Depression Treatment and Our SwitchesDepression Treatment and Our Switches One of the things we have known for some time in the treatment of depression, anxiety and stress is that emotional trauma occurs. This can happen in the form of man made events, such as intentional emotional abuse, or lack of nurturement as in from a missing parent figure, also from extreme emotional activity as in the case of manic depressive personalities. When emotional abuse occurs, there is a build up of emotion in our psyche, and sooner or later this emotion must be processed. Hardship and other loss can create the same situation with natural events. Life happens and sometimes it can be rough. Those with medical and psychological predisposition to depression, anxiety and inability to deal with stress have lower thresholds for this trauma. Depression Treatment and Our Internal Switches As discussed earlier when a certain amount of hardship occurs for a person, two things happen; first their emotions build up, often subconsciously over time. When a threshold of pain, loss, and lack of nurturement has been reached, another thing happens, and we change perspectives. This change in perspectives seems to be a return of ourselves to a more primitive state of consciousness, resulting in a change as to how we perceive the world around us. Depression Treatment and Realization Points or Horizon Points This withdrawal to a more primal view of the world, and retreat from our overburdened human feelings perception of life happens at what we call Realization Points or Horizon Points. This is where we conclude that the suffering we are enduring is too great and feeling it and seeking its solution are no longer possible and reasonable choices. We may conclude that because of the hopelessness of our situation, or in the case of man made abuse, we may conclude that we do not deserve victory over our needs due to shame and low self worth, even if possible. In either case we return to a more distanced view of life, and leave our feelings behind. We have switched off our emotionality, and no longer have the ability to emotionally connect with others, or for them to connect with us. Depression Treatment and Degree of Switching There is a definite on-off characteristic involved in our mind's switches, and degrees of switching as well. The more trauma and unaddressable need we have had, the more the degree of switching. The more extreme switching happens in those who are sex and violent offenders, whom some of which demonstrate withdrawal into a reptilian state of awareness, rather than a feeling and human awareness. They have lost all capacity for deep feeling in this state, and use mimicry to manipulate the sincerity of others. Depression Treatment and The Levels There seems to be three distinct levels we may switch to, which are viewpoints or vantage points in those levels. They are activated when we reach a ‘This is Chaos, fall back!’ moment. Have most of us experienced times in our life when we have thought this? Yes, most of our visitors here have! There is a link in the Depression link below to go into more detail about the switching and its levels, and healing our own switches. Depression Treatment How We Find Our Switches Let us say we have addressed all of our past pain and grieved through it, and we in therapy, or with friends, have gotten all our growth achievements applauded, and all of our selfish nurturement needs met, then are we done? Not quite. If our emotional needs are traumatic enough to require treatment, there most likely needs to be some regression work to see if we need to 'switch back' in our minds. We do that with relaxation techniques similar to and including hypnotism. Depression Treatment Finding Our Realization and Horizon Points Whether we do this alone or with a therapist, it is necessary that we allow enough time for each session because we do not know when a breakthrough will happen, and our session may go long. Relaxation work can take us back into our past, and if successful, we may not want to leave if we can get a lot of work done while there. Deep work like this is hit or miss; and unlike talking, we might not be able to shut things down as easily as concluding a conversation. Depression treatment must take into account not only our past pain or ‘unfinished business,’ as we call it, but also our reversion to more protective views of indifference which is switching. There is a difference between ‘withdrawal,’ which is denial of events, or their significance, and ‘switching,’ which is a reversion into indifference, and refusal to emotional connection with other persons and with their feelings and boundaries. Depression Treatment and Getting to Know Our Past Better Where can we find out about our emotional time line and where our switches were thrown? Where can we learn to switch ourselves back to overcome our depression and anxiety much faster? That link is at the Depression Link below, 'Going Back.'
Going Back
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