Healing From Depression And Avoiding Suicide
It’s that time of year when everything seems to come together to drive a whole lot of people into depression or exacerbate existing down feelings, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. More specifically,
It’s winter/darker;
Shorter days – less sunlight;
The holiday season, which means pressures on the finances, time with family (which, as stated in this article, can bring stress and sadness in so many ways), time away from family, and remembrances of losses in the past;
Many people exercise less, creating lethargy and down feelings;
Eating patterns often grow undisciplined and out of control, thus decreasing feelings of self-worth; and so much more.
For so many people, it’s when the hardness of life seems to increase. For some, this increases negative self-talk, self-loathing, withdrawal from others, and increased loneliness and hopelessness. Is this you? Are your negative feelings pulling you down? Does it get worse this time of year, or is it pretty much bad all year?
Whatever the case for you, there can be little dispute that depression and its kissing-cousin anxiety are a beast and can suck the very life out of life.
And so, what we’re stuck with in life is the grand question of what the heck to do with it? Is there even anything that can be done with it or to it? Or is it simply a burden that must be shouldered but never escaped?
***So, I’ll begin by reminding you that I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, licensed mental health counselor, social worker, or anything relating to the medical field.
It is critical that you understand this. I do not approach depression, anxiety, or any other life problem from the perspective of medicine, which I have profound respect for. I have been a soul counselor for 30 years. That means I simply approach everything, even depression/anxiety, from a soul perspective, a deeper perspective, with often upside-down, counter-intuitive answers in simple, layperson language.
If you believe you need medical help, please reach out to your medical professional or these resources for addressing your mental health problem:
Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
What is Depression?
I was in a suicidal depression for 12 years.
It went from roughly my early-/mid-twenties to mid-thirties. It swallowed me whole. It was as if life, itself, was sitting its fat ass right on my head, and I couldn’t breathe. I had happy moments, I won’t lie. But it’s as if everything I tried led to dead ends, roadblocks, angry or resistant people, or just egregious amounts of labor for even the smallest gains. And I just assumed this is what life was. No matter what professionals I saw, no one really had any answers. Plenty of guesses, but nothing that rang true or helped. I had a lover or two fully convinced they knew exactly what was wrong with me, and they were more than happy to tell me so (better to keep the focus off their own failures and indiscretions).
For me, the depression was a lot of time in bed, a lot of time alone, reading and walking, and a lot of deep thought. But the biggest aspect for me was the lack of clarity.
So many things seemed simultaneously true.
So many voices of so many people got inside me and caused so much self-questioning and doubt. As the years of depression rolled on, the sense of no way out only increased, and the feelings of just wanting it all to be over with only intensified.
For at least a decade, I had semi-regular thoughts, increasing in intensity and frequency, of killing myself, how I’d do it, etc.
For me, it was razor blades to the wrists. It just made the most sense. I could do it anywhere. Having grown up in sports and around brothers, the idea of cuts and bruises was not anything intimidating. And, it was an exit medium that was completely under the radar, as long as I had a few bucks and access to a Walgreens or CVS. Thoughts of suicide were one of the few things – at times the only thing – that could offer me the relief of clarity of thinking and the relief of all of the heaviness of life being done. Nowadays, it’s easy to forget how intense those years were, but I know the thoughts of suicide became daily, even multiple times per day.
So, what was depression for me?
It was really no different for me than for every depressed client I’ve ever worked with.
It’s always some derivative of lack of energy, sadness, often heightened anxiety, the utter fog or lack of clarity, no desire to move and/or constant movement to avoid the feelings of lethargy/down, the feeling of so much pain of so many flavors, and self-loathing, in one way or another.
There are other indicators. And every person experiences these things in different ways and degrees, and each deals, or doesn’t deal, with it differently.
But, the overwhelming nature of depression is common, as is the fact that it largely increases over time. It doesn’t magically heal itself.
Where Does Depression Come From?
This is the point in the conversation where I, as a soul counselor, deviate from the established or common conversation on depression.
All Life Including Pain is a Gift
See, I believe that all life is gift. All. That doesn’t mean it’s without pain just that everything, including pain, is gift. Even that which thrashes us and destroys us inside is, in the end, a gift, if we allow it to be. It holds in its terrible claws wisdom, depth of insight, healing, life-changing metaphor, and evolution into higher consciousness, compassion, and vigor.
I have counseled people who have lost a child (or two), killed others (whether in war or civilian life and are now in prison), attempted suicide, lost fortunes and families, lived through the Holocaust or other horrors, been abused in every manner possible, and experienced every aspect of pain life could possibly throw at them. And, whether you believe it or not, I have seen them courageously go into all their inner pain and, through the brutal work, come out the other side not just changed but deepened, strengthened, healed, and calm in a way they never were before. And yes, a great, great many of them reach the startling, painful, yet very real conclusion that in its own ugly ways, it was an upside-down blessing for them in their own personal relationship with their own soul (quite apart from how the events might be perceived by others or humanity, as a whole).
They’d never want to do it again, but in the end, it was a profound gift to their life.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Every pain is the soul calling us down, in the words of James Hillman. Depression is the soul calling us into ourselves, proclaiming that this life as we are living it presently is not who we are (/I am).
Depression is the call down into the destruction of old-self because old-self wasn’t working and held no hope of ever working. Old-self was driven by external voices and expectations, not to mention ego and all its wants and fears.
But old-self was inconsistent with, even anathema to, the authentic self written on the depths of who you really are. Depression is simultaneously the call to the destruction-solution and the red alert that what we’re longing for, and living isn’t our truest self. It’s that place inside where the true voice of the soul rising up inside meets the voices and pressures that have been stuffed down your throat from the beginning.
That conflict between two voices, external and internal, is at the heart of depression, not to mention anxiety. That incessant grinding of one voice on the other is the origin of all internal unrest. It is the great tectonic plates shifting and grinding against each other inside, and then all the surface-level earthquakes that deep grinding causes.
Depression is the Solution, Not the Disease
Seen as such, depression is then the solution, not the disease. Running from it and the pain implicit in it is, thus, running from the very resolution and relief you seek.
See, what you’re really struggling with, at the root, is the tug-of-war between who you really are and who they want you to be. And, the price of authentic self is the losing of them, the disappointing of them, the wrath of them. For many, that is too high a price to pay. So, they attempt to persist in making those external voices/pressures/people happy. However, the price of that is the rejection of self, the self-neglect, the abject misery, the incessant busyness, or drugs of one sort or another to numb yourself to how freakin’ miserable you are inside.
A Choice between outer pain and inner pain
So, what you’re really choosing between is outer pain and inner pain – them hating on you or you hating on your authentic self. And, for far too long, you’ve chosen to assuage your own pain by just incessantly pleasing them – maybe it’s your parents, your siblings, auntie/uncles, spouse, society’s definitions of manhood (or womanhood), your mentor, or even your own children.
But, it doesn’t work, does it? I mean, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be reading an article on depression and all this depressing sh*t like suicide, unless it resonated with your own experience. So, by that theory, if you dig deep enough, you’ll see and feel the very thing you’ve been (self-)medicating yourself from.
You’re f**king miserable because you’re not self-authoring.
Someone else(s) has been authoring your life, using all the leverage they have for doing so, likely leverage and power they took from you at a young or vulnerable time and never gave back.
“Real power cannot be given.
It must be taken.”
-Gloria Steinem and Godfather III
Give yourself permission to Seize What is Rightfully Yours
The part that makes depression so damn intimidating is that the solution demands seizing, however you need to do it, that which is rightfully yours – your own power to self-govern, which was your god-given right from the beginning.
And, the seizing is preceded by something even more important – permission. You keep waiting for someone in life to give you permission to be your authentic self when the ugly-ass part of life is that there ain’t no knight coming along to give you what your soul needs at its deepest level. You have to give yourself the permission to seize your life.
Tragically, yet grotesquely beautifully, permission pretty much invariably only comes from pain, extreme pain. The pain of inauthentic living, the pain of being told what to do, the pain of being minimized and eating the sh*t of others eventually, eventually and long down the road eventually leads to the f*ck it point where you no longer care what they think; you no longer are unclear in what you want; you no longer wait for or even think you need their permission.
You self-permit.
You choose to seize your life back.
You’re no longer even afraid of the backlash, the anger, the disappointment, the levers of their former power over you. You simply know that your own permission is enough and all you’ve ever needed.
And, maybe later, you kick yourself for not doing it sooner, but in the now you know that it is time and you are ready.
Permission!
Is Depression a Mental Illness?
Sure. Why not. Pretty much anything can be perceived as a mental illness.
And, lord knows, it sure feels like an illness of the mind. That’s indisputable. But, is it mental illness? A whole lot of people – a whole lot of really, really smart people – say so. So there you have it. And again, I ain’t a mental health professional. So, it’s probably best not to listen to me.
I’m not saying it is or is not a mental illness. I have no idea, and I don’t really care.
For, to me, it’s a symptom of a greater disease of the soul. Thus, the healing is at the soul level. And, if you don’t believe that, that’s okay.
Go the mental illness route and work with the very smart medical folk. They have powerful medicines. My medicine is for the soul.
How Do I Know If I’m Depressed?
In layman’s terms, you’re likely depressed if:
Life sucks, and it sucks for a long time, even when things on the outside seem to be going well;
Do you sleep, or just lie in bed, far more than you ever have before?
Has your level of busyness or chaos-seeking increased, or perhaps that busyness is your addiction because you know you’re running from ever slowing down and having to sit in the sh*t that instantly rises up from within when you do?
Do you repeatedly use different means to escape from your existence, such as pot, over-working, over-parenting, pills, booze, incessant shopping, ceaseless swiping/scrolling/gaming, extreme experiences (extreme sports, high-risk investments/gambling, war/killing), over-parenting?
Do you hate yourself to varying degrees at different times?
Is self-criticism your default mode when anything happens?
Do you tend to absolve others of responsibility but constantly self-flagellate?
Are you forever taking from others – time, attention, money, power?
Are you forever giving to others – listening more than talking, fawning over them at the expense of self?
Overly aggressive?
Overly passive and self-minimizing?
There are a million possible indicators, but very often the simplest answer is simply that you either know you’re miserable inside or you know you’re running from sh*t, because you know that if you were to stop and allow yourself to feel it, you’d be overcome with misery in about two seconds, flat.
That’s how you know if you’re depressed.
Or, reverse engineer the question.
Start with the solution. Are you living your path, purpose, principles, or the way you know would make you most come alive? If not, I guarantee you’re depressed af deep inside. Guaranteed. Whether you see it or not.
So, How Can I Cope With Depression?
Cope with it?
Honestly? Don’t. Don’t cope with depression. I mean, sure, there are those brief spells where we just have to power through stuff, and a good coping mechanism, or two, can be helpful. But, if you’re still coping, you ain’t healing.
Coping is accepting something and just trying to live with it as best you can.
Healing is going to the root to solve the equation, specifically so that you don’t have to live with it anymore.
Okay, Then, How Do I Heal From It?
You follow where the depression is leading you.
You go down deep into it with the right tools to work your way out of it. Sure, you can get a therapist. But finding one who actually knows how to do deep soul work is a bit of a sketchy enterprise because how the hell can you really know?
So, I’ve made tools to do it yourself, because I had to do it myself and create my own tools. And, I’ve been using and refining these tools for decades with countless clients.
800+ Free Badass Counseling Videos
Your starting tools are my 800+ free videos on FB, IG, TT, X, and YT.
Use them as journaling prompts. Start writing (yes, physically writing or typing, not just voice-to-texting) your thoughts, your memories, and especially the feelings that go with it.
Ask the ‘why’ about a million times, as well as ‘what was really going on underneath that,’ and such questions that cause you to dive even deeper inside.
Download the Badass Counseling Show Podcast
Second, download my free podcast, The Badass Counseling Show, and the roughly 150 past episodes in which I’m either counseling people with problems very similar to yours or directly answering listener questions.
Again, all of this should be serving as journaling prompts. Additionally, you should be writing letters you do not send to people whom you have strongly feelings for/against.
YOU MUST PUT WORDS TO YOUR FEELINGS!
The healing comes from naming the beast, not just thinking about it, not just feeling the feelings.
It’s like when you find yourself suffering from your gums swelling up, a rash on your ass, and your ankles are hurting, all at the same time, over the course of a few weeks and then a month or more. Eventually, it doesn’t go away, and your level of concern increases considerably.
Finally, you make an appointment and see the doctor. She examines you then says, “Oh, it’s just such-and-such malady. Here’s the prescription. That’ll be 400 bucks. See the receptionist on the way out.”
That ‘such-and-such’ changes everything.
By naming the beast, she defangs it. It no longer is a cluster of anxiety-inducing symptoms and feelings. Now, it is a thing that has a name, which means it has been understood and tamed, to some greater or lesser degree, at one point or another.
Naming it is taming it. And, it's no different in our inner life. In fact, it’s infinitely more true when it comes to soul work. Drilling down to origins, true feelings, and implications of those origins and truths is extraordinarily powerful and life-changing.
Two Books to Step You Through Depression Healing
Most importantly, I’ve created two books to hold your hand and step you through the depression healing.
First, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup. (Available soon in Spanish)
Second, BADASS WISDOM: A Killer Daily Meditational to Take You to the Ugly Places and Kick Your Ass.
(Both are available at badasscounseling.com)
>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
So, my point is that even if you are getting professional help for your depression, you can accelerate your healing and growth by doing the out-of-session work on your own.
And, because of the somewhat limited nature of counseling (50-minute bites at a time), doing deep work on your own can often vault you past what you’re accomplishing in session.
How Long Does It Take To See Improvements?
Honestly?
I am an absolute believer that change can be immediate if you go deep enough. Absolutely and unequivocally.
Does that mean the depression can be gone in one day or one week? No. Not at all. But, you can see movement, change, and new light and relief in a day in a week. Absolutely.
The problem is that most people and a whole lot of therapy just never go anywhere near deep enough into that sh*t from the past that is the origin of all that crud inside you that is not your authentic self. It’s so easy to get absorbed into the immediacy of relationship struggles, financial problems, career or family stuff that we never even touch the past stuff. So, that’s like forever taking cough syrup thinking the real problems are being solved, even though the virus or infection is never being touched.
Symptoms and causes are two completely different things.
You get down to those real origins, and stuff can change today, literally today. But that requires the courage and the tools to go down there, to know what to look for, to know what to do when you’re down there, to know what questions to ask, to not run when it gets scary.
And, parenthetically, if it ain’t scary, you ain’t gone deep enough yet. You’re skimming. You’re pretending to go deep then wondering why the change ain’t coming. You’re terrified to go to the real sh*t. For, the truths are too painful, and the potential implications/ramifications are harrowing.
So, if you’re not experiencing greater lightness, greater calm, and greater clarity in your life, either you or your therapist isn’t going deep enough. And you need to find yourself new tools and/or a new counselor because you’re just skimming and symptom-solving. You’re not anywhere near healing.
What Can You Do To Keep Depression At Bay After You’ve Suffered From It?
Well, in truth, if you’re having to ‘keep it at bay,’ then you never really solved it. You never got down to the real issues. You never began the work of living authentically and rejecting/ejecting the voices inside you that were never yours, to begin with, the ones that you’ve been living by, at the expense of your own original voice, feelings, wants, needs, and drives.
The key to a depression-free and anxiety-free life is to live authentically, damn the price. You’ll not be immune to life’s vicissitudes, pains, losses, and let-downs. No one is. But, you will no longer be solving the present and the past, at the same time. You’ll no longer be bogged down by past crap and the expectations, pressures, and criticisms of people who used to have power over you. Once you’ve healed that stuff, you’ve removed sooooo much crud from inside your love cup that you are now able to easily handle any new losses or challenges, not just because you’ve healed yourself before and now know how, but because you have so much more room to handle it; you’re not jammed up inside with all the past sh*t.
If you’re having to keep depression at bay, you never went deep enough to begin with, and you’re not living your authentic life. Because, once you have, depression is no longer part of the conversation.
It’s just gone, particularly if you are staying in your regular ‘spiritual disciplines,’ as I call them: journaling, time alone, regular exercise, good rest, sleep, healthy diet, and solitude with the soul pursuits.
So, all of this leads us back to where we started – suicide…
What’s The Link, or Relationship, Between Depression and Suicide?
Suicide is when the self/soul has been fully overwhelmed by the voices, wants, needs, expectations, pressures, powers, and pains of others. It’s when self has been extinguished – the divine flame inside drowned by the flood of otherness.
Suicide isn’t as simple as the depression getting bad enough.
At the deepest levels, it’s the complete belief that the soul of self doesn’t matter, will never matter, is bad, and is completely unwanted by others and self. So, it’s not enough to say that suicide is untreated depression.
Suicide is the absence of permission and courage to be oneself.
People kill themselves because they’ve been conditioned to believe they suck, the real them isn’t wanted/allowed, and they exist for others, solely. And no amount of drugs, of any sort, can make those untrue truths go away.
Again, if you’re experiencing depression or thinking about suicide, whether you admit it to others or not, it’s time to go deep. There are no two ways about it. That IS the solution, and it demands courage.
I’m all for resources such as suicide hotlines, suicide therapy, and even medications, as necessary. But, in the end, you gotta go deep into the soul and the origins of belief in your not-mattering.
Here are two resources:
>> Suicide Risk Assessment Questionnaire
>> The Columbia protocol: Simple Questions Can Prevent Suicide
But what if I think someone else might be suicidal?
I’ll be real honest with you, if another person even so much as remotely mentions the word suicide publicly or to another person, it’s a GIANT RED FLAG!!!!
Bringing Up Suicide is a Red Flag. Get Help Now!
It doesn’t matter if you think they’re serious, or not. To even bring that word into the open is huge.
Why? Because it is such a taboo topic in Western society and most people fear some giant fuss being made (even if that very help is precisely what they’re needing/craving inside), but also because someone who is suicidal likely fears their deepest pain and talks of suicide being mishandled, minimized or hurt even further.
I mean, let’s be honest if the root of suicide-depression is soul pain caused by the voices and expectations of others being rammed down your throat at the expense of your own soul/self, then it’s reasonable to assume that if you bring those pains up to the people closest to you, you’re bringing it up to the people who likely caused the pain/problems, in the first place, which means there’s an extraordinarily high likelihood they’ll muff the ball on this one, too, potentially blowing it even worse.
Suicide is not optional insofar as getting a potentially suicidal person to someone who can help them is not up for debate. It’s mandatory.
The mere mention of it is a desire to have you hear their pain and take some action to actually help them. This is not the time to trust them to their own devices.
It’s time to get them help, as in NOW.
>>Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline<<
What If I’m Part of the Problem?
What do you do if you think you might be one of the voices and pain sources inside the person you think might be suicidal?
You need to start going into your own sh*t to determine and disgorge all of your own pain and messages you were taught about yourself from your own past. Because, it is your own trauma and sh*t that caused you to control, manipulate, hurt, or use this person who is now suicidal.
To truly help them solve themselves, you need to solve yourself, which includes going to them and beginning to TRULY OWN all you did to bring such egregious pain and suffering to their lives.
And it is precisely here that you are being forced by life to choose between you and them – your ego, your conviction that you were/are a great parent, your own demands, etc.
Would you admit grievous fault and failure, if it meant keeping alive someone you claim to love? Would you?
Or is your ego so frail that you have to protect yourself at the expense of them?
If you choose the frail ego option, you’ve basically implicated yourself as the likely person who drove them to suicide in the first place.
Healing From Depression & Avoiding Suicide
If this holiday season finds you depressed, don’t just cope. Give yourself permission to seize your life back. Avoid sinking further into thoughts of suicide.
Thanks for reading.
-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com
