How to Heal Depression

Are you tired of feeling depressed? Would you like to find out the causes of this draining emotion so that you can heal yourself? Early in my practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I learned some very interesting aspects of this debilitating emotion that robs us of our health and happiness.

To begin with, I discovered from my clients that depression is anger turned inward. Anger is a secondary emotion. Under this feeling is fear, hurt, and/or powerlessness. I also learned that there are only two basic emotions and they are fear and love. All other emotions are either fear-based or love-based. It is easy to tell the difference. Fear constricts our bodies and does not feel good. In fact, it is the cause of stress and anxiety. Love expands our bodies and feels great.

Therefore, the cause of emotional depression (there are also medical causes) is basically fear. However, that is not the bottom line. To go deeper, I discovered that our fears are caused by our negative decisions that are made from our negative experiences. My goal in the process I developed, HART, which stands for Holistic And Rapid Transformation, is to help clients identify their fear-based experiences and thoughts and to change them to positive ones, so that they can feel good.

For over 28 years, I have had tremendous success with this process, because it quickly gets to the causes of depression and any other problems. No matter what the issues were for the clients, I always looked for the negative decisions that caused them to live in fear and have low self-esteem.

For example, John, a forty-three-year-old successful lawyer, was referred to me by his friend. All of John's money could not stop him from suffering from depression. The emotionally struggling man could not seem to grasp the happiness he desired. The lawyer had problems with relationships, family members and friends. Nothing seemed to make him happy. He was miserable.

As I do with all clients, I looked for the negative thoughts that were tormenting him. With the HART process, they were easy to find. We are unique, and our problems are not. John made many common negative decisions based on his painful childhood. His mother was emotionally unavailable, and his Dad was an alcoholic.

From the verbal and physical abuse and lack of love and support, John decided that he was bad, not good enough, unimportant, unlovable, unworthy, and unattractive. All of these beliefs were not true, but F.E.A.R is False Evidence Appearing Real.

Typical of children, little John took responsibility for all the pain in his family, and he felt helpless and hopeless to help them. All this hurt his self-esteem. Even though John was an adult living on his own for many years, he, like all of us, was still being affected by his past.

Once John was able to release those fear-based thoughts and change them to positive ones, his self-esteem improved. He smiled as he said, "Helene I feel better and more hopeful." I taught John how to identify his depression, anger, fears, and negative beliefs, and how to release them constructively with the HART process. I reminded him that he was okay, no matter what people said or did. I helped him realize that he had the power to attract what he wanted with his new positive beliefs (The Law of Attraction).

Six months later, I received a phone call from John. He happily told me that he felt good, and he had a loving relationship with a wonderful woman. "Helene, when something negative happens, I no longer take responsibility for it. It feels so good not to be depressed."

If you suffer from depression, you can also help yourself overcome that debilitating emotion. Even if you are taking medication, it is still important to deal with the emotional causes by releasing your negative thoughts and changing them to positive ones. When you raise your self-esteem, you can also raise your head up high and say, "I am depressed no more!"