The Freeze of Depression

Sometimes a necessary transition from our current location seems daunting. We believe that there is only one “right” solution to where we go next and if we mess it up, we will perish. This is the kind of fear response programmed into our brains. The dear alarm system, amygdala, is blaring the sirens. But what if staying in our current situation actually has a greater potential for damage than does movement? Once the alarm system has been triggered the default response is often to freeze, stay paralyzed. Shame influences how we see ourselves and others. We feel as if we truly are frozen. Depression can result from feeling trapped, disempowered for any kind of movement. The dynamic psyche, Soul, and body all require movement, flow, and flexibility in order to survive.

Alex Korb, PhD writes about the life saving power of this movement in his book The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression. “In mountaineering, if you’re stuck in a bad situation and you don’t know the right way out, you just have to pick a direction and go. It doesn’t have to be the best direction; there may not even be a best direction. You certainly don’t have enough information to know for sure. So if you start down a path and end up at a cliff, you’ll just have to pick another direction from there. Because guess what? In a dire situation, you can’t be certain of the right path; what you do know is that if you sit there and do nothing, you’re screwed.”

In my private practice, I assist many people who are experiencing this lure toward movement and transition. Old belief systems, early attachment traumas, and fear may have molded them into an image or persona that no longer fits. An initial clue that we are experiencing the need for greater wholeness often is evident in strained relationships. When we are frozen and do not speak from our deepest truths, relationships will suffer and we hold out hope that the other will somehow meet our unmet needs. Instead, it is our journey to take and meet our own needs. It is a confusing time and can require a skilled listener to help empower us to break out of the paralysis. Maybe you are afraid of movement. Consider a free consultation with Laure Schwartz, Spiritual Director, Mental Health and Somatic Therapist, at The Healing House of Saint Paul. Access the on-line scheduler at http://healinghousesaintpaul.org/laure-schwartz/

Healing the Worry Treadmill

Do you experience uncontrollable worry? It can feel like running on a treadmill, knowing you are not getting anywhere but for some reason you cannot get off. In addition, are those around you making you feel shamed for worrying? Worry is related to our brain's tendency for what is called The Negativity Bias. Rick Hanson PhD, neuropsychologist, describes this pre-historic tendency as the brain's programmed function to see the negative or the threat in order for the species to survive. In our earliest existence, we needed to watch for any and all threat in order to not be eaten!

Those neurons that fire together in repetition begin to sculpt a brain structure that keeps the blood flowing to this busy part of the brain, the limbic system. Included in the limbic system is the amygdala whose job it is to alert you to danger. The higher brain or the thinking brain (frontal cortex) cannot accurately access danger if the limbic system cannot rest. 

When we live with unresolved trauma or are currently in a persistent and toxic threat/protection cycle, it is almost impossible to make the necessary, even slight, adjustments to our thinking brain. It is NOT a simple matter of "positive thinking." The body's nervous system is stuck in a cycle that revs up the need to survive based upon the negativity bias already programmed into the brain.

How do we heal? How does the cycle settle and allow us to live less constrained by worry and fear?
One key element is healing past traumas. What is a trauma? Anything or event(s) that comes at us too fact, without any preparatory response, or that which is prolonged such as verbal, emotional, spiritual, or physical abuse. The latter is more common and is also called complex trauma because it is not as easily identifiable. Most people have dissociated from complex trauma, leaving scars and old, concrete belief systems about self and the world buried away in the unconscious or non-conscious. 

Techniques I use in healing complex trauma:

• Somatic Experiencing
• Right brain therapies like re-imaging, dreams, art, music, and poetry
• Depth Psychology
• Discovering one's unique Spirituality and Soul

To find out more and to schedule a free 1/2 hour consultation with me, go to www.healinghousesaintpaul.org and use the link to BookFresh for appointment times.

Decide its time to heal the worry treadmill. It is indeed possible.
Laure Schwartz

Stuck on a Well Worn Path

"Observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more or less guarantees its co-operation. The unconscious as we know can never be “done with” once and for all. It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys." Carl Jung

This is why we do so much work companioning our deepest experience and using the observing self in spiritual and therapeutic work. Our well-worn paths that now don't fit will cause symptoms that we need to befriend, listen to, and hear their stories. If we think we can muscle these symptoms to the ground, we are re-wounding ourselves over and over. The symptom serves a purpose. Our friend Alfred Adler, as well as Jung, reminds us to dig deeper for the purpose it serves.

Let us not get stuck in a well-worn path, unable to move. Body, mind, and spirit are encouraging movement all the time. What well-worn path might you be stuck in? Is it a pattern of shaming self and your children, believing that somehow that will motivate? Is it old belief systems about the Divine, counting on an if/then response from outside of yourself? "If I believe and do "X", God will show up and take care of me."

Well-worn paths come from years of practice, ignoring symptoms of incongruence, being afraid to re-evaluate old belief systems, and conformity. Tracking our own symptoms, letting them speak to us, staying curious without harsh judgement, this is using the observing self. This is true compassion for self and others.

Cattle create a well-worn path following each other out to pasture or water and back again. Sounds like a good idea, they know where to go without thinking, blindly following the one in front. But when the water has dried up or the grass is gone, how do they get redirected? How do you get assistance listening to the Soul/psyche that is redirecting you?

Re-membering Your Desires

Pictures remind me of what I enjoy doing and that which touches my Soul. The expansiveness of mountains, looking out over canyons, fields and art stir places deep within that show me more of who I am. Energy moves where it is easiest for it to go. Water in a river flows along the path of least resistance. Your underlying structure allows your path of least resistance. This structure includes your desires, your beliefs, your assumptions, and your aspirations and can be discovered when you notice what touches you deeply. Your path is created by you. Uncover your creative self, and you will come closer to home where your energy moves. Find something that yearns for you to take a picture of it. Then see what the picture says to you.

Below: crossing the Royal Gorge with Trooper, the expanse of the Royal Gorge, and sunset on the Atlantic Ocean.

Movement

We are born to move, to sense our bodies interacting with everything around us. Think of a baby wanting to grasp, touch, hold things in its mouth, look, gaze at a face, lights, colors. Movement is natural. There is innate curiosity about what will happen if my person moves and comes in contact with you, with nature, with animals, with everything. We are born to move, be curious, experience life, engage in our deepest findings. If you find you are stuck somewhere in your life, my first guess will be to discover what it is you are not allowing to be validated in your life. Resistance is stuck-ness. Resistance is not moving. Risk movement and see what happens.

As I have journeyed and am still moving through graduate school in spirituality, depth psychology, somatic experiencing, learning about the nervous system and trauma, I am discovering my truth as a practitioner. I share it with you this morning.

I have a truth and a methodology of allowing one’s deepest experience to be honored, noticed, and validated in order for it to naturally move through. The experience only gets stuck in the body and the mind when it is rejected and invalidated. Then the response takes on a life of its own, calling the shots unconsciously of course, but nonetheless, controlling. We give the experience too much power when we are afraid of our reactions or needs. Where it takes over our thinking is in the resistance to it, wanting it to go away, and shaming self for having the experience or the response. Our humanness is not being allowed. 

By disallowing our experience ourselves, we then think others are rejecting our reactions too and rehearse over and over in our heads how and why they are now not supportive of us, turning the other into the enemy. This is our projection we have placed onto the other. If we can pull back our projection and realize it is actually indeed ourselves who are rejecting our experience, we can free the other person and ultimately ourselves; freedom to allow the natural flow of activation and rest within the nervous system and our emotional lives. Once the activation is tended, understood, and allowed, it will naturally flow out and move through us. 

Movement. Keep all responses moving so as not to create the freeze or shut down in the system. It is in the freeze that toxins form, adrenals get either stuck on or off and the natural flow from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous systems gets thwarted. The sympathetic nervous system alerts us to something not being quite right. We need this activation. But we became afraid of it through a culture and upbringing that says to us that our activation is not wanted nor is it “right.” The parasympathetic nervous system, when allowed to naturally flow, will bring our activation into a rest mode when we tend to that which activated us in the first place. If we disallow our reactions and responses, the system gets stuck.

As a spiritual director, graduate student at Adler in psychotherapy, and working with somatic awareness, this is what I implement with all of my clients and have been amazed at the empowerment and healing that happens just by following one’s deepest experience and being curious about what it has to teach them.

My Private Pilot

I wanted to watch. I wanted to be there when she returned with her best friend. Taking him up in the plane for the first time as a young, 17 year old, female pilot. Knowing the level of trust that came from her friend's parents, was constantly on my mind.
To fly around St. Paul in the Cessna, in the stillness of the experience. you see things from a different perspective. Awake, finally, to your surroundings. No final destination today. Just an experience.
I watched them take off. I watched them come back, land and take off again. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, sun shining, a few white clouds, blue sky, the river lying there luring a spectator to see. On their final landing, I knew she had given him the ride of his life... his life, so far. I was so thankful for their deep friendship.
They came and found me in the lobby of the Holman Field airport and his face could not have been brighter. Laughing that big full laugh, showing all of his straight, white teeth! He couldn't sit still as he described the flight and what it was like to leave his house that morning - his mom burning the memory of his face onto her mind forever.... "I love you."
I later asked my daughter, 'what did you like best about flying this morning?' Pause, more pause. She replied, "Giving someone else this incredible experience." Her deep generosity shining through. Her encouragement to those around her to live a Big Life. See something differently. Explore the edges. Welcome mystery through the miracle of flying.
I invite you to watch this slide show, listen to the music, see what happens in your body as you do. Be curious about your own mystery, your own generosity of experience making.

Gentle Persistence

One morning I found a photocopied text that a former colleague had given me back when we worked together at Luther Seminary. I'm guessing it was sometime in early 2008 when I was so incredibly broken and in pain, knowing that I needed to attend to my dear Self, dear Soul. I remember hardly being able to read these words at the time. It was as if the reading of it would somehow threaten to destroy me. And yet, this friend, colleague persisted day after day to share truth, to share scary words, to open doorways for me to breathe life. I cannot thank her enough. The short writings she shared were entitled, "The Discerning Voice" and "The Inner Voice of the Soul"by John O'Donohue.

"The quest for the truth of things is never ending. To be human is to be ambivalent. We never see a thing completely. In sure anticipation, our eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze. The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable. Because the mystery is too much for us, we opt to settle for the surface of things. Comfort becomes more important than true presence. Yet, somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice. This voice distrusts the status quo. It sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images things tend to assume. This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person's qualities. This faithful voice can illuminate the dark lands of despair. It can also reveal a different voice lurking about in our psyche as well; the harsh and unrelenting voice that finds fault with everything. Even when unexpected acknowledgement or recognition comes your way, this voice will claw at you and make you feel you are unworthy.

Having just returned from co-leading a retreat called "Sacred Earth: Body and Soul Connection", I reaffirm the necessity of community when one is walking through the greater unknown. The Soul was never meant to travel by itself. I have had friends, therapists, spiritual directors, and my spouse and daughter traveling with me for some time now. Each of them, in their own unique way, gently persisting that I stay on this larger, more expansive path than the narrow one I had been on. I'll never go back to what was inauthentic to my Soul, no matter what the cost. For the pain of abandoning myself earlier in my life was unbearable. I would much rather live in the presence of my deepest Self, my deepest desires, even if faced with the unknown. There, in the middle of the unknown, is where life is truly lived for me.