Kendra had been depressed on and off for the last three years before consulting with me. "I've tried various medications and they help somewhat, but I still feel depressed. I've tried psychotherapy and it also helps a little but not enough for me to feel happiness or peace inside. I hate feeling this way and I just don't know what to do."
The first thing that I did to start Kendra on her Inner Bonding journey was to help her create a personal source of spiritual guidance. I asked her to make up a being who was very loving, wise and powerful to whom she could turn, in her imagination, for help and guidance. Kendra made up an older Indian medicine woman whom she called Elder One.
Next I asked Kendra where in her body she felt the feeling of depression. "In my heart and stomach. My heart and stomach often feel so heavy and sad."
"Kendra, imagine that your feeling self, the part that is presently depressed, is a child within. How old is this child?" She told me she thought the child was around six.
It's easy to forget that we are all perfect in our own design. Sometimes we muck it up with habits and choices that do not serve us.
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Have you been wronged?
The Practice:
Beware of anger.
Why?
Anger is tricky.
On the one hand, anger – feeling annoyed, irritated, resentful, fed up, mad, outraged, or enraged – alerts us to real threats, real injuries, and real wrongs that need correcting, and it energizes and fuels us to do something about them. In my family growing up, my parents had a monopoly on anger. So, I suppressed my own, along with a lot of other feelings, and it’s been a long journey to reclaim my interior, including anger, and be able to feel it fully and (hopefully) express it skillfully.
Whether in personal relationships or in the halls of power, people in positions of authority or privilege often tell others that they don’t deserve to be angry, they shouldn’t get so worked up, it’s their own fault, etc. when in fact they have every reason and right in the world to be angry. It is certainly important to know in your heart what is actually happening, how bad it is, what the causes are, and what to do – and decide for yourself how much you want to get or stay angry.
No one really wants to talk about it, but the truth is, there is a kind of “evil spell” hanging over each of us and our world as well. In fact, part of this global spell is our denial of its existence. It is called suffering. Everyone does it—and, like hypnotized captives, everyone believes that their suffering somehow benefits them. That’s how the spell works. Why else would anyone punish themself with unhappy feelings unless they had been tricked into somehow perceiving self-hurt as self-help?
Let’s examine one of these instances. First of all, to be angry is to suffer. It doesn’t help anyone to get angry. Anger hurts whoever is angry. It burns. Anger ruins relationships, causes heartache and regret, and devastates health. And yet, in spite of all of these facts, when we are angry it feels right. Somehow, in some unseen way, anger proves to whoever is experiencing its heated feelings that he or she is right—even though, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The same scenario holds true of worry, anxiety, resentment, doubt, guilt, or any other dark state.
Simply said we can say that fear is the opposite to Love. Where love exists, there can be no fear.
You have to learn to master your own fear. Try and reach a level of calm and ease within. The subconscious mind is amenable to suggestions . It is controlled by suggestions, give it positive ones.
STILL YOUR MIND AND RELAX
In this situation, the thoughts of the conscious mind sink into the sub conscious. This is like osmosis, in which fluids separated by a porous membrane, intermingle. As positive thoughts, sink into the subconscious, they grow with their own kind, and you become poised, serene and calm.
Shadow work is the process of looking at the wounded parts of ourselves with compassion, love, and understanding so we can transform them. So those parts of us no longer keep us stuck or in pain.
When you do your shadow work, you set yourself free from the parts of you that have been hidden or that you’ve refused to look at. And as a result, you become more authentically YOU.
The shadow self is born from the grief, guilt, shame, and pain that has accumulated throughout your life and has become ingrained in your patterns. Deep within you, beneath this conditioned self is something greater – something which you already are but which you haven’t been able to freely show or experience. This is your Divine uniqueness.
We all feel sad, lonely or depressed from time to time in our lives. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or a disappointment we’re facing, feeling a heaviness at life for a period of time is natural. When that heaviness and lack of energy becomes our constant state of living however, we may be experiencing a more serious form of depression.
If you feel this constant state of depression in your life, you are not alone. In fact, Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults. (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005 Jun; 62(6): 617-27).
When you look at depression through the lens of Energy Medicine, there are many techniques you can use to help alleviate the symptoms of depression and regain a sense of vitality and joy in your life once again.
Depression is Stuck Energy
Quantum science teaches that everything in all of creation is energy – including you. In it’s natural, unobstructed state, energy is meant to be constantly moving, especially inside the human system. However, we as humans, have the ability to shut down that energy flow when we worry, get angry or experience other undesired emotions.
Many people think that guilt is a natural experience. It is a familiar experience, but it is not healthy or productive. It serves no constructive purpose. How can that be? Here are six things to think about the next time you are feeling guilty:
- Guilt comes from fear. Your spiritual growth requires challenging fear and cultivating love. Holding onto your thoughts and feeling of guilt will not support you or anyone else. They prevent you from living in love, creating in love, and enjoying yourself in love.
- Guilt impairs your ability to learn from your experiences. When you see something that you could have done differently, or wish you had done differently, remember how you could have spoken or acted in love instead of fear so that you can apply what you have learned next time (not to make yourself feel more guilty). Your experiences are designed to inform, support, and benefit you, not cause you to contract into fear and remorse.
- Guilt is an experience of a frightened part of your personality, just as the actions that you regret came from a frightened part of your personality. Following fear with fear moves you in the opposite direction that your spiritual development requires, which is toward love.
My spiritual path began over 35 years ago when I first got clean and forgiveness is the road to freedom. Pain, resentment, shame, and anger can hold us for our entire lives if we never take the time to dive in and find compassion for ourselves and those who have hurt us.
The tricky thing about resentment is that it isn’t about the other person at all. In fact, the person you resent may not even know you resent them! But because you hold onto the stories from the past about people who have done you wrong, you keep an energetic tie to them.
Healing your past hurts begins when you look at your life with radical honesty. You have to take inventory of all of the places where you feel you were hurt, victimized, or taken advantage of and be willing to see your own part in them.
I just returned home from leading a healing retreat in Sedona, Arizona. While I was traveling, baby quail hatched just outside my home. During my unpacking, I observed the parent quail teaching each fluffy little bird about the world. I wondered if the lessons are focused only on survival. My thoughts expanded. How often do we humans practice sharing only survival tips, because of past ancestral experiences?
Is it possible to shift our approach in life, from survival focus to flourishing focus, by healing our generational trauma?
Generational trauma can happen when a traumatic event of our ancestors affects the following generations. A great example would be looking at The Great Depression. Many of the survivors of this very challenging time frame, raised their children with thoughts of lack and scarcity. The Great Depression was a collective experience that was felt by many generations.
Have you ever suffered from a betrayal? Who hasn’t! Fortunately, you can gain a new understanding of yourself that will both raise your understanding of others, and take the sting out others’ betrayal of you.
To get started, we need the following brief explanation of the inner workings of our personality. Because of our experiences in life, over time different “selves” develop in us. We’re not aware of them. In fact we think we always respond to events as a single, consistent person. But these conditioned selves live within the structure of our personality, and when we experience new situations, they emerge to respond to them. That’s why we might be confident and talkative among one group of people, and shy and quiet with another group. Each environment calls up a different self that’s been waiting within us, and that’s the self that responds. I call this self that responds the TPIC – the Temporary Person in Charge. It’s the aspect of us that takes charge in the moment. It’s not who we really are; it’s just a temporary self that the moment called out.
Having just lived through one of the most stressful years in history, people are ready to leave the pandemic behind and looking forward to a brighter future.
Researchers are just beginning to look at the long-term psychological effects of the pandemic, but many people are likely to carry emotional scars from losing loved ones and a year of isolation.
One result is trouble coping with the stressful situations large and small that life inevitably brings. Trapped Emotions, unresolved emotions from difficult or traumatic experiences, may trigger feelings of being stressed out and overwhelmed. This is a potentially damaging pattern that may affect our emotional and physical health.
When you suffer something traumatic, it can be extremely difficult to confront the resulting feelings. You may feel like doing so would force you to relive what you’ve already endured.
Does it feel safe with other people?
The Practice:
Relax needless fear around others.
Why?
We all know this fear. You step into a meeting with people you know and still there could be a watchfulness, a restraint, a certain carefulness in how you speak that comes more from subtle anxiety than reasonable prudence. Perhaps someone disagrees with you in this meeting – and you feel uneasy, off balance, unprotected; maybe later you worry what others thought about how you responded to the disagreement: Was I too irritated and pushy? Do they think I’m defensive? What should I do next time? When you get home, let’s say your teenage son is quiet and prickly as usual. You want to tell him that the chilly distance between you feels awful, and you want to open your heart to him . . . but it feels awkward, you’re afraid of making things worse, and when you spoke from the heart while growing up it did not go well and the fears reaching back into your childhood shadow and strengthen your fears today, so you say nothing, again. (I have had to deal with this myself.)
You're a loving human being and there it’s not worth you wasting another moment of your precious life to be angry or resentful about anything. Bitterness is not a good look for anyone. At some point in your evolution, once you no longer have a problem with being you, you start to encounter generational patterns that you actually agreed to break on behalf of your lineage. These patterns can be emotional traumas, addictions, and they can be behaviors that are unrecognizable to you.
Coming to grips with what you can and can’t control opens the door to true emotional freedom and personal power. I frequently receive questions about what to do in situations where someone is behaving in an unloving way, or a way that’s painful for them. For example:
- My co-worker never answers emails, making it very hard for me to do my work, as I need his input.
- My wife never wants to make love.
- People often ask me intrusive questions that I don’t want to answer.
- My husband is often late and never calls to let me know he is going to be late for dinner.
- My friend got together with a bunch of our friends for lunch and didn’t invite me.
- My parents are forever criticizing me.
- I often feel invaded and demanded of by family and friends.
- My husband sits at the table when we go out to dinner absorbed with his phone instead of talking with me.
- My children are disrespectful toward me.
- My wife has a male friend whom she talks with all the time and sometimes meets for lunch, even though I’ve told her I’m uncomfortable with their relationship.
- My wife often wants to talk about what I’m doing wrong.
Two Healthy Choices in Conflict
It is important to remember that we have only two healthy ways of dealing with conflict – two loving responses when another is behaving in a way that is upsetting or hurtful to us.
There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the Archives).
Note – This talk is dedicated to Tim Ferriss, who turned me on to the phrase FOMO. Tim exemplifies the creative aliveness of FOMO energy when it’s living through someone who’s dedicated to being awake, caring and real. Check out his podcasted interview with Tara at: https://youtu.be/pXNEM4wjSmE and his podcast at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/.
Do you believe you are responsible for causing others’ anger, hurt, sadness or anxiety? Is this causing you to feel guilty?
“My wife is so upset that I have to travel more on my new job,” Chuck told me in our phone counseling session. “She feels so alone and lost when I’m gone. When I talk with her she is either crying or angry. I feel so badly and guilty but I don’t know what to do.”
“Do you feel responsible for her feelings?” I asked him. “Do you feel that you are the cause of her feelings?”
“Yes.”
* * * * *
“I’m just starting to date again after my divorce and I’m having a hard time with it,” Jeanette told me. “I just don’t know how to let a man know that I’m not interested in dating him any more, or in pursuing a sexual relationship with him. It feels like such a sticky situation.”
“Is it sticky because you are worried about his feelings?”
“Yes. The last man I dated hung his head and looked so distressed when I asked him to leave. I know that he was really attracted to me and I wasn’t at all attracted to him. I felt so awful that he was so hurt.”
“Did you feel responsible for his feelings?”
“Yes.”
It’s through our relationships with those close to us that we get to work out our spiritual growth — and I am no exception!
My relationship with my mother was a container in which I received some of my deepest hurts and also have experienced the redemptive power of forgiveness, which is our Fourth Energy, Love.
From my earliest days, I had such a love-hate relationship with my mom. She was a very complicated, confusing woman. She was absolutely riddled with contradictions. Like, if someone rang the doorbell and we weren’t expecting company, we had to immediately get away from the windows so no one could see us. But at the same time, she loved to show us off and have us look a certain way, dressed up like little dolls with curled hair and perfect clothing.
She wanted to control everything — and me being me, I wanted to rebel, so we’d butt heads constantly. I was supposed to behave according to her rules. But at the same time, she’d be totally lenient in other ways.
I remember wanting to skip school because I hadn’t studied for a test. She made up an illness for me and let me stay home. She was both my friend and tormentor — the definition of “frenemy.”
When our family finances fell apart, the whole family fell apart. We were all a mess, emotionally and financially and spiritually. I was deep in my addiction to drugs and alcohol, and nearly lost my life to my addiction. I was out of control and out of balance in so many ways, including in respect to my fourth energy center, where love, compassion, and forgiveness reside.
Creating a Balance of Love and Compassion
When it comes to healing and how to heal, we often have so many questions. As we explore this, let’s start with a concept, which may be new to you—
There is nothing to heal, because there is nothing broken.
This may not be how a typical conversation about healing begins, so let’s tie it all together with an explanation about how our body and our life collaborate with each other. We live in a quantum reality and that quantum reality is what you’re truly interested in becoming masterful at.
Whether you are aware of this or not, there is a deep, true part of each of us that desires to walk and talk awake in this quantum reality as the creator and the healer that we truly are.
Everyone is capable of transforming their lives from victimized “reactorship” to empowered creatorship, because creativity is what we’re made of. It’s what we are here to do.
We are all capable of making this Quantum Flip® from victimhood to creatorship. No exceptions. Because we are made of creative energy itself and we are here to learn how to express and reveal that fully.
Remember those days when we used to travel? (I miss being in the room with all of you!) Back then, I’d meet people live and in-person who’d studied The Energy Codes® coursework for years. It was so inspiring to me, and still is, albeit virtually, that we’re reaching people all over the world because that is how we establish a different reality. We’ve created a new reality, despite, and because of, the circumstances.
The biggest epidemic in the world today is loneliness. That feeling of being unloved, unloveable, alone…
Technology has created a world that continues to become more connected... more crowded...
and yet increasingly lonely for so many.
This persistent feeling is not just emotionally painful, it can damage your relationships, career and even your health. Lonely people tend to sleep poorly, experience depression and anxiety and have reduced immune and cardiovascular health.
Research also tells us that chronic loneliness makes you increasingly sensitive to rejection and hostility. In uncertain social and work related situations, lonely people immediately think the worst.
Lonely people also pay more attention to negative social information like disagreements or criticism. They tend to remember more of the negative things that happen and fewer positive things.
Weekday Personal Support
Join Panache Desai each weekday morning for support in reconnecting to the wellspring of calm and peace that lives within you and that has the power to counterbalance all of the fear, panic, and uncertainty that currently engulfs the world.
Designed To Move You From Survival and Fear to Safety and Peace. Available Monday - Friday. Meditation begins at 9 AM. Access early to hear Panache's monologue - around 8:30 AM.
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