I wrote this in 2014 and have not changed too much. I did attempt to update a lot of stats but they weren't there to be updated... which is odd don't you think. And for those that know someone that is struggling, remember it takes the village, and you all have a story, wisdom and love to share that will make a difference, so do that, be the village. x
Living the life you wish doesn’t take superhero abilities, although I am sure most days we all wish we had them…
I would be able to become invisible, so much fun to be had.
Anyway,
A good and desired life is not just for the brave, rich or gifted. It is possible for everyone, even though it’s like everything you do: it starts out feeling like hard work but becomes easier as you learn and practice the guiding principles.
It goes a little something like this;
Every morning you wake, probably to a set time, and without doubt within 30 seconds are contemplating the day in front of you.
At the core of this are infinite possibilities within the reality of two choices: 1) you can be happy, looking forward to the day and what it might bring; or 2) you can feel miserable knowing you have to drag yourself through it, just so you can get to the end and start again. There are numerous degrees between the two but they usually have a sense of groundhog day predictability.
And as much as I love easy, there is no shortcut when it comes to change, you will always have to start from the point where your feet are standing this minute.
If you’re 40 you are hopefully not even halfway through your life and at 50 there is still a huge life horizon.
And when you think about time, An undesirable or unhappy life is not like wearing an ill-fitting pair of shoes and braving the discomfort for a week or two. If your life does not fit you well and harmoniously it influences your state of mind and mood every second, day in and day out, until you change your shoes and your life. :)
Make no mistake if you are fundamentally unhappy, dissatisfied, frustrated in the way you are allowing your life to play out it will manifest in the mental, physical or behavioural. And in the perfect storm of these times maybe all three. These states of mind internalised continuously will have an outcome, and that outcome is never something that will bring you joy, because joy is not what you are creating or thinking about or allowing. Lingering or repetitive illness, clusters of negative external events, injury that doesn’t heal, consistent relationship or financial struggles. All of which will leave you wondering – ‘Why me?’
And the answer to it all is that you are not living your life they way you want to.
Obvious signs we are on the wrong track
We are being fed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills at a horrific and ever increasing rate. Flippantly dispensed as an antidote for the result of choices we have made; choices made confined to the fear based boundaries our programming has instilled. How we were taught to behave according to past generations and the core beliefs of whoever is the actual person that makes up the social norms we are all supposed to follow. What nonsense.
I might use the word nonsense a bit in this, so be prepared.
But, when you take the time to break it down, who does make up whats acceptable, and not acceptable in your life, is it you? Or do you know on some level you are dying to bust out but those invisible chains of ‘socially acceptable ‘ that keep you still? And not just still but criticising the ones that do find the brave to just fly in the face of it all. :) Yeah you know eh.
So back to depression,
Many are making decisions in a chemically altered and numbed state of mind. And by many it is now in the region of around 15% of the worlds population which adds up to apprx
1155000000. Thats a hell of a lot of 0's. Each a soul living a very altered life.
We would seem to have developed the illness to promote the pharmaceutical companies profits, rather than designed the drugs to assist the illness. Don’t we play well with what we are programmed to believe.
Depression: The inability to create a future
I have seen this thing they call depression over and over amongst my clients, family and friends. I’m sure, had I taken my fingers out of my ears long enough to hear the diagnosis, I would have been told I had suffered a bout or two myself. It’s not the state of mind I am going to argue over, it’s the reasoning behind the diagnosis. Clinical depression is the second biggest disability in the world. That must mean a huge percentage of people are living lives that make them miserable.
We have more technology, more choices, more money, more leisure time and opportunities to enjoy it than any other time in history. And yet we are still being told and living under the impression that drugging ourselves with anti-depressants is the most workable solution. A massive 10% if not more, of the world is on these drugs (even children under 5). You would surely have to ask yourself: ‘How does a 4yr old have the physiology to be unhappy unless from external events and adult prognosis?’ Why do 1 in 4 American and quite possibly NZ women (we cant be sure until they publish the stats) over 50 find the world so intolerable that they would rather exist in a distorted state of mind than face reality?
‘Mood stabilisers’ – even the language sounds like something out of George Orwell’s 1984. Something that is becoming more and more relevant in these times. Stabilised to whose requirements I wonder? Possibly the same people who support that life timetable we feel we need to adhere to. These drugs might knock off the rough edges of the sad but you can be sure they will also knock the sox off joyous. It is just flat line living. It’s not as if by consuming these medical magic bullets you will suddenly be able to acknowledge the need to redesign your life and manoeuvre your way to the change and improvements that your life clearly requires for you to not be miserable.
Taking these drugs is like painting on a disturbingly smiley clown face. And masks are great until you have worn them for so long you’ve forgotten who is under them. But we want quick solutions to our problems and popping a pill is quicker and easier than making life-changing decisions. It is so common that we all know someone who is on anti-depressants. There doesn’t appear to be any concern attached to taking this form of drug and certainly no social stigma, people openly refer to them as their ‘happy pills’. The dilemma is what happens when you stop taking them. If your life hasn’t changed in any way, then the result can only be the return of dissatisfaction and despair. So back onto the medication hi way.
There are of course many people who do suffer (and I don’t like the word suffer but mental illness is a foul thing) from real organic illness and these drugs provide a chemically induced balance, although more and more evidence is becoming public that shows these chemicals to be ineffective for anything but the most profound depressive state. My disbelief comes from accepting that globally, on average, 1 in 10 people need to be medicated by anti-depressants to maintain any sense of sanity or happiness. 230 million prescriptions in the USA alone last year; (remember this figures are not out of date with significant constant increases since 2015) 50 million in Britain; and NZ with a population of just 4 million has 1723 children under the age of 14 who apparently need their moods ‘stabilised’ with anti-depressants. 16 of those are under 4.
The fact that really leaves me wondering about our approach to the diagnosis and treatment of this ‘condition’ is that 60% of people on anti-depressants take them for at least 2 years and approximately 14% up to 10 years. Wouldn’t this indicate that the medication isn’t resolving anything? Horrifyingly these statistics don’t appear to be ringing any alarm bells in the medical community. And you would have to ask why not when research clearly shows the correlation between exercise and diet for the successful treatment of depression. Unfortunately, we are not seeing significant numbers of doctors considering this approach before the prescription pad hits the desk.
Life might appear easier in the haze of medication. But feeling joy, sadness, frustration, love, anger and fear are emotions that keep us inspired and motivated to strive for the life we truly want. If we are numb we can and probably will drown in apathy.
As an asides, I’ve often pondered the question: if being unhappy for long periods of time is labelled depression, what word do we use for being happy all the time? I still haven’t managed to come up with something fitting. Why isn’t there such an important word in our vocabulary?
Depression is anger without the enthusiasm
One of the most amazing women I’ve met, who has had to climb some formidable mountains to come to terms with her experiences and find peace, once said: ‘depression is anger without the enthusiasm.’ Subsequent sessions with numerous my clients supports this view. Depression is about an internal anger that you don’t have the motivation to push against.
Anger is an important emotion, not always a sane one, but certainly an important one. It signals loss in our life, and by loss I mean any loss not just the obvious, it could be financial loss, career, relationship, dignity, social connection, self worth. Loss is loss. But it is also about not getting our own way, and again thats in all things. Even if you left a completely horrible relationship you are going to be angry, simply because you weren’t loved the way you wanted to be. You didn’t get your own way.
Anger will make us move, it will have us doing something, and like I said that may not always be sane but it carries a charge. Sadness, depression, anxiety these emotions can see us stalled, rolled into a ball so the world doesn’t see us. We need anger, but of course like all things its always going to be how it is expressed that is important.. And how that works is for another time.
So…
Depression is the outcome of feeling we have lost control over our life – it no longer reflects who and what we want to be.
And for the most part the why we get so knocked off track, is our playing the rules of what has been instilled in us from an early age.
So who do we wage war against when we realise that the socially acceptable parameters which have been instilled in us since birth have no relevance to our lives? Who do we blame when our natural instinct tells us we don’t want to live within the social norms of those that went before us? Why should we marry and have children by the time we are 30 (why can’t we remain single if we choose and why can’t we choose a career over having children without friends and family question our sanity)?
What if we don’t want to dress to the expectations of others, or want to be confined to a 9 – 5 job? Perhaps we prefer to become a circus clown or write a book or become an artist, and do any of these things at any age that takes our fancy.
What happens if we don’t want to connect with those we feel we don't align ourselves with, especially if that is family. What happens if we are over being the peace makers, the nice guy, the middle of the road, tow the line human we were taught we needed to be to have that approval we all seek.
Please feel free to add your own list here…. :)
When we refuse to accept ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ parameters for our behaviour we risk being seen as ‘different’. This ‘one experience for all’ belief system is so deeply embedded in us that we don’t feel capable of fighting for our own reality and living out our own journey. Our fear is that if we do stand up for ourselves and lay claim to the life we were meant to live, we will be shunned. Not conforming threatens our connectivity to others. And lack of connectivity is in itself so closely tied to depression.
It takes bravery and a lot of self-worth to go against the ideal of those whose opinion we value. The fear of losing their love and respect or approval if we don’t conform becomes an invisible chain around our ankles. It keeps the blinkers on as we follow the narrow road toward the finish post of our lives without daring to look at the possibilities to the left or right. So we attempt to convince ourselves that we are doing the ‘right’ thing and live in a state of denial of what we know deep down.
At the very core of it, depression is anger without the enthusiasm because it’s about us not getting what we want. If we are satisfied with our lot, have the freedom to choose right or left and to make change without perceived fear of negative consequences, to live life the way we want, then we will be less angry. We will certainly be less angry without the enthusiasm.
Part of what we have normalised in our deeply ingrained ageing process is that it’s okay to hand over control of our lives to others. Factual learning, the math’s of life, is one thing but the parts we have a natural attraction to (our passion for different things) is something others should have no voice in. For example, every generation has its list of acceptable and unacceptable career choices that come with a star rating and you need to be incredibly fortunate for your passion to comply with the list. Life does tend to become more combative if you decide not to follow that current list. Every parent in history has had a drive to see their kids thrive, but thrive in a way they themselves find right, not necessarily what their kids feel driven to do.
Try telling the world you have decided to go to university at 55 or that you intend giving up your law practise to go fly a kite. The likelihood is you will give up after the third negative opinion and thats even before you feel brave enough to tell your parents.
And we do give up, not in just our career choices but in most of our decisions when others have a share in what they believe our life should look like.
Maybe ask yourself why others have more control over how you live your life than what you do?
For the most part it’s just nonsense.
Begging the powerless to approve of your decisions the natural instinctive drive to do what you love or need is something that has been emotionally beaten out of us by a very young age.
What confuses me most is the contradiction of my own experience. Recently I had two clients in two days who had just been prescribed anti-depressants by their doctors. Relevant maybe if they had in fact been even slightly sad, but they weren’t. I fail to see how giving anti-depressants to some-one that isn’t depressed can be helpful or even vaguely healthy.
Please note the above is only up to 2018
One had complained of migraines. Without touching her, checking for neck or spinal problems, taking her blood pressure or doing any neurological testing, he whipped out the prescription pad and that was that. Apparently it was for pain relief! I’m not a doctor but I do know that migraines can be caused by a lot of different things, some quite serious. The second client had issues around a sore neck. Again it seems that this must be a symptom of depression because out came the pad and anti-depressants were the magic bullet.
If I have come into contact with two people in one week who have been prescribed anti-depressants so casually then worldwide how many people are falling into that flat-line life unnecessarily? According to theatlantic.com studies show that in the US alone:
General practitioners write 62% of all prescriptions for anti-depressants;
73% of those prescribed anti-depressants had no psychiatric diagnosis;
Regardless of the fact that multiple studies have shown that one of the best cures for depression was regular aerobic exercise only 42% of doctors were counselling their patients in this form of self- help. * theatlantic.com March 24, 2014
I could go on about how long it takes to write a prescription as opposed to counselling and other effective forms of therapy but it would be pointless.
We can’t completely blame the medical profession for this blowout of pill consumption, big pharma yes, they are absolutely to blame.
We live in a world where people want that magic bullet - they want it now and they want it without the need for any personal investment in their own wellbeing. And yet, recent reports have revealed that important data about the safety of these drugs, especially their risks for children and adolescents, has been withheld from the medical community and the public. A mere ten minute search on your laptop will reveal the lengths that the pharmaceutical companies are going to bury the real dangers involved in taking these drugs.
How many people, I wonder, have actually investigated the pro’s and con’s of popping these pills. I would hazard a guess that it is not many. So I thought it would be interesting to conduct an exercise on illness versus side effects. I chose Prozac simply because it is a medication most people have some knowledge of.
The side effects of Prozac according to Rxlist include:
Nausea, upset stomach, constipation, headaches, ANXIETY, insomnia, drowsiness, dizziness, nervousness, heart palpitations, loss of appetite or increase in appetite, weight changes, cold symptoms (stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat), dry mouth, decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm. Some patients may experience withdrawal reactions such nausea, nervousness, and insomnia upon stopping Prozac. Report any new or worsening symptoms to your doctor, such as: mood or behaviour changes, anxiety, panic attacks, trouble sleeping, or if you feel impulsive, irritable, agitated, hostile, aggressive, restless, hyperactive (mentally or physically), more depressed, or have thoughts about suicide or hurting yourself.
Call your doctor at once if you have a serious side effect such as:
Very stiff (rigid) muscles, high fever, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats, tremors, overactive reflexes;
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of appetite, feeling unsteady, loss of coordination;
Headache, trouble concentrating, memory problems, weakness, confusion, hallucinations, fainting, seizure, shallow breathing or breathing that stops; or
Severe skin reaction -- fever, sore throat, swelling in your face or tongue, burning in your eyes, skin pain, followed by a red or purple skin rash that spreads (especially in the face or upper body) and causes blistering and peeling.
This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur.
(Hands up those that don’t find that list at best shocking)
Basically this one drug has the ability to worsen the very thing you have been trying to run from.
These are the results from one survey done in New Zealand on how those taking antidepressant medication were finding it.
Researchers asked more than 1800 people in an on-line questionnaire how they felt when they were taking anti-depressants. Most said the drugs reduced their depression, but for many, that came at the cost of other, unwelcome effects. Of those surveyed, 62 percent reported sexual dysfunction, 60 percent complained of feeling emotionally numb, 41 percent said they felt less positive and 39 percent reported thoughts of suicide. In the 18 to 25 age group, 56 percent reported suicidal thoughts.
I believe we really don't have convincing evidence that antidepressants are effective but we do have increasing evidence that they can be harmful.
I know there is a natural tendency to take what might be perceived as the easy route. Self-responsibility is not something that is taught or even seen as an option these days. But taking the route less travelled in this case may be the better option if you want a fulfilling life.
If you are feeling depressed and prefer the medical routed why not find a practitioner who is prepared to explore alternative solutions with you. One who will help you access and plan an exercise schedule, meditation class (a practice that has proven its health benefits over thousands of years) and advice (if needed) about sleep patterns. Counselling or just an ear to listen.
Follow your gut on what works for you, talk to your true connections, every one has a story that could contribute to you finding the right path for you to assist you on feeling better.
Don’t try and mask up, or do it alone. You're most definitely not on this boat alone, I hear the evidence of that daily with my clients.
3. Sit and write, and keep writing, write about whats right in your life and whats wrong, make decisions that you have been putting off, do the small changes you can manage, make a plan, and focus wholly on that.
4. Unstick the energy around the place, clean out drawers, friends, family, stuff you have been hanging onto …. Just in case… but you know just in case won’t appear.
5. Exercise is a hard one I know especially in winter, so start going for a walk, start ringing your friends and asking who wants to join you, or go alone and plug into your favourite music. No, sad songs, :) pick the music that raises your vibration not lowers it.
6. Join a class, start looking at stuff online that inspires you to change, take a class in something you would love to do, learn to play the piano, even better buy a piano and play really badly and loudly and annoyingly.
7. List your values, list your loves, list who you want to be, what you want to do better, and more importantly where you want to be and what you want to be doing in 6 months..
8. Depression and anxiety sit in your energy, mostly in the chakra.. allow yourself a healing.. get a good chakra balance, or better still learn how to do it yourself, so when trouble hits, you can fix it before it affects you When your Chakra are blocked or scattered your emotional state is never great.
https://www.distanthealings.nz/soul-school-with-penny-green
9. Take one step at a time, you don’t need to see the whole journey, that wouldn’t be fun, allow for the twists and turns they are always the most interesting and magical and just start putting one foot in front of the other.
10. Take care of your energy, certain parts of it shut down when you are panicked or depressed, or confused, or anxious.. Go to my website and follow this link
These exercises are designed to activate those energies again, so you can genuinely feel happy and joyful and grounded.
Finding the Joy and Losing stress and anxiety… yes do those.
https://www.distanthealings.nz/children-and-teens
These are just a few practical and very empowering actions which allow you to have control over your life instead of medications which take it from you.
You are an Energetic being.
Your every problem is Energetic and needs an Energetic Solution.
If you get stuck let me know….
Oh and not to forget, turn that bloody devise off, turn your internet off, get yourself out of the bad EMF and walk in nature, sounds cliche but if you knew what happened to your energy in those places you would be camping out there .
One of the significant illness caused by EMF is depression and anxiety, amongst the other 107 .. just saying.
Change your vibration change your state of mind.
Much Love
Penny x