Depression and Healing

A guest blog by Theo Kitchener

Depression for those suffering from it can be many different experiences, however it may also be that the body is trying to heal.

It’s what happened to me when I was incomprehensibly upset about something. It’s the incomprehensibility that makes it depressive. I could barely feel the actual emotions because they were just so big.

What to do? We can get stuck in it, or we can process the emotions. Doing so requires understanding, tools, and trust in the process.

For most people, particularly those who have been in the depths of despair before, myself previously included, depression is really scary. It seems like there’s nothing useful or healing about it. It’s to be avoided like the plague if at all possible. It’s important to just stay in high spirits.

That’s really understandable. If our only recourse was anti-depressants, therapy and looking after ourselves better, then I would totally agree.

But those things are not our only recourse. Healing requires us to go deep into depression. But to do so with emotional safety, understanding, support, and trust that something useful will come of it. Processing the emotions may not look like anything much is happening, but everything slowly shifts.

And when it passes, I am a different person. Different in ways I need to be different in order to cope with whatever the depression was about.

Being depressed around others who are also depressed can be really useful as well. Without the skills, it can just reinforce the stuckness, but with them, it can be incredibly valuable.

Theo Kitchener is a system change thinker and writer, which includes a lot of work around healing, since healing is absolutely necessary to change the world. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and check out her online course, Healing for Utopia.