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Uncovering and Healing the Roots of Anxiety and Depression

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I recently wrote an article for the Edge Magazine. It’s relevant these days as many people’s subconscious issues are coming to the surface while the consciousness of the planet shifts and raises. This happens for the purpose of releasing what no longer serves you from your body/mind system and integrating the learning of it into the fullness of your being. Freedom calls anything to the surface that is not free. Please enjoy these words:

Anxiety and depression can be physiologically, spiritually and/or mental/emotionally based. But since the body, mind and soul are all interconnected, they overlap. Often anxiety or depression has to do with the past affecting you, and this can be uncovered and healed because you are far more than your past. If we put anxiety and depression under a microscope, we see that it is typically made up of a myriad of negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs that began somewhere in the past, occasionally even a past life. The good news is that although the past can have a strong grip on you, it no longer exists except as a memory, which is a combination of thoughts, feelings and corresponding beliefs that get formed, otherwise known as “thought-form energy”. Yet there is a larger, higher, “more real” part of you that transcends the thought-form energy from the past. When you connect to that part, you can uncover and release the roots of the past that limit you.

Einstein said that you can’t solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem, but you can at a higher level. Your soul isn’t anxious or depressed — and you are that soul more than you are the ego personality that is anxious and depressed — because one part of you lives on, the other doesn’t. In fact, you couldn’t escape that whole, complete part of you if you tried, it just gets covered up with false beliefs from the human experience. Using hypnotherapy, you can connect to and identify with your wiser soul self that is forever anchored in the here and now, and that part of you can help heal your ego-based body/mind self. You then experience what the Buddha meant when he said the thinking mind is the source of all suffering.

Here are some examples: A woman (I’ll call her Linda) came to me recently feeling very depressed. Underneath her depression were feelings and beliefs of shame, unworthiness, and “not good enough” due to growing up with abuse and neglect. These heavy feelings made life feel as if she was trying to run a marathon with armor on. Using hypnotherapy, she envisioned her consciousness moving up above her body, above and beyond the earth, and into Source energy where she melted into it and felt and compared various qualities of Source such as peace, joy, love and security. This can only be done if you’re not in your thinking mind. From this highest dimension of your being, there is a knowing that nothing in the Universe can harm you, and it is a perfect place to heal the ego part of you that feels stuck.

From this high vantage point, feeling connected to Source, Linda looked down at a timeline of her life — specifically above the 2-month old version of herself. I asked, “Should your infant self, like all infants, ideally be made to feel loved, wanted, valued, safe and secure?” “Is your infant self worthy of love?” The truth is yes, all infants are worthy of love, so it became evident to Linda that unworthiness is not inherent to her being. Shame and unworthiness are messages that feel true, but are not, and Linda could see that she picked up these perspectives early on from her parents. Since it didn’t belong to her, she envisioned and actually felt that heavy thought form energy going back to her parents, who in turn passed it down to where they got it from, their parents, and then down through the generations and into a fire pit to be incinerated into Source energy. She then got back the part of her that was lost when took on the feelings of “not good enough”, feeling the sensations of love, empowerment and joy come back to her. She then sent this energy down to her 5-year old self, Jr. High self, and all the other times that she needed it in her life. Four weeks later, Linda emailed me to say that she felt as if a huge weight had been lifted since the session, and that she had propelled far onto her path of growth and healing.

In another example, a man with high anxiety did a past life regression and saw himself as a young Viking whose beloved grandfather was murdered by a group of three men. He was consumed with anger, hatred and revenge, and he died with this rage. These heavy feelings kept a sliver of his soul consciousness stuck around the earth plane, unable to move up into the higher realms after death. We did a soul retrieval and thus healed and re-integrated this lost soul aspect of himself. Six weeks later he reported that since the session he felt much less anxious, and things which would previously cause him much stress and worry no longer affected him.

It is indeed profound and helpful to connect to a higher part of yourself that already is whole and complete, that you can never really escape from, in order to heal the part of you that feels stuck. Then it becomes clear that happiness is actually a perception shift away.

Alternative Ways to Heal Depression and PTSD

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I recently wrote the article below for the Edge Magazine. Although I specialize in dealing with the emotional causes of depression, anxiety and PTSD, there are a number of different ways that can also help with these issues. Below is the article that discusses some of these other approaches. Please enjoy:

After working on a psychiatric unit for over 23 years, I watched some people find relief with medications for depression. Yet, I’ve also witnessed many times when a person either experienced no relief or the side effects of the meds far outweighed the benefits. Not only are people complex, but so is depression, and it often has many triggers and causes, both physical and emotional in nature. Let me share some alternative methods that can help alleviate both the physical and emotional roots of depression. Often, combining several modalities can be the most effective approach.

First, a simple, yet often overlooked modality is homeopathy, which works to bring the body back into balance physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It’s not an overnight fix, but you’ll find an upward spiral of growth happens over time with no side effects. Occasionally, you may notice your symptoms reappear for a day or two and then subside because an old pattern often reappears before it’s released. Keep in mind that homeopaths study for 4 years, and homeopathy has a long history of being a popular medicine which can also increase the effectiveness of other modalities.

Secondly, if you’re eating a lot of low vibration foods such as processed sugar, white flour and food products with artificial ingredients, you may experience low energy and lethargy, with a mood that matches the way your body responds to these foods. Consuming more fruits and vegetables is an excellent way to shift not only your mood, but your health. Experiment for yourself by eating more whole foods and notice if your mood is positively affected. I do understand that when you’re struggling with intense symptoms such as depression or PTSD it may be difficult to choose fruits and vegetables as they aren’t as comforting or numbing as processed foods. However, try adding one additional fruit, vegetable, smoothie or juice per day.

A healer who has had a profound effect on my health is Anthony William. In his paradigm-changing, best-seller book, Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic Illness and How to Finally Heal, William explains that PTSD is a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by trauma. When there isn’t enough glucose stored in the brain tissue to feed the central nervous system, PTSD symptoms can develop from relatively minor stresses. He explains that fruit sugar and raw honey in their unadulterated states are the only sugars the body accepts for glucose storage in the brain. He suggests wild blueberries, melons, beets, bananas, sweet potatoes, figs, oranges mangoes, apples and dates, among others.

William also discusses how depression can stem from non-emotional causes such as adrenal dysfunction, viral infection, electrolyte deficiency, heavy metals or other toxins in your body. For these conditions, he suggests specific foods to help heal these conditions such as wild blueberries, spinach, hemp seeds, cilantro, walnuts, coconut oil, sprouts, kale apricots and avocados. He also provides a list of healing herbs and supplements that can help. He just released a second book, Life-Changing Foods, which connects one to the power of food.

For emotional causes of depression, such as traumatic loss or stress growing up, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and EMDR are effective tools to release trauma from past events or circumstances that are stored in the body and subconscious mind.

Often times when we don’t get emotional needs met growing up, negative beliefs about oneself can set in at a deep level. Shame programs such as feeling unworthy of love or success can be so strong that affirmations don’t easily work because a subconscious part of you doesn’t believe them. In these situations, it’s helpful to find someone who can guide you in transcendental inner journey work, where your consciousness can take a separate, observational look at your egoic mind patterns. Any type of transpersonal hypnotherapy, such as past life regression, the emotional healing process or other such inner journey work, is helpful in releasing the grip of false, limiting beliefs that may feel true but are absolutely not. When these false beliefs can be seen through from a higher level of consciousness, they no longer have the same effect on you, and thus support the releasing of depression.

Lastly, it’s important to connect with others. We were meant to love and support one another, and the burden of depression can lighten with more connectedness. I understand that one of the biggest challenges with depression is having the motivation or confidence to reach out to others, so you may want to get some support from other modalities first and as your spirit lifts, you may more easily cultivate the wisdom and courage to know that you are worth seeking out support and connection.

A New Paradigm in Emotional Healing

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For awhile now, the approach to emotional healing has been to notice what the problem issue is, such as anxiety or depression, and then manage the symptoms the best you can with medications or coping skills. There is certainly a time and place for symptom management. However, as consciousness rises, a new perspective in healing is emerging which is to view the emotional symptoms as not something to fight against, but instead as something that is yearning for your full attention, because it is ready to be released from your body/mind system. And in so doing, you will also understand why it has been there, like a puzzle to solve.

A natural response to a triggered feeling, such as anger or fear, is to avoid it. However, when you give it your full presence, a type of alchemical reaction takes place. The feeling becomes reduced to a sensation in the body. As you become fully present with this sensation and allow your awareness to sink deeper into the heart of it, you shift from thinking mode to feeling mode. This means two things: 1) you no longer suffer because suffering is generated by the thinking mind, and 2) you become present-moment focused and able to access the subconscious mind. As a result, images or pictures can emerge that give clues as to what the triggered emotion relates to. And as you dive still further into the sensation, other feelings may emerge that underlie the triggered emotion. These are the layers of thoughts, feelings and beliefs that hold the triggered emotion in place. Ultimately, as you allow your consciousness to drop through the physical sensations of all the layers of emotion, you may eventually find your consciousness immersed in a vast nothingness. This usually marks the nearing of the end of the journey, because as you continue to focus intently on this nothingness and notice what’s deeper still, you begin to feel a very light, vast, expansive presence that you are not separate from. This is who you are at your core self…a boundless, infinite presence of oneness which is your deepest essence. In this bottom foundational layer, the words commonly used to describe it are “love, freedom, peace, joy, light, and expansiveness.” There is no longer emotion, but pure awareness, and you know and experience your true self to be this presence which underlies all feelings and limiting thoughts…exactly which people like Eckhart Tolle have been writing about! It’s also known as Source energy.

The result of steeping in this core Self is ultimate clarity. You fully see through all of the deep-seated negative, limiting feelings and beliefs that you have been operating from. An example might be “undeserving and unworthy of success and love”. These limiting feelings/beliefs are easily seen through as not having anything to do who you are, but rather they are seen for what they actually are…an untrue mind program that got passed down, usually through the generations like an unconscious virus. In that moment you know without a doubt that who and what you actually are goes far beyond any limiting thought or belief, thus these limiting beliefs begin to release their grip on your subconscious mind and your identity. Thus you awaken to your true self.

Lately I’ve been guiding many of these healing inner journeys to freedom as part of the Emotional Healing Session that I use. I first read about the process years ago in a book by Brandon Bays titled The Journey, a book well worth the read. I’ve since observed a number of practitioners who use variations of this healing process which essentially utilizes negative feelings as a portal to the profound peace that we all possess within ourselves. It’s been my experience that healing happens in layers, and each journey inward allows you to feel more peace, joy, clarity and freedom as the negative mind programs lose their grip on your subconscious mind and identity. Guiding people to fully experience their true, authentic Self is absolutely part of the new paradigm in emotional healing.

A Sure Antidote for Depression and Anxiety

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There is a reliable antidote for depression and anxiety, and that is wisdom, which is to understand a “truer” version of yourself, which is to spiritually wake up, which means beginning to identify more with the life energy behind the body and less with the mental and emotional programming of the body form. The biggest value of past life regression is that it essentially helps in this process of spiritually waking up because you can directly feel and experience yourself as the life that animates the form. It can’t be known by thought, but from a higher dimension of consciousness beyond thought, whereby which you experience yourself as vast eternal stillness and presence.

From the perspective on earth, the sun appears to rise each morning and set each evening. But this is only relatively true. From space, it’s known that the sun never actually rises or sets, but shines continuously. Similarly, the identification of being the human is only “relatively true”, and according to the Buddha, is the root of suffering. As you become more aware of the one sustaining life behind not only your body, but all other forms, and you identify with it more and more, the subtle beliefs behind depression and anxiety begin to fall away. You identify more as a being of pure creative potential, which in actuality is a “truer, more absolute” version of yourself. This is a truth that can be known by experience, and not merely as an intellectual concept.

Eckhart Tolle writes that the most significant thing that can ever happen to a human being is the process of becoming aware of your thoughts. As this happens, you eventually begin to identify less with the incessant mind stream of negative chatter that holds you back in life, and more with the awareness that notices a thought or a subtle unconscious, limiting belief. This is the beginning of the “waking up” process, where you see an out-dated thought or belief for what it is…just faulty mental conditioning that you believe in less and less. Again, the biggest value of past life regression is that you fully experience the separation between you and the incessant thought stream. You instead experience yourself as vast stillness, awareness, and enormous potential. From that vantage point, all negative beliefs about yourself seem erroneous and silly. In this manner, it serves to help you in the “waking up” process.