***Depressed, Sad, Negative, Irritable?

Are you trying to overcome depression? Perhaps you suffer from seasonal depression that is just starting to lift as spring and summer approaches. Whether you are a person who experiences low grade depression (like a chronic virus) or a deep unrelenting sad mood that seems to stretch over the horizon, it is likely you are here, seeking ways to lift that ton of bricks off your shoulders.

In our quest to “feel good”, we sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees, and stop allowing ourselves to feel down. If we do not have a period of mourning, however, we cannot bust through to the other side of our depression to the joy, where contentment lies.

I often speak to people who have had a significant loss either through a death, a divorce, a relationship ending and yet they will not allow themselves to experience the depression they are feeling in their quest for abundance and positive mood wondering why they dont feel authentic.

As human beings we are deeply interconnected, we love deeply and when those connections and relationships suddenly grind to a halt, it is not surprising that we experience depression, sadness, loss, anger, and negative mood – sometimes for prolonged periods.

If we were not supposed to experience pain, depression, or negative moods, we would not have been born with the capacity to experience these low feelings, rather we would have been born only with the capacity to feel love, joy, happiness. Some people try to skip this deeply sad stage by avoiding depressed feelings and try to skip to the happy moods which can compound their feelings of loss when it backfires on them.

Rather depression can signal – sometimes bluntly that there is inner work to address, that there are sad feelings that need to be looked at, acknowledged, accepted before we can move on to the good stuff. Long-term studies look at this now and recognize that medications can take you so far but the support and assistance from a therapeutic relationship is the key to transcending your sad feelings.

Sometimes the pressure to “get over” it and move on is a secondary wounding in the experience of depression, many wonder why they can’t just “snap” out of it living lives of quiet desperation. With training, you can learn to change the way you are thinking about your life – the key to emotional wellness.

Learning to change the way you think about yourself, your life, your beliefs may mean that you need to radically slough off old, ingrained ways of viewing yourself and your life to move through depression and sadness. Once this is achieved, however, there is no limit to the joy, love for life, and abundance you can experience in the wake of depression.