Depression is huge. It's so complicated, and it's not an easy thing to talk about.

I feel it’s important to reiterate here that I'm a healer. I've had great success with vortex healing, but I am not a doctor or a therapist or a medical professional. We're not trying to diagnose or treat anyone here, but I thought it was well worth taking some time to explore depression as an issue.

And I often cite depression as an example of an issue because it's not just an emotional issue. It will have a physical expression. It has a mental expression. It has a psychological expression. It expresses itself in many, many ways. And it holds us in an experience of separation and isolation. It can come from a combination of things and it can have endless ways of expressing itself.

I do want to make a distinction between, you know, we all get depressed every now and again— we all feel blue sometimes. But the kind of depression we're talking about today is when you really end up being cut off from the world. You can't function. You can't get out of bed.

Depression often has had a stigma attached to it.

I think this is starting to change, but there has been an idea that it’s “just an emotional thing- snap out of it.” The idea that you can talk yourself out of it. I think that's certainly changing now— people are recognizing that there could very well be a physical aspect. Something that needs to be addressed with medication. The potential problem with that is people expect, “Oh, I'll just take a pill and feel better.” And if that doesn't work, you know, then what do you do?

Depression could also be a result of suppressed trauma. I know a woman who went into therapy because she was struggling with depression and she didn't know why.

As she went through her process, it was revealed that she had trauma from her childhood which she had completely blocked out. She hadn’t been able to process it at the time, and as a survival technique, she disassociated from it. Her depression led her to bring that back to the light where it could be healed. She didn't know that when she went for therapy, she just was depressed. She had to work and follow the thread.

She worked with medication and ongoing therapy, both individual and with a group, to reveal what was going on. There's obviously a psychological aspect. Whatever happens on a physical, biological, or social level with trauma affects how you see yourself.

By the time we're talking about depression, we're usually talking about many factors that have come together.

Which is why one can't say, “Oh, just get medication for it or just talk it through or whatever.” It really becomes something you sit down and unravel and take a look at, and that can be extraordinarily difficult. It requires being curious.

Another woman I talked to really emphasized her experience that her depression made other people uncomfortable. That made a terrible situation unbearable— we have such a stigma about it and we're uncomfortable watching other people's pain.

How do you teach someone to be curious?

I think the first step is to meet them in compassion. Depression, by nature, kind of wants to create its own isolation. It cuts you off from life in a particular way, including relationships. It is important to just show up without judgment. To hold that space for them so they don't judge themselves in their own process— that's love and compassion.

What does depression look like from the outside?

It's easy to see someone's depressed if they're not leaving their house or something like that. But some people have told me that the hardest moments are when you lose hope. I think that is the bottom of depression. And it's one thing to feel depressed when you don't have a job, or a partner, etc. But some people have told me that the hardest moments are when they have all of that, and they're still depressed.

“I have everything, what else could I want? And I'm still depressed.” It's still not right. That is agonizing. It can be very hard to see from the outside. And that's why we have to bring the same amount of compassion to the person who is behaving in one particular way.

A friend of mine talked about how when he was younger and he experienced depression, he would fall, and then he would kind of hit bottom. He knew he was in trouble when he was falling and falling. Falling, falling, falling, and there was no bottom. He just kept falling. That hopelessness is killer.

Instead of trying to navigate or manage the pain, the question is, is can you be in the pain and actually use it as a path to freedom?

Depression is not something you live with, it's something you live in.

It's not negotiable in that way. So, can you explore it? What is this really about?

Is this anger turned inward? Is this a survival technique from a trauma? Can you just follow the question of what is this? Because depression becomes part of every spiritual process to some degree or another.

The holidays can be an especially tough time for depression.

It's a time when we tend to feel the loss of our loved ones who’ve passed. Then we're living in an environment where things are flowing on a particular way, but this is the internal environment and we feel it doesn't match up. We judge our shells selves for that, and then there's the shame.

Depression is isolation and feeling cut off.

If there's some kind of connection to a spiritual life, to the divine, there is a connection there. If you don't have that, you feel cut off from everything. In a way that depression can also become a spiritual path where you just sort of take a look. Where am I cut off? How is this playing out? How is this pain affecting me?

When you're in pain, it hurts. You just want to manage it and you want to make it go away. It's very hard to be in pain and continue on the path. Instead of just trying to push it away, to know that you can actually be okay and be in pain at the same time. We think it has to be one or the other, but you can actually be in pain and follow the process, as difficult as it may be.

As a healing modality, we talk about addressing the issue on all levels. It addresses it physically, emotionally, psychologically, karmically… all of that to release the condition that holds the stuckness. But the real healing is that connection, when you realize that you were actually never disconnected from life.

Depression is an issue that wants to keep you in separation and wants to keep you in isolation. So whatever you do, follow the path. Address the conditioning, address the pain, and open up again. Just don't give up.