.
So, ah, yeah. So I came home after the massage after running some errands and I was sort of questioning what to do with myself, really unexpected free time. And it’s like, Oh, I’ve got all of this stuff I could be doing. Of course there’s like endless things that can always need to be done, you know? And so I’m doing some laundry and Yada, Yada, Yada. And I’m thinking about my relationship with myself. I’ve been a very weird place, a very, very, very weird place this past couple of years really. But in particular, I’d say this last year has been a very interesting time of growth and expansion and change and personal development and very compressed. I’ve been feeling very much like a lot of what has been deeply unfelt in my life. Things that are sort of as core deep wounds and beliefs have been really present and making themselves a very known in my life this past year.
So it’s been a very intense sort of healing crisis in many ways. As I faced these parts of, and while I was doing this massage, one of the things that came up for me was realizing, and this is something I’ve have processed and thought about over the years, but it just like anything I feel, I learn it in layers. Things come in layers of understanding layers of embodying layers of comprehension, layers of really letting those things in those understanding sink in really deep. So it’s like each time I come across these beliefs or thoughts, they kind of hit me and a newer, deeper capacity. So I was really recognizing cause I struggle pretty consistently with depression, specifically around my menstrual cycle. It really gets super magnified a week or two before. And then also during, so like three weeks out of my month, I can have a lot of, a lot of feelings that are sometimes really euphoric and sometimes deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable. And I really have battled with the depression aspect of myself and feeling like I’m a resist and fight and, and really fight myself and feel like I’m fighting, labeling myself as like, there’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with me or seeking to fix myself and that there’s something broken that needs
He fixed. And I don’t really believe I, yes, I believe that there is some stuff going on. But I don’t feel that I am a broken person because I have uncomfortable feelings. I have so many different ideas and thoughts about what depression is and where it comes from. And I feel on a personal level that there are several different manifestations of depression and then it can show up in different ways for different people and maybe because of different reasons. And so I feel like that’s also why depression can be really hard to nail down as far as like a quote on quote cure because I feel it’s multilayered. Depression is really multilayered. I feel ultimately depression is suppressed emotion from past, from probably something that happened in the past that we suppressed and that we are actively, even if subconsciously still working on suppressing that.
And I don’t particularly resonate nor believe that depression is caused from some sort of specific vitamin deficiency or any kind of food. Anything related. I do think that if you’re depressed and you’re eating a bunch of crap, like a really bunch of processed junk and sugar is not going to in any way help you, it’s not going to make you feel better. It will, I think exacerbate, but I don’t think it is necessarily the cause. And so when people are like strictly approach depression from a dietary aspect, it really pisses me off because I’m just like, you know, I absolutely believe food is medicine, but I also don’t think that the cure for depression because that’s again thinking that it’s strictly some sort of chemical or you know, biological, something to do with the, the physiology of the person, that it’s specifically something related to body chemistry, body balance and so on.
It’d be your brain chemistry or your gut or anything to do with just the physical physiology of the person, but that it’s also that you know, that it is saying that the physiology of you is affecting the emotional cause. But I particularly believe that it’s the inverse. I believe that it’s the emotion, the emotional element of depression that could be causing the physical disruption such as, I think the emotion comes before the chemical imbalance. I think the emotional trauma, stress, repression, so on can then cause an imbalance within the brain and also like problems with your gut and so on and so forth. It has my personal philosophy. It doesn’t resonate with you, then leave it. You know what I mean? That’s something I also feel like just a little tiny rant in this day and age. Whenever I say here, these are my conclusions is stuff that I’ve come to.
This is, these are my beliefs, my thoughts, my feelings, my understandings, and my personal philosophy and I’m sharing them. And if they resonate with you and that feels like truth for you and it helps you fucking right on, and if it doesn’t, then leave it, let it go. Put it aside. Say That doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t need that. That’s not a piece of information that I need to take into myself and make my truth. And then that’s that. We don’t have to have some giant argument about, you know, this is the right truth and you know, nobody has to be right here. This is all just, you know, everybody’s just on their own journey of belief, you know, and all the scientific studies and research. But you know what, there is no one specific scientific study or research, you know, it’s like if they could all agree than sure.
But it’s still a debate even if you bring science into it. So let’s just walk, forget that Shit and just say take it or leave it. The end. So as I digressed back to my original thought was just realizing that over the years, the conclusion I keep coming to is recognizing how much we fight against ourselves. I fight against myself, my battle with my emotions. And so today I was actively, consciously acknowledging to myself whatever the self is that is observing one’s own thoughts, the observer self, the consciousness self, whatever it is. Like when you say, I feel blank, who is the eye that is observing that you feel blank. So I feel depressed. So who is the eye that can be removed enough from the depressed self to say I feel. Anyway, so that’s a whole other thing as well. Just thinking about all the different aspects of the human mind and the observer and who is the eye that is experiencing these particular thoughts and feelings and recognizing that I am not my own enemy. I am my own enemy. When I make myself my own enemy, my body is not my enemy and nor is my mind. See over the years I have mantra that my body isn’t my enemy because of dealing with my own chronic pain issues, which I think also stem from depression stuff. And so today, thinking about my mind is not my enemy as well as my body is not my enemy. I don’t have to be my own enemy at all. Choosing to not create t
A villain out of any of my thoughts or feelings, be it physical or emotional and that I don’t have to become victim to any of them, that I don’t have to fight against any of them. And I sat with, and this is something I love about the mindfulness practice and something I did when I was experiencing severe anxiety in the past is diving into the fear, into the anxiety, into the pain, into the depression. And literally instead of trying to avoid it or feel better, even trying to find things to feel good about, but that I would actually sit with the discomfort and see where that would take me because, you know, sometimes it was too much and I would just try to do something to feel better. And sometimes that’s the route one goes. But other times avoiding the pain became in and of itself an exhaustive job.
So I chose to then just say, I’m going to feel depressed and let that be okay and just be depressed and not try to be anything but that particular feeling in that moment and just sit with that sensation and be in that. And usually I, the second I would do that, then the depression naturally starts shifting and turning into something else. And I tend to have some of my most profound discoveries when I, instead of trying to run away from my feelings, but I then choose to acknowledge them. So it’s like thinking about your feelings as if they’re small children begging for your attention. So sometimes say if I’m in a depressive episode, I can think of it as like, there’s some part of me that is kind of a throwing little tantrum. It’s like…oh, notice I need your attention right now.
And the more I am like shy, quiet, sit down, shut up. No, I don’t have time for you. And then it just, the more pissed off it gets. So like a child, sometimes you just need to turn face the child was having the tantrum and say, kindly lovingly get down, down on your knees, get down to its level. Look into his eyes, sweetie, what’s going on?
I hear you over here. I hear you freaking out. Tell me, tell me what I can do for you. Tell me about it. What’s, you know, I’m here. I want to listen. Let me know how you feel.
And it’s amazing. These, these emotions inside of us are all these different unmet needs and literally like all these little children that live inside of us expressing all of these needs that need to be met and all these feelings and all these emotions and all these things throughout our entire lifetime that we can have been ignoring and, and
Avoiding and suppressing and even shaming, judging, criticizing, berating. And so they desperately want our attention and they act out. It really, really act out and say why, you know, sometimes you know, even negative attention is better than no attention at all. Right? So it’s like part of my practice with emotional awareness coaching is to really help people get in touch with what parts of them they’ve been ignoring and avoiding and berating and belittling and criticizing and these parts that are screaming out for our attention that need our love and acknowledgement. They need us to see them and to sit with them and to listen to their stories and to be present so that they can heal so that those needs, those deep, deep, unmet needs can finally feel like somebody has acknowledged them. That’s what we all want the most is to feel in this world. Loved. Yeah.
And that can translate to you paid attention to seen, responded to with kindness and attention and presence. I mean, how good does it feel when someone is really with you and you just feel them, they’re with you. They’re listening intently, they’re hearing you there being really present and they’re honoring you with love and kindness and attention. That’s, that’s priceless. And it’s something we don’t often think about giving to ourselves. Like we so often seek that outside of ourselves and tend to feel a lot of disappointment and upset and get really triggered and have a lot of problems.
So in our relationships, because a lot of people are also carrying around these burdened, neglected children inside of them. And so we have a whole room full of neglected, angry you know, children who are all striving to be loved and paid attention to, but none of us know how to give it to the other. So just chew on that for a little while and think about that.
But so sitting with, sitting with the depression and sitting with those uncomfortable feelings and we, I, you know, I question why do I avoid feeling my feelings? Why do any of us avoid feeling our feelings? Why do we numb out, tune out, pay attention to other things? Because I mean, the answer I’ve concluded from my own personal experience is fear. Some sort of deep fear that if
For me personally, if I let these feelings in, that I will be overly consumed, that I’ll be flooded and that I won’t be able to find my way back. Like the ultimate fears. Like I will be lost within this particular emotion. And that’s never the case. You know, it really isn’t. The more I fight against that feeling, actually the generally the more flooded I am by that feeling versus if I sit and allow the feeling to arise. And what do I even mean by that? Do you even know what I mean when I say I sit with the feelings? So that means when I’m feeling the feeling of depression say, which just feels kind of like for me, a restlessness and a sort of empty confusion and feeling futile and just like, what is the point of all of this shit we call life? Sometimes there’s just like, so it’s a very hard, it’s hard feeling to really describe, but I feel like, you know, so whatever depression is for you, sometimes it’s maybe doom and you know, hopelessness.
And so of course to like survival instinct is to avoid that because nobody wants to feel those kinds of feelings cause it’s painful, right? It’s painful, it’s uncomfortable. And so when I say sit with it, I then turn to that feeling towards turn towards that feeling within myself and I say, come on in and I let the feeling wash over me and I feel the feelings of depression feel those feelings of being futile and empty and restless and sort of I don’t know, like an empty confusion almost, and frustration in a depletion. And I let myself feel that until the feeling doesn’t need to be felt anymore and trust me, it will be like, okay, I’m good. Like I’ve felt that now, like I’m moving on. Feelings don’t actually last forever. It’s maybe sometimes about five minutes, maybe 15 if it’s something like really super intense. But if you’ve ever noticed, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this, like your major crying episode, like I’ve had major crying episodes in my life and I’ve never cried for like five hours. You know, you have a really intense, maybe
Like maybe have cried really intensely for like 30 solid minutes. It’s not probably even that long. Honestly, it probably cried if I really timed it. Probably more like it feels like 30 minutes, but I’ve probably actually only cried really hard for like five minutes and then maybe I like wimpery cry for 30 minutes and then maybe I’m kind of numb or depressed or depleted. But that emotional overwhelming intensity has eased up and usually about an hour or two later I’m feeling considerably better after having like a big cry. So it’d be that’s the whole process is that recognizing if you just allow yourself that big cry, even if it’s not actually crying, if it’s just allowing yourself to be in that feeling, it will dissipate and it may come back 20 minutes later to do it again and then so on and so forth. It’s this is not like, and then you feel it and then you’ll never have to feel it again.
But the more I feel that we step into our feelings and allow them the space to exist, Debbie processed and witnessed and experienced, then the more we can actually move through them. What keeps us stuck in cycles and habits and things that we just keep repeating over and over again is because we’re, even though we’re thinking we’re trying to break these habits, usually we’re trying to avoid what we’re doing, avoid how we’re feeling when we’re doing it, and make some sort of changes, you know, physically some sort of behavioral changes without actually acknowledging the emotional feelings behind the habitual pattern. So emotional awareness is, as far as I’m concerned, on my journey. It is one of the end all be all ultimate tools to true lasting life changes. I feel if we’re not willing to become aware and to have a relationship with ourself in a really deep and thorough way, then we’re gonna probably wander through our lives pretty confused about why things are happening and why our life is the way it is if we’re not having a honest dialogue with ourselves. So that’s my thoughts, my thoughts for today. Hope you enjoy it and tune in next time. Thanks everybody. Bye