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“Our modern societies are suffering from their own depressions and historical traumas; no surprise when selling ourselves is our oldest profession, instead of loving ourselves. Even though we all subconsciously know we are from the same song sheet, rather than busying ourselves with finding our individual voices to sing with, we waste our energies trying to silence each other over different ideologies. Many now believe that unless we get rid of our destructive systems of race, religion and money, they will get rid of us. But what about our own personal challenges with trauma that give rise to its myriad forms of depression, chronic anxieties and mood disorders? Can love truly "fix" us in those circumstances?”
— Mickie Kent
One of the greatest privileges writing a blog like this brings is the contact from readers. It's the greatest form of receivership for me when I hear how much my articles have helped others in their own lives. It's humbly noted, but I'm just sharing my own personal experiences applied to the new science and growing movements out there, and always explain that we need to tailor advice (especially over the internet when so much of it is unverified) to our own personal and unique self.
I always maintain, too, that we must always follow professional medical advice, and seek proper therapy when necessary, under the correct guidance from a trusted general practitioner. But nothing beats us strengthening the ties that binds us to our inner power - of being informed about what makes us tick, or makes us sick.
Often prevention is better than a cure, but what if we are seriously ill? Let's say, through no fault of our own lifestyles, but through a series of genetic dispositions or negative experiences embedded into our subconscious via our formative years (or both) we find ourselves struggling with life badly? These are circumstances where slight tweaks to an unhealthy lifestyle can't easily bring you closer to a joyous mind. This is where one reader's email to me comes in.
I share an excerpt of it with her permission, but she asks to remain anonymous, so out of respect for her wishes, for the purposes of this article I shall call her Diana. In her mail to me, Diana writes:
Mickie, I just got to say how much I love reading your blog. Your articles are so insightful and so refreshingly lack BS that I just feel you'll understand why I'm writing to you. I suffer from severe mood swings that can affect my whole day. I am on meds, and under my GP's supervision, but during my black dog days I just feel as nothing works. The stuff you write about is fantastic, but the fact is I'm living proof that some of us are broken beyond repair. While it might work for the majority, simply knocking out a few kinks in my life isn't going to bring me happiness. I don't think even during my "highs" I've ever experienced, or know what it means, to be happy."
I have to confess that Diana's mail moved me to tears, and touched me deeply. More so because my twin flame used to suffer from depression in his youth, after suffering a nervous breakdown. When we first met he was struggling to cope, but he was coping, and now he's so different you wouldn't even know he had ever suffered a breakdown. He's the most happiest-go-lucky guy I know. His breakdown became a breakthrough. He turned the void he fell in as a teen to an awakening, which pivoted him into a breakthrough of creative expression, self-empowerment and inspired action. He made the necessary adjustments, kept his heart open, and made it a time where he really came to know himself, to ask the hard questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is this life about?
He is proof positive that there will be times in our lives that we all feel broken to a greater or smaller degree, that much is true. But no one - I repeat - no one is beyond repair in such circumstances. That is just your illness speaking, not you.
Even in regard to many psychoses today there is growing evidence that the mind can heal itself to almost miraculous results. Of course, these "miracles" don't happen like magic. Self-help courses to help you through troubled times are not miracle workers in that sense, and there is no wand a doctor can wave.
It's most definitely easier said than done, when we feel like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. But mental illness doesn't mean something broken that must be fixed, and we need to get away from that kind of analogy.
Your brain and your emotions work differently, and your pathways might just be longer to get you to who you are, but trust me, they solutions are there, and even if they're not, you can lay down new pathways to a "better" working you - or at the very least to help you devise a more manageable coping process.
Depression treatments you won't believe work.
Mental illness, and especially depression also has a lot of social stigma to get over. Case in point, being depressed doesn't mean you lack a sense of humour. Humour is a good way to deal with depression: in fact many comedians who make people laugh are simultaneously struggling with a personal darkness. A lot of comedians use dark humour to introduce absolute truth in order to provoke the public and not authority. It's a way to blast politicians without getting into court for it. Similarly with depression, you can make fun of it to provoke your mind to action without triggering your depression to deepen. It's a good coping strategy.
It's absolutely vital you believe that your needs matter. If you don't value yourself, look out for yourself, and stick up for yourself, you're sabotaging yourself. For those of us in charge of our families and responsible for children, remember, it IS possible to take care of your own needs while simultaneously caring for those around you. And once your needs are met, you will likely be far more capable of helping those who need you most. With a little support yourself, you can even be the team leader of your very own support group.
This is a potent time for you to truly commit to only bringing people into your life who reflect how wonderful you really are. And real friends are those that see us at our lowest, and understand us the most. One awesome thing about Eeyore in the Winnie-the-Pooh books is that even though he is basically clinically depressed, he still gets invited to participate in adventure and shenanigans with all of his friends. And they never expect him to pretend to feel happy, they just love him anyway, and they never leave him behind or ask him to change.
So, if you feel you aren't being treated with respect or that you are spending your time doing something that you don't enjoy, or people don't understand your differences, then it's time to let those people or circumstances go.
Discover the value of your core
It may seem a great burden or challenge that faces you with such an "affliction", but you need to value yourself and remember your worth, and that your differences help make you who you are. And what is going on with you goes deeper than what you're experiencing currently. Something may have happened to you for you to deservedly feel this way.
Trauma comes in many guises, and there could be any number of causes for feeling angry and depressed. However, if you have recently sustained a traumatic brain injury, the cause may be quite clear.
It's important to remember that this is a normal part of your recovery. So, allow yourself time to slowly reintegrate yourself back in to your normal routine, and even lasting damage doesn't mean lifestyle changes won't help you manage your difficulties better.
If your issues are not from physical trauma, or you're experiencing long lasting emotional issues which stem from other traumatic events that have left emotional scars, you'll still need to consult with a physician or psychiatrist if the changes you experience or the differences in your nature are so debilitating they stop you from getting on with independent daily living.
The important thing is not to hide your feelings, or to feel shame - however natural it may be for you to feel this way. Opening ourselves up and talking to supportive professionals is important therapy, and although it might be frightening making choices that have been different than anything you've known so far, it will be well worth the risk. In ensuring that there are more safe spaces to discuss depression, we can also try to discuss what small things we can do to remove the stigma of mental health-related issues. And when you say YES to people and circumstances that light up your soul, and NO to what doesn't, you'll see your life will become infinitely more amazing. Never, ever sacrifice your own well-being just to please other people.
So, please also remember that you deserve nothing but beauty and love. Take bold and confident steps now to create a life of joy. A joy which doesn't necessarily mean the fictional version of happiness that is unobtainable to ALL of us, but the real inner sense of joy that comes with finally being at peace with who we really are, and all our differences that colour us individually between our own lines.
The difference of depression
Depression is a dark place that not only burdens us, but for unnecessary reasons it also shames us. We feel different, and we feel upset for being different, as though we are somehow "broken" from the majority. The truth is we are all, at some time or another, susceptible to depression. We can all trip and fall into its cycle. Even an accumulation of the daily stresses of modern living and the pressures to conform or be a perfect person, compounded with toxic factors in our lifestyle and diet, can be enough of a traumatic trigger to make us experience some or all of the symptoms of depression.
This dark place in our moods and mind we call depression has many shades and shadows. There are many different definitions of depressive psychological conditions that differ slightly from what we understand as standard clinical depression. For example, atypical depression (AD) is defined by mood swings that are affected by negative and positive events. This is referred to as "mood reactivity". Common symptoms of AD also include excessive sleeping, fatigue, feelings of being overwhelmed, overeating and trouble with rejection and social interaction.
If this is you, then don't despair. It doesn't mean you were born for unhappiness or to miss out on joy, it means you will experience it differently. It may sound like spiritual rubbish, but happiness hard won is true happiness, because on the way to it we learn the true worth of joy. You tell me if you don't feel a sense of achievement on those days you grab the upper hand as you manoeuvre yourself out of your personal dark forests of fear.
Trying to embrace your fears is not only a very vague concept, but it's a bit like "embracing" a hurt knee. Hugging your knee may make it feel better for a short while, but some suggest that the idea of embracing something elevates it, giving it a disproportionate amount of significance. Fear should not be elevated, it should simply be acknowledged.
While I'm not a psychologist, I can tell you that people are primarily afraid of two things, physical and emotional pain. Just about everything you can think of falls pretty neatly into one of those two categories. And oddly enough, more people get hung up on avoiding emotional pain than the physical kind. This is despite fact that things which cause physical pain are often things which can immediately kill you. But people regularly make risky decisions while avoiding mundane activities which at their worst might make them look foolish.
Dealing with fear is a real issue. But it's not a mystical process. It can be handled systematically. And just like therapies, medications and workout regimens, one size doesn't fit all. Different fears require different methods, and there are plenty of reasonable methods out there.
So go ahead and hug your fears, but make sure you are aware of them, identify them. Quantify what it really is and then make your plan to deal with it. We know that muscles can be strengthened and brain function can be improved. So do the same thing with your courage. Exercise it regularly against your fears. Let them bounce off you.
We can master the tricks our mind plays on us to empower, rather than sabotage us. Especially when it comes to fear, because generally life seems one long roller coaster ride of fear. But fear is not something to be eliminated. You can't banish it away to a far-off place, nor should you. We can channel our fears to help us get out of the darkness. Think of it not as eliminating your fears, but the elimination of your limitations that come from fear.
And as we try to pave a way out for ourselves, modern society doesn't seem to help with its dominant systems of violence, racism, religion and money - especially when it comes to the way we feel about our self-image.
Our lifestyle has changed at supersonic speeds, especially in the last fifty years or so, but our brains still respond as they did when our ancestors lived a much more rural-centric lifestyle. However, we're not as active as we were, and are more stressed, with modern urban living constantly pushing us to move at breakneck speed and look as though we're stuck in our twenties.
Switch off from stress with a manifesto.
But are you living the life that you truly want to be living, or are you living the life that you think you "should" be living? In our endless pursuit for a hyper-version of happiness and chasing after better and bigger material things, we can sometimes forget to slow down and really think about what makes us genuinely happy. We can mistakenly think that being busier and having more things will bring us joy, only to discover that we have created less time for ourselves to do what we enjoy the most.
Our genes, however, are still responding to our environment in the way they did in the time of our ancient ancestors, and when we are constantly in environments that keep our cortisol levels high, hormonal imbalances occur to affect our body as a whole - from the way we think right down to our digestive systems.
Feeling our existence is without purpose makes things worse. Loneliness adds fuel to its flame. And our addictive cravings for food, or abusive substances or bad relationships are simply the visible symptoms of more than just bad dietary choices. They're our cry for help.
Food cravings, at least for humans, tend to revolve around emotional needs rather than physical ones, and dieting can create a kind of civil war in your brain and in your gut (which in turn influences your cravings, too). Scientists also believe junk food can change a person's behaviour and weakens self-control. We can become seduced by food, and if a food is forbidden, you'll probably crave it more.
Between the constant vigilance over what you eat, the cost of food, and frequent over-worrying, you might find yourself feeling even more depressed. It can be stressful and exhausting, and it's at times like these we need to talk to our doctor or a mental health professional to discuss appropriate medications, therapy, or a combination of both, because we need to remove the emotional issues that block our path to recovery.
And if you are obese your brain could even be making you think differently about food. Our thoughts and feelings really do affect our food intake, and our exercise. Studies show that if you strongly believe in your mind that the workouts you are doing are drastically improving your body, your results will increase dramatically from those workouts. This was the results found by a Harvard University study mentioned in a book called 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman. It's the classic placebo effect at work.
Once we realise that we can influence our gene expression through the right exercise, wholesome nutrition, a healthy lifestyle and our thoughts, then we can start to act.
Can lifestyle changes really help?
Strong emotions like depression, anxiety and anger are at the root of why so many people seek help from doctors, counsellors, psychotherapists or clinical psychologists. MIND, the National Association for Mental Health in the United Kingdom has said that at any one time millions of people suffer from the negative effects of these emotions, and according to the Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm) depression is the single biggest killer of men aged 20-49 in the UK. It touches all corners of society, and depression is definitely not just feeling run down.
Scientists suspect depression takes its own toll on our cells, and can even speed up the ageing process, while studies show that depression is something chemical, suggesting it can be reversed with chemicals. It dispenses for once and for all that you can just pull your socks up out of your mood. Even happiness may be as much hormonal as anything else - with research showing that based on our body clock our "happiest" time is in the afternoon between 3-4 pm when our pleasure hormones or endorphins are believed to normally at their peak.
However, once you get professionally diagnosed, deciding to change your lifestyle to help combat those chemical imbalances can accelerate your healing and contribute to your recovery. It's about finding the right balance and combination of medication and natural solutions.
I have devised this "life" questionnaire for you to print out and use. Click here to download. It's divided into five sections: Life Satisfaction, Beliefs, Relationships, Problems and Medical Treatments. There are no right or wrong answers, but if your level of dissatisfaction is high you may want to discuss your results with a medical professional.
Lifestyle tweaks that improve mood may not be enough on their own, but they do work. Many mental health problems are started and maintained by certain thinking styles - anxiety is always linked with worry and depression is linked with rumination. Do too much of these, in the wrong way and you'll have a problem. In addition, research has revealed that although it has long been thought the key to a resilient brain lies in good genes, the secret to a healthy mind appears to lie in what is eaten to fuel the body and lifestyle choices. English comedian Stephen Fry's 2006 documentary about his own battles with depression, in the award-winning The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, interviewed a doctor struggling with depression herself. She explained how she turned to food to help her with her condition, and that it helped her manage her condition successfully enough to return to work.
Read what to eat to beat depression.
Meanwhile, those of us who struggle with these challenges and wish to seek more natural alternatives - to supplement the professional advice and help we seek - will need even more patience. Sometimes it takes a considerable amount of trial and error before the right natural option is found for you. This type of optimism and patience is even more difficult for those who suffer from depression and severe mood swings.
But the point is this: you CAN be healed enough to come to terms with your illness, the hopelessness is just your affliction talking. And I'm not saying I can heal you; I am saying YOU can heal you.
Moreover, no change is about restoring you to something other than your authentic self. Change means to change what isn't working for you, not to change you to what other people expect you to be, else it won't work. Obviously this world is constantly changing, and if you are not open to change, then you are going to live a very miserable life. You are going to change as well, but that doesn't mean that your core values (or authentic self) must change.
We should always welcome new sides to us, new places, new faces and new loves, but never force change on those core parts of you, unless you have strong reasons to believe you were wrong to believe them in the first place. For instance, you can't think away your homosexuality (not even with yoga). That is your authentic self.
Similarly, depression or a depressive state may just be a part of you, a genetic form or something that happened in the womb to make you who you are, and although there is a lot we can change about ourselves, distorting our authentic self will only bring suppression, not release - AND be an underlying core for the depression.
Inspiring stories of struggle
Suppression (physical, psychological or emotional) is one of the biggest components to depression, and mental and emotional unbalance. Suppressed emotions and desires are more dangerous that those fully experienced sometimes, because their consequences stretch longer over time and give birth to even greater uncontrollable problems.
Comedian Fry's documentary, whilst revealing his condition to be a little understood but potentially devastating condition, also showed how his psychological imbalance was brought about mainly by suppression over his sexuality. But when Fry spoke to many other sufferers, they all said they would not make their affliction go away, because their struggles and their creativity - that poured out from it - had made them who they are. This included Fry himself.
For many, the issue was more about coping with the effect their afflictions had on their lives or the challenges their differences brought to the table. Getting over depression or healing doesn't necessarily mean making your depression magically "disappear", it's about being able to embrace it - and as moronic as this sounds - even finding "joy" in it further down the line.
There are a lot of talented people who suffer from affliction, and their stories can also help inspire us in our own. It shows us we are not alone in our struggles. When we feel like a lost soul, sometimes we can take comfort from not being alone. Everyone is experiences life-changing events. Everyone is fighting their own personal battles, and such inspiration from the personal stories of others can help us take the necessary steps towards coping, or help sufferers see themselves as uniquely special, because they see the world in different ways. Some even credit their creativity to their affliction.
There are sufferers who say their passions and their successes help them achieve victories in their daily battles with their shadow side. Take Fergus Henderson, owner of one of the most coveted eateries in London, and also a sufferer of Parkinson's disease. It makes his achievements all the more remarkable given that he has battled Parkinson's for 20 years.
There are millions - no, billions - of examples around the world. How about the cash strapped mum battling with cancer who became an eBay millionaire? Or how about Jacob Barnett? There was a time in his life where specialists were sceptical that as a young boy he would ever learn the alphabet, let alone read.
Jacob's mother was told not to bother with flash cards or any other alternative methods of instruction because his learning would be stunted due to his autism. At the time, Jacob did not even speak so it seemed that these specialists could have been right. Fortunately, his mother didn't think so and embarked on a unique journey to bring out and celebrate the best in her son - whatever that may be.
Switch on love with a manifesto.
As it turns out, it meant that he enrolled as an undergraduate student at age 11 and started work on his master's degree at age 15 at one of the premier physics schools in the world, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics - which is an incredible feat for anyone, let alone someone who was never thought to be able to master their ABCs.
The one thing all these inspirational stories have in common is support, and the courage not to give up when faced with adversity. They all changed their lives for the better, by turning their lifestyles around, too. But can simple changes in the way we live really help influence a debilitating illness like depression, especially when science is telling us that it's not simply a matter of feeling down?
Can we ever resolve emotional distress?
We all have basic physical and emotional needs such as the need for attention, love, security, connection and control, and the self-esteem which arises from competence and being challenged and stretched in our lives.
Nature also gave us the resources to help us meet such needs including: memory, imagination, problem solving abilities, self-awareness and a range of different thinking styles to use in various changing situations. It is these needs and resources together, which are built into our biology, that make up our human framework. When emotional needs are not met or when our resources are used incorrectly, we suffer considerable distress. And so do those around us.
By the time teens reach their 18th birthday, one in five will have had at least one diagnosable bout of clinical depression, while 33% of the global population suffers from panic attacks. It's a disturbing figure, and although it may feel like your brain is playing a prank on you, there's gathering evidence to show that teaching teens strategies to challenge negative thinking and manage stress can help reduce depression. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can break depression's downward spiral of negative thinking.
The joke doesn't need to be on us if we confront our fears, and turn to face our inner demons. We all face stress; how active our coping strengths are, or how vulnerable we are, will depend on a balance (or imbalance) of these factors. It is when we feel our energies blocked that we fall ill and things begin to get difficult.
It's the fix du jour: lifestyle choices can help in everything from vision to virility. We may try and change our sleep patterns, or listen to music, exercise a bit more, eat better, or occupy our mind with more positive thoughts.
Some of us choose to get therapy when our daily coping strategies no longer work. There are hundreds of different counselling and psychotherapy models that people use, but there is no meaningful difference between a counsellor and psychotherapist. They attempt to do exactly the same job and, whatever they call themselves, they should only be judged on how effective they are at relieving emotional disorders.
Read ways to boost your emotional well-being.
Despite their training many professionals are not good at dealing with the disruption that out of control emotions cause their clients. Some common forms of counselling, for example, are known to make depression and anxiety disorders worse. Although psychotherapy is generally agreed upon as the best medicine for depression, any form of counselling that encourages excessive emotional introspection can prolong depression and anxiety. It depends on the individual. Conversely, once you find the RIGHT type of counselling for you, it is known to be more effective than drug treatments for all these conditions (even if due to chemical imbalances).
This can be confusing for vulnerable people seeking help, but it has only recently been realised that effective counselling ALWAYS depends on how attuned the therapist is to the factors of human nature and their effectiveness at helping people. Certain therapies focus on helping clients identify unmet emotional needs and empowering them to meet these needs by activating their own natural resources in new ways.
To do this, CBT therapists use a variety of up-to-date, proven techniques aimed at problem solving. This form of counselling is believed to be effective because it draws on both findings from psychology and neurobiology about how people really function and international research studies that have established which counselling techniques are the most effective. Such talking therapies don't waste time just endlessly listening to you without guidance or attempting to dredge up real or imagined miserable memories from the past (although trauma does need to be dealt with), since research shows this tends to confuse and upset vulnerable people.
Although talking through trauma is beneficial, and many of us use internal chatter to get through crisis, we shouldn't become morbidly fixated on past events. With the correct therapy, any voyages of self-discovery are given practical application in the world they live in, including suggestions of practical ways that can help the sufferer deal with the mental and emotional stress, and the emotional and behavioural difficulties arising from that, which they feel in the here and now.
Ending our anxiety and addictions
It can also help resolve trauma and manage anger. Anger disorders damage health, increase the likelihood of an early death and cause enormous misery among relatives, colleagues and innocent bystanders.
It is also believed to help stop addictive behaviour. Some believe there is an addiction gene we are born with, but all forms of addiction can be helped - alcohol, gambling, sex, TV and computer games, eating disorders - providing the person wants to make the effort to stop. It may even relieve medical conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain and migraine, because many of these have an emotional component.
Stressful events often trigger an outbreak because emotions affect health - and vice versa. What you feel ("bad", "as if you're nothing", "hollow") will impact your thoughts ("it's going to be a bad day", you feel something "bad will happen" or you think about everything bad that has happened to you) which in turn impacts your behaviour (you stay in bed, don't eat, sleep a lot, avoid people). Some habits will eventually impact on you physically - creaks in your back or neck, pins and needles in your legs, or just an overall achy, heavy feeling.
The chart above shows how everything is connected. It's a vicious circle that criss-crosses itself. How you feel will also affect your behaviour, and your physical well-being can also impact negatively on your thoughts. In fact, a century ago, even the greatest mind doctor of them all, Sigmund Freud, predicted that one day mental illnesses would be explained physically, once scientific techniques for the study of the brain became possible. Today some believe depressive illness is not a psychological or an emotional state, and is not a mental illness. It is a physical illness, the result of chemical imbalances. They say we should blame our biology not our mind: what we eat, our physical fitness and the state of our body all attribute to our mental condition.
However, to take a purely biological approach is unhelpful. The four components of Feeling, Thoughts, Behaviour and Physicality not only affect each other like dominoes, but they are all interlinked, too. Although the relationships between the components are complex, some believe what is clear, however, is that the key to breaking the cycle is behaviour, or rather the secret to getting positive energy flowing through this cycle, is behaviour. In effect, it's believed that what matters, ultimately, is not what you believe, because what you do is what will make the difference. Your thoughts will soon follow suit once new habits and behavioural patterns are formed through gradual exposure and repetition.
Another school of thought tries to battle this directly from our thoughts, said to influence our behaviour and body language. Thus by doing both, challenging negative thoughts and habitual unhelpful behaviours, we attack the mood or anxiety from two fronts, because our mood will naturally affect our body language, and vice versa. A third theory focuses on the emotional brain, and concentrates on the impact our feelings have on our thoughts and actions. Additionally uniting all four areas by focusing on the physicality front by eating well and exercising, too, means we are taking the fight to all four fronts.
Such "lifestyle" therapies, it's believed, can also harmonise relationships. Difficulties in relationships are often self-perpetuating because our beliefs and reactions to one another trigger patterns of behaviour which stop us solving them. when couples want to stay together but are having problems, such counselling may help them, too.
Read how to be a healthy valentine.
It is important to identify what you hope to achieve from any therapy offered. Goal achievements are said to be an important part of the assessment process. With the help of your therapist, it is always best to try and identify at least four therapeutic goals that you can agree on and are potentially achievable. Assessing the progress you make on these goals is a practical approach to problem solving the issues out of your life.
For instance, if you hate yourself, make the goal to lessen that feeling. If you continually find yourself worrying about everything, to try and reduce that. It may even be the goal to just deal with your dark days better, or to start doing the things you like again.
The problem is if we allow negative habits to become ingrained into our daily life, it will also affect our brain patterns. The responses that are there for times of danger, for example, such as anxiety, remain with us when there is no apparent danger. It's like the switch is stuck in our brains. We need to have practical ways of replacing the habits that no longer serve us with positive traits, and thus get our brain working again to flick off the switches that are causing us pain in our life.
Changing negative habits
Quick breathing exercise to ease anxiety or emotional stress
- Slowly breathe in through your nose. Take in as much air as you can.
- Exhale slowly through your mouth. Repeat steps 1 and 2 again.
- Now as you inhale through your nose, count to four.
- Then as you slowly exhale through your nose this time count to six.
- Make sure you are exhaling more slowly than you inhale.
- As you exhale, notice your muscles relax.
- Continue your nasal breathing for about five minutes or until you feel your stress is under control.
Another way to untense is to notice what your body is doing and do the opposite, for example, if your fists are clenched, open your hands. If your shoulders are hunched, relax your shoulders down, and so on. Another practical tip is not to overlook the essential household chores, and to make them fun. Put clean sheets on your bed, clean out your fridge, or even better still, your cupboard. Have a spring clean every month or so, and as you de-clutter your wardrobes, you'll also end up with an uncluttered mind.
Click here to change 6 negative habits.
You can also practise problem-solving steps, you don't need to just use them in an emergency. Think of it as a dress rehearsal. Practise mindful breathing, so that it becomes second nature to you, and when you feel anxious, you can employ it almost immediately.
Another way of solving issues of negative emotions is to simply "ride them out". When you feel anxious, do your breathing, and be patient until it passes (because it will as you body cannot physically keep up the tension indefinitely even though it may not feel that way at the time). Or choose an object to anchor your feelings of happiness in, and when you feel unhappy, reach for that object of choice to remind you of happier times. If you have problems facing people, rehearse what you want to say, or plan things ahead of time if you can.
For those individuals looking for more holistic avenues, one alternative you may wish to consider is yoga. Many people who suffer from emotional distress or a "restless mind" say they find yoga beneficial. We all know that yoga does a body (and a mind) good. But no one could really say with any degree of certainty why - or even how - it improves conditions as varied as depression and anxiety, diabetes, chronic pain, and even epilepsy, until a group of researchers at Boston University School of Medicine in 2012 discovered yoga's secret: yoga works by regulating the nervous system.
Use yoga to manage your stress.
Yoga, by definition, is holistic. You don't have to change belief systems, its modern incarnation is non-denominational, and it's a universal form of spiritual practice. It simultaneously addresses the needs of the body, mind, and soul - where to live a healthy and happy life its coda requires that both our immortal and our mortal parts remain fully united, and that these two aspects support and nurture each other.
Yoga says that in the search for immortality, if we ignore our body, breath, and mind, we are bound to suffer. In search of physical comfort and sense pleasure, if we ignore our spiritual side we are also bound to suffer. Thus yoga's ability to touch us on every level of our being - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual - makes it a powerful and effective modality for trauma victims in their journey to transcend their trauma. Initial study results have revealed that participation in trauma-informed gentle yoga leads to a significant reduction in symptoms of post-traumatic stress, for instance.
Read about the power of meditation.
Although yoga therapy is a new and emerging profession in the modern world, its roots are said to reach back thousands of years into Vedic teachings and science. When we trace our spiritual lineages back far enough, whatever our religion, we find they converge in a great ancient tradition that is shared by cultures throughout the world. In the case of yoga, the ancients brought forth profound insights into the nature of the human condition from the depth of their own inner journey, as well as extensive teachings and powerful practices about understanding and transforming suffering at every level taken from this convergent pool of universal wisdom.
One insight suggests that unresolved "issues in our tissues" manifest not just psychologically, but physically as migraines, nervous tics, clenched muscles in the neck, shoulders, and jaw, a sunken chest, or a heavy heart. Left unresolved, they can exact an even heavier toll in the form of heart disease, diabetes, panic attacks, ADHD in children, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and a host of autoimmune disorders.
Read about 10 spiritually transmitted diseases.
Most experts agree that trauma's effects live in the body - and that's why yoga works, but whatever you decide to use to help you change in your lifestyle to help strengthen your coping strategies, remember to take it slow. Going back to problem-solving therapies, they will take this into consideration, therefore, and try to change habits in behaviour with gradient steps - gradually facing your fears with small baby steps involving feel-good tasks such as reading, or listening to music, or doing gentle exercise (like yoga therapy). When your behaviour changes for the better, it will impact on the physical problems you face, too, and not just the emotional ones.
Above all, remember today is the day to take action no matter how bad you might feel: Take the first step to accepting yourself, genuinely and proudly. Don't be afraid to be who you are. Trying to be anyone else is a waste of the person you are. Be yourself. Embrace that individual inside you that has ideas, strengths and beauty like no one else. Be the person you know yourself to be - the best version of you - on your terms.
Always be true to YOU. Don't put yourself in any situation that you cannot put your heart into. Bring yourself closer to life by taking out those things that don't serve your healing. If you want to get closer to the real you, you need to learn to let go, not of yourself but of things that are unhelpful to you. Without judgement, but in peace.
Letting go of the bad isn't easy. Neither is living. Harder than most can imagine. But who said it would be? And that doesn't mean you can't try. You can do it, as long as you hold on tightly to who you are, and embrace your flame as well as the shadows it emits. Because if we close our eyes to who we are, we will all remain in darkness before our time in the light.
And to keep that light shining it's best remembered that we cannot shake hands with our self with a closed fist. We must unclench to surrender to ourselves and be at peace with who we are, to paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi's words. And would that all of us can make such meaningful statements when we, too, must depart this temporary existence for other, more permanent pastures in the natural course of things.
But until then, life is a journey AND a struggle - one worth the effort of our lives. For although we may not know why we fall at times - we CAN heal. And when we fall, we need to know that we have the resilience necessary to bounce back up again. Just love yourself, have faith and be patient, and know that rules are there to be broken - even the ones for living well. Have fun with your struggles. Healing will come in time. At the right time.
Read 18 rules for living well.
Each of us has our own timetable for the process to love. Do not rush the process nor stay too long in a void. The stages of the process are not cut and dry, they are fluid and will flow back and forth, BUT there will be progress. Each of us will experience the process in our own unique way. There are no short cuts to growth. Please be patient with your process, and allow your life to unfold naturally.
Because you see, real love IS patient. If we allow love into our lives, it will allow us the opportunity to address our inner issues, and, as a true teacher or therapist would, allow us to come to realisations on our own. And then give us the grace with which to deal with them. In a way that is not presumptuous, but fully conscious.
Ultimately, we need to start being inspired by love. We need to check ourselves and walk past our depressive biases to an inner truth, where we have made love part of the solution to all our problems - out of the many facing us today. And when we finally hold hands with the love inside us, what a good day that will be.
Yours in love,
