Healing Soul Sickness And Depression

Healing Soul Sickness The Heart of Depression

Posted on 04. Nov, 2009 by Katie Todd in Depression

Soul Sickness And Depression

Many with moderate to severe depression are unconsciously refusing to have a life. This is soul sickness. When the pain of our lives consumes all hope, our inner survival strategy becomes disengaging from life. Anything that previously bought joy, hope or love before becomes a threat. The aim is to feel nothing. The belief and fear is that love and joy inevitably bring pain. The underlying agenda dictating all choices is to be pain free. Therefore, the irrational ‘child’ logic states: resist all positive experiences and emotions and there will be less pain. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. This is the most painful way to live. When denied love and purpose our souls and lives suffer terribly.

When floundering in the cycle of soul sickness, no self help strategies work. The underlying cause hasn’t been identified. We drive others mad when behaving this way. They tell us we’re doing nothing to help ourselves, which is true!! The effect of living with someone with soul sickness is devastating.

Healing Your Heart

Healing such a chronic malaise is not as hard as it looks. The first crucial step is to recognise the unconscious decision to disengage from life. Go back to when the depression escalated. What events triggered this response? The minute we decide to live – just waiting to die – we are living as if dead. Recognising this self destructive agenda liberates its hold.

Receiving help to heal the pain of the event or events that triggered this self destruction is the next step. Self help strategies will work if we decide to engage and live again. Honouring our interests, passions, talents and loves are essential in getting well. I had an opera singer who had given up singing who came to see me. Within five minutes it was obvious he was experiencing soul sickness. He had denied himself his most important talent, passion and purpose. By naming his artist archetype and acknowledging its central role, his life changed overnight. Reasserting the artist to centre stage then allowed him to refocus and heal other areas of imbalance.

When healing soul sickness, our lives are reborn, in much better balance, honouring the people we were born to be. That is the purpose of soul sickness : to dramatically realign our lives with our true potential.

If you have any specific questions or comments about any of these articles I would be delighted to answer them.