Creativity, Women and Depression

What is Depression?

 

"Depression is most commonly known as a quiet suffering, however perhaps it is a silently screaming of the soul to express it’s authentic and creative self. In addition to the sadness and hopelessness that is commonly experienced with depression, we feel disempowered, invaluable and non-existent."  - Lisa Riley

 

 

Depression is Inner Rejection

Expressing feelings and becoming aware of all of the conflicts in your mind and acknowledging and honoring your feelings is way of loving yourself. Depression is the repression of feelings. It can often be traced back to parts of the mind struggling to express differing points of view. Usually during a depression a deeper truth or a repressed aspect of self is trying to arise that the conscious mind habitually rejects.

 

When I first learned to track my own depressions, I noticed that I could feel a muffled feeling or desire arising, or a suppressed need, or an inner truth trying to coming up to my awareness for acceptance. If I could not meet it - my supressed feeling would flit through my awareness for a short period and then in a state of anxiety, guilt, embarrassment or fear I would try to push it back down again.

 

As I pushed my repressed feeling or a deeper truth back out of conscious awareness the self-rejecting cycle of depression would begin. I could feel myself becoming more distant from myself and from other people, I could feel myself withdrawing away from life and saying no to what my deeper mind was trying to tell me.

 

Corrective therapeutic experiences such as sharing verbally in therapy or through exploring your unconscious mind through the synchronicity of spontaneous art can help you to see your life more honestly, and help you express and release buried pain, trauma and loss. Sharing honestly in therapy or with a commpassionate other can help you to become aware of rejected feelings and bring them into the light of your awareness for integration.

 

Depression is a Withdrawal of our Greatness

As women, for those of us that are living into the feminine principle of life we are meant to give our best selves to life. Why don’t we? What we most avoid is giving our gifts to life wholeheartledly and showing up as our biggest and best selves even when no one else around us is offering their higher self to the situation.

 

We often fear doing what no one else is doing. We often fear going out front and being different. We fear opening our hearts that fully and taking risks because we may have been hurt before in our truthful expression and we are afraid to feel hurt again. A great truth is what we most repress as women is our own innate greatness and the possibility of living into our highest potentials.

 

Women, even highly functioning and achieving women suffer from periodic, often secret bouts of depression, crushing self-doubt and periods of despair especially if their achievement is driven by negative self-talk and a feeling of never being good enough.   

 

When you feel a depression coming you will likely feel your energy withdrawing from life. Depression is often a refusal to live at full heart centered throttle and with truthful authenticity. It is a resistance to the truth of your life or your feelings in some way. You can ask yourself some good questions when you start to feel your life energy contracting, withdrawing from life and spiraling into a deep dark hole. 

 

Ask yourself the following questions and write down what first pops into your mind:

 

What am I afraid to express?

What am I afraid to say?

What am I afraid to change?

What am I afraid to accept?

What am I afraid to give?

Who or what am I afraid to give it to?

Who am I afraid to love?

Who am I afraid to forgive?

What am I afraid to hear?

What am I afraid to let go of?

What pain or loss do I not want to feel?

What truth about myself do I not want to know?

 

The part of us that is afraid (our egos) actually welcomes depression because depression stops our life from progressing. If you were to look deeply enough into your own mind, you may see that depression is helping you to avoid something - often a decision, a choice, or a needed change that you need to make. 

 

Depression as Dark Initiations of the Soul

It is important to note that sometimes as human beings we need to move through old repressed feelings and often depressions give us time to clear out old stored pain and unhealed energies. It is helpful when we are going through periods of deep pain that we will go through it to other side if we meet our darker forces with presence and acceptance. Often during a depression old pain arises to be released when we are strong enough psychologically to handle it. When we do not feed the pain with our dark thoughts and are not using our depression as an excuse to avoid life, we can emerge stronger and better able to face our purpose.

 

Richard Moss MD describes depressive feelings as “abysmal”. He writes, “Abysmal feelings are intrinsic to being alive, and I believe they are in service to awakening to your deeper intelligence. Perhaps it can be said that when you are ready (even if you do not believe you are), your soul calls you down into them as a process of spiritual initiation or for the purpose of healing.”

 

“Transpersonal psychology regards these feelings as both “pre-egoic” and “trans-egoic”. Pre-egoic suggests that these are residual imprints from very early in life; and trans-egoic means they are archetypal dynamics, part of the very structure of consciousness and never merely personal.”

 

“Darker feelings are often inevitable during an illness or whenever your ego feels threatened, such as in times of change or uncertainty. Even taking a vacation is notorious for stirring up the dark, as if something inside of you knows that the familiar daily busyness has been keeping you too distracted in ego-driven activity to attend to your soul’s calling. For the sake of essential regeneration and re-birth, you must go down to the abyss for a while.”

 

Modalities for Healing Depression

Effective modalities for healing depression involve moving out of an inward isolated state of being and extending your energy outwardly such as:

 

-Getting honest with someone else about your authentic feelings.

-Connecting outwardly with others – sharing deeply with a friend or counselor

-Extending energy outward through a regular self-expression practice

-Feeling all of your feelings fully with acceptance and unconditional love

-Becoming more honest and accountable with self and other

-Giving to others through your pain.

-Regularly moving your body in daily exercise.

-Giving 100% of your wholehearted energy to life.

 

Climbing Out of Depression

Climbing out of depression involves, looking at yourself with honesty, asking for help and making a true effort to move your life forward through the expression of repressed feelings, needs and desires. Moving out of depression as a woman involves looking honestly at your submerged passions. Becoming truthful with self and other follows a progression of becoming honest with yourself first, then with a trusted other and then within groups and the world at large.

 

If you prefer to work on your own to start, there are many excellent courses on this site that offer self-expression as means to moving your life forward and your energy out of withdrawal and into living your purpose.