Finding help with depression is needed by an increasing number of people. There are changes in society, especially in the United States that is bringing this need to the forefront of our lives. While your depression or those of your loved ones can come from a million different causes, we can only offer insight in some general areas. Perhaps this insight can serve as a starting point for your search for a healing and solution. Medical reasons if purely the cause can only be addressed by those in the relevant medical and therapeutic fields, on a very personal and individual level, specific to the one suffering. However, there may be causes in the umbrella over your life that are spiritual which we may help provide answers and comfort for as well. It is this spiritual setting, this landscape that we will lay out here which might provide you with some understanding.
We all know the symptoms and feelings of what depression is, and there is no need to list them here. Every website on the subject lists them completely. We will lay out the landscape of the world in which we all are living in and see if we can find a cause for your situation. Maybe you will find a familiar cause in your case. At its deepest root, depression and its cousin anxiety have as its source an unmet and continuous emotional need. Here are some of the contributing factors which our current living conditions can create in your life. They may seem on the outside of your world, but even over the horizon, they can be influencing your emotional integrity strongly. For an introvert person the social ice breaking can be far worse.
We list some here:
Kiosks in fast food restaurants and some medical centers where you do not meet a person, you interact with a computer screen.
Applying for employment through a website and interaction is with an HR person or chatbot in another state. How impersonal is that!
Ordering a pizza from a local pizza place in your community in Kansas and talking to an oriental taking your order in Nepal. So much for making social ties at your local pizza eatery.
Vehicle windows that are tinted where no view of the occupants is possible. How do you wave to anyone and let them in front of you with a gesture?
New buildings are all painted flat black, white and grey with no warmth. They imitate family dormitories in Russia where no one can afford a home.
Everyone worshipping their cell phone as a god and no one looks at anyone as they pass. Everyone is in their own little world.
Everyone on the street is wearing hoodie sweatshirts, black shorts even in wintertime and wearing earphones and listening to music, with all outside contact cut off.
Commercial buildings are all hard floors, chrome, no warm colors, and all seating has been removed, even in coffee shops. No carpet, no cloth seats, chairs are like in a prison.
Phone communication with businesses and medical care centers is through menus, where access to the person you need to communicate with is impossible. You must wait for them to call you back.
And the list of settings blocking personal interactions goes on forever. The behavior of people in public settings are just as indifferent, closed and uninviting.
No matter what station you and your family are situated today in this modern world, there are changes that are happening which not everyone is emotionally equipped to adapt to very easily. There are many changes which are not connected but together may be pushing you or your loved ones away from their emotional integrity. The very way our human interaction happens has moved away from face to face to more remote and abstract forms of communication. The purest and strongest form of interaction is when we talk together in person, and we have the other person’s attention. When that happens, we can clearly see that we matter to them, and our feelings and emotional needs matter to them as well. Such attention given to us prompts us to emotionally turn inward and express our feelings more deeply from our heart, whatever is in there will come out. That is as it should be.
When barriers go up such as indifference, the tendency to express ourselves drops through the floor, and the buildup of emotional need to express begins to build. Lack of in person interaction causes a lack of expression of our everyday feelings. This buildup can go on for a long time without notice, but unmet emotional needs never go away. And at some point, the need begins to define itself as depression and a lack of being our authentic self. A certain critical percentage of our daily emotional activity needs to be shared with other people and mirrored back to us for us to feel validated. In other words, for us to be complete, we need to feel seen, recognized and agreed with on certain views and experiences we have had. All therapy, love and nurturement we need to experience is based on this principle. When we are denied this loving, agreeing audience then we are no longer a person, we are a shadow, and that hurts.
When we are again, or maybe for the first time, given the loving attention of a person or group that cares to listen to our feelings, and confusion about things, then we will start to share what needs to be shared. We will ask that question which we always wanted to ask but we had nobody to whom to ask it. When we start to communicate, even if it’s awkward at first, then the communication will become more correct. We will become able to put into words what was in our hearts to say that needed said. When this happens, then we will feel complete, understood and loved.
In some form or another, some of the questions we will need answered is, “why did I not matter?’ or “when do I begin?” and “What about me?” and “Where do I begin to be present?” The Primal Scene is a caretaking loving face reflecting to a needful face and mirroring back of what the needful face needs and understanding what the needful face wants to share. All therapy and all the deepest human interaction happens on that level. That is what makes us fully human. This is the basis of all society. Humans do it, mammals do it and is what connects us fully to all living things. Moreover, and through others mirroring back our emotions to us, it deeply connects us to ourselves and lastly then to God.
The remedy for finding friendship and making relationships with the emotional depth you need is only possible through emotionally healthy social groups. Those must be meticulously searched for one situation at a time.
Churches are a first choice, politics a second choice. When looking at churches, you will have to try many. Most churches are about worshiping the church organization, and their theology, and not about nurturing its members, which is why you are there. You will know soon enough if they are about your emotional and spiritual needs or if they are about promoting their ideology and church leadership, and in growing their church organization. Their theology about Jesus is not the answer, you getting your selfish nurturement needs met is.
In getting help with your depression, your need is a spiritual one, and not necessarily one of needing religion, although it can be. If your inner self, or inner child as it is often referred to, has a heart of sports, adventure, desire to create or promote something, then the emotionally healthy social group may be far outside of religion. There are many common causes, special interest groups and hobby clubs. Looking for one will involve looking inside yourself first to find what will be a match out there.
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.