Depression as a helpful Protector.

I know it sounds strange, but depression was most likely a life-saving and adaptive way of managing intense distress at some point in your life. To be fair I think we can unpack the idea of depression as a whole, and maybe I will do that next time, but for now let's look at depression as just a part of you or me, that has shielded us from difficult early experiences. 

When we experience relational trauma or attachment trauma, where our safe person (usually mum or dad) isn't safe, but instead they are critical, dismissive, angry, humiliating/shaming, absent or anything else that isn't attuned, we experience intense stress because we are unsafe. It is the feeling of deep loneliness that cultivates depression to step in and shut us off from emotional pain and isolation. 

Our sympathetic nervous system is over-activated, because it is communicating that we are in danger. That vulnerable child part is safely stored away, shut off from conscious awareness. It is a matter of emotional survival, and sometimes physical, but of course in the long run we are shut off from our life force and disconnected from many things like our body, other people, our emotional world and we might feel numb and empty empty and it might be difficult to derive joy out things that we think we should maybe feel joyful about.

I know that it has helped me to be able to connect with my depressive part in this way, talking to it with deep compassion for the job it had to do early in my life. I have also been able to witness many people being able to shift their relationship with their depressive part, allowing for an inner dialogue of gratitude and understanding, and in time this past can slowly step aside allowing us to tend to the vulnerability that it has stored for so long. 

By befriending your inner community and all its parts, allows for aliveness, joy and connection to surface and there might just be more ease, joy and contentment in your life.