FIRE YOUR THERAPIST !

DEPRESSION/ ANXIETY   4-21-08

Depression and anxiety are greatly misunderstood  and mistreated. By misunderstood, I mean that traditional medicine, the typical doctor, psychologist or practitioner, views depression as a disease/illness that can be treated with medicine and/or cognitive/behavioral therapy. I am not here to dispute that some sufferers may benefit from these treatments, but I will say that they are not getting to the cause or the reasons for the depression or anxiety.

The symptoms of depression and anxiety are the result of unconscious (normally) emotional pain. Depression, often described as a physical sensation of a void or emptiness in the chest. Anxiety is experienced as a sense of muscular tension, nervousness, jitteriness, panic, or like jumping out of the skin. In this writing I am going to address anxiety and will speak to depression a little later although they are actually two sides of the same coin.

Anxiety is often related to fear where a person is under stress, fearful of outcome, or threatened in some way. Fight or flight mechanism is engaged, heart rate elevates, blood pressure goes up, adrenaline kicks in- all of this because a check was bounced or the garbage was not put out or gas prices are rising. The limbic brain, the emotional center, is engaged and “implicit” memory, unconscious emotional memory from past events, maybe even childhood, is triggered. So it is not these stressors which are causing the body to react as if a threat is occurring but the emotions stored in the limbic memory which are causing the fight or flight response.

Emotional pain is what is stored in the limbic brain which causes the anxiety, and if therapy does not address this pain and only works with thoughts, surface feelings, and behavior then the anxiety will always be present. It may be medicated and reduced but it will be like an underground river, impacting the person’s life, possibly debilitating but at least causing distress when a stressor occurs.

A later blog will focus on healing this anxiety. Responses are welcomed.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 8:45 pm and is filed under THERAPY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.