"Depression is most commonly known as a quiet suffering, however perhaps it is a silently screaming of the soul to express it's authentic and creative self. In addition to the sadness and hopelessness that is commonly experienced with depression, we feel disempowered, invaluable and non-existent."  - Lisa Riley

My view as a therapist is that everyone experiences depression in their life even though they many not know it or want to admit it. Indeed the human psyche or ego could be said to be built on depression because it is a thought system based on fear and repression.

If you are human you will experience dark feelings. Women statistically experience twice as much depression as men, and artists and creative people are often prone to feeling the deeper, darker more unfathomable feelings. Depression can described as a feeling of meaninglessness, hopelessness and as having no point of view. Time collapses and you cannot remember ever feeling better or imagine that you will ever feel better again.

Creatively and spiritually speaking depression could be described as an extended period of dark feelings, negative self-focus, and a feeling of helplessness over our harsh and controlling inner voices. It can involve overwhelming, annihilating and painful feelings of despair and sadness. What is the root of this sadness? What are we really fighting inside?

Extended focus on dark stories about what we believe is about wrong with life and what is wrong with oneself can build on top of these dark feelings and the depression can gain momentum and spiral down further. Usually there is an urge to withdraw from others and it becomes difficult to function in daily life. Spiraling into depression can be described as falling down into a deep dark hole that can seem difficult to climb out of again.

Depression is Inner Rejection

Expressing feelings and becoming aware of all of the conflicts in your mind and acknowledging and honoring your feelings is way of loving yourself. Depression is the repression of feelings. It can often be traced back to parts of the mind struggling to express differing points of view. Usually during a depression a deeper truth or a repressed aspect of self is trying to arise that the conscious mind habitually rejects.

When I first learned to track my own depressions, I noticed that I could feel a muffled feeling or desire arising, or a suppressed need, or an inner truth trying to coming up to my awareness for acceptance. If I could not meet it - my suppressed feeling would flit through my awareness for a short period and then in a state of anxiety, guilt, embarrassment or fear I would try to push it back down again.

As I pushed my repressed feeling or a deeper truth back out of conscious awareness the self-rejecting cycle of depression would begin. I could feel myself becoming more distant from myself and from other people, I could feel myself withdrawing away from life and saying no to what my deeper mind was trying to tell me.

Corrective therapeutic experiences such as sharing verbally in therapy or through exploring your unconscious mind through the synchronicity of spontaneous art can help you to see your life more honestly, and help you express and release buried pain, trauma and loss. Sharing honestly in therapy or with a compassionate other can help you to correct, change your perspective on your life, and view yourself differently.

Depression as a Withdrawal of Our Greatness

As women, for those of us that are living into the feminine principle of life we are meant to give our best selves to life. Why don't we? What we most avoid is giving our gifts to life wholeheartledly and showing up as our biggest and best selves even when no one else around us is offering their higher self to the situation.

We often fear doing what no one else is doing. We often fear going out front and being different. We fear opening our hearts that fully and taking risks because we may have been hurt before in our truthful expression and we are afraid to feel hurt again. A great truth is what we most repress as women is our own innate greatness and the possibility of living into our highest potentials.

Women, even highly functioning and achieving women suffer from periodic, often secret bouts of depression, crushing self-doubt and periods of despair especially if their achievement is driven by negative self-talk and a feeling of never being good enough.   

When you feel a depression coming you will likely feel your energy withdrawing from life. Depression is often a refusal to live at full heart centered throttle and with truthful authenticity. It is a resistance to the truth of your life or your feelings in some way. You can ask yourself some good questions when you start to feel your life energy contracting, withdrawing from life and spiraling into a deep dark hole. 

Ask yourself the following questions and write down what first pops into your mind:

What am I afraid to express?

What am I afraid to say?

What am I afraid to change?

What am I afraid to accept?

What am I afraid to give?

Who or what am I afraid to give it to?

Who am I afraid to love?

Who am I afraid to forgive?

What am I afraid to hear?

What am I afraid to let go of?

What pain our loss do I not want to feel?

What truth about myself do I not want to know?