Episode 14: Overcoming Depression

In my early twenties, I contemplated taking my own life. I would think about how I would do it and how I could end my suffering. I was severely depressed. I felt like I was in the darkest hole and I couldn’t climb or crawl my way out no matter what I did. I got on pharmaceuticals to help with my depression because I knew that I needed support in order to find balance. I felt that life wasn’t worth living, but there was something inside of me that stopped me from doing it and that something inside of me was two things: One, I didn’t want to disappoint my family. And two, there was just this knowing that it wouldn’t solve my problems and there was something that I was meant to be doing. And I wasn’t sure what it was, but that wasn’t the answer to end my suffering.

Depression is a scary thing. If you’ve never thought about taking your own life, it might be even hard to wrap your head around why someone would commit suicide or why someone would even think that way. You don’t know what’s going on inside of someone because you’re not inside of their head. You haven’t experienced their pain, you haven’t experienced their trauma, and we never know what someone else is feeling. We can assume. We may be able to relate based on their experiences or what someone is sharing with us, but we never know what’s going on.

And our depression rates have risen significantly since the pandemic. One in three American adults suffers from depression. The depression rates have risen to over 32%. This is according to a study done by public health researchers at Brown University and Boston University. The rate of depression was at 8.5% in 2020. And at the end when this article was posted at the end of 2021, the rates found that 32.8% of US adults experience depressive symptoms. That’s insane. I wanted to create this podcast for a place for people to know they’re not alone.

And sadness and depression are running rampant right now. We have so much societal pressure. The pandemic has really affected a lot of people’s mental health, and if you’re struggling with your mental health right now, please get support. Please reach out and ask for support. You may need to reach out to a doctor and have them help you find balance.

There is nothing wrong with taking medicine to help you find balance. I know that sometimes in the spiritual community, people think that they can meditate their way out of it, and that could be the case for some people. For some people, it’s not. And there is nothing wrong with taking something to help you find balance again. And this is not an episode to push pharmaceuticals in any way, shape, or form.

I’m a pretty holistic person, but I know that for me. I’ve been on depression medicine before, in my early twenties, to help me with my depression because I knew that I needed help with it and my numbing techniques were not helping and that some medicine might be beneficial. I also found other practices that really helped me as well. And I’m going to share my story and my dance with depression today and how I overcame it in hopes that this helps at least one person, and hopefully it helps more than one person. But if you’re depressed, I want to just let you know that things will get better. It does take time, but focus on moment by moment, day by day, on the things that you can do to help you feel better.

My dance with depression did not end in my early twenties. I have had episodes of depression, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. But first I wanted to share that one of the reasons why I didn’t take my life was because I didn’t want to disappoint my family. And I also had this knowing that there was something more for me to do and that knowing wasn’t really like I’m going to go out and I’m going to change the world. It wasn’t that. It was there was something more to discover about myself. There was something more to look at on the inside and that I could choose happiness. Those weren’t the words that I had at that moment in time. It was just this intuitive knowing. And I didn’t even know it was my intuition then. It was just this intuitive knowing that I just had to keep going, even if it hurt. And even if I was struggling in that moment, I had to keep going.

And that knowing led me to yoga and led me to Church. And I will tell people, that yoga completely saved my life and changed my life. When you’re depressed, it’s really important to pay attention to your gut. Pay attention to signs from the universe because the universe is constantly supporting you and constantly wants to see you succeed. The universe does not want you to suffer, and we create our reality with our thoughts.

And so the universe, God, divine, will try to assist you in feeling better. You can say a prayer like, hey, God, hey, universe, support me in feeling better. I am not feeling good right now. Please help me. Please lift me. Please bring light into me and the universe will respond. It might take a moment for you to recognize the signs that the universe is responding, but the universe will respond.

And what I started to do when I was depressed is I started to listen to my gut, also known as my intuition. And I was starting to receive signs from the universe again. At that time, I did not have these words to know that that’s what was happening, but that’s what was happening and I started having a really strong desire to do certain things. And one of those things was to practice yoga, specifically hot yoga. And that desire ended up leading me to a studio that assisted me in really peeling back the layers of trauma and leaving them on the mat. So I didn’t have to process them in the way that I was processing them anymore.

When I started going to yoga, I started sweating out the substances I was trying to use to numb myself out. I was also giving myself the opportunity to do a moving meditation and to breathe. There have been studies that have shown that when you breathe and you practice yoga that it can decrease depression rates. And this was a study that was done also by Boston University.

And I didn’t know that at the time that that’s what it was going to do. I just was guided to do it and it completely changed my life because it helped boost my serotonin levels. My dopamines, I started receiving all those happy juices and I started seeing life through a different lens.

I also was invited to go to Church with a really good friend of mine. She invited me to go to a Church that she never went to and we went one day and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I did not grow up in a Church. Church was not something that I grew up with, but my mom would always say like, hey, you can believe in God. You don’t have to go to church to believe in God. So I would often pray and I would often speak to Angels when I was a kid.
And going to church felt like a coming home party for me because it was a place for worship and it was a place for me to be held in light in a safe container to sing. Because this Church that I went to, I would be able to sing and sing and sing and sing and I loved it. And one of my spiritual teachers would often say the quickest way to God is to chant. And singing at Church, I believe is like chanting and I chant now also. My singing is different. I love chanting in Sanskrit, but these two things really helped me to get out of my depression.

Now, am I telling you to go to Church and to practice yoga if you’re suffering from depression? Absolutely not. I’m actually not telling you that at all. What I’m going to tell you is if you are suffering from depression or if you know someone that’s suffering from depression, is that depression, what my late teacher told me is an attitude, is a cry for creativty.

And when we are depressed, our soul is screaming to create something. Our soul is here to create and it is here to express itself in its uniqueness. And when we are not creating and co-creating with the universe and we’re doing things that don’t light our soul up. And we’re also processing trauma or processing events or experiences. And when we’re processing trauma and processing events and experiences, this can cause a degree of melancholy. And for some people, it can cause depression and severe depression. It just depends on the person and what they’re processing.

If you’re noticing that you’re disenchanted with life or you’re noticing that you wake up just sad in the morning, ask yourself, what can I create today that will allow me to feel good? When you go and start creating, you’re going to start noticing that you have the opportunity to experience life differently. The other thing that I highly recommend doing if you are experiencing depression or sadness is to ask yourself what your soul truly desires. Because that’s what I noticed that I started to do when I was suffering from depression. I would ask myself this, what do I truly want to do? What is it that I’m truly desiring to do at this moment in time?

And when those support systems actually got taken away from me, when I moved to a different state to be with my now-husband and I ended up injuring myself. And I started to get depressed again because I couldn’t practice yoga. I couldn’t find a Church that resonated with me or felt really good. I started to get depressed and I started to find myself crawling back into that dark hole. I spent a year crying… like a year crying. God bless my husband because I don’t know how he….. He told me just the first year that we lived together, I just cried all the time. I was so depressed because I cracked my tailbone for the second time and I started to worry about would I feel like taking my life again?

And I didn’t want that to happen. And I started noticing what are my strong desires? What am I desiring to do? And I had to give myself a pep talk in order to do it. And that’s when I realized like, hey, I want to practice meditation in a deeper way. I want to understand meditation in a deeper way. I also want to understand my dreams because at the time my dreams were tormenting me because I would dream about people torturing me and killing me and things like that. Again, unprocessed trauma coming up through a dream state. My subconscious mind was like letting me know what was going on and I was scared and I was nervous and I was in a dark place again and I started listening to my heart’s desires and that was, “Go meditate.”

And within a very short period of time, a lot shorter than in my early twenties, I started feeling good. My pain disappeared from my cracked tailbone. I was walking with a limp. And that’s why I couldn’t practice yoga anymore, because it was just not supportive of my injury. And within a short period of time, I was off my pain medicine and I was able to start feeling better and I wasn’t depressed anymore. And it all came down to just that check-in. like, what do I truly desire?

So at any point in time, if you are feeling depressed or if you’re feeling just disenchanted with life or sad, maybe there’s a different word you have for it. Maybe you’re even angry. Maybe you’re just like, “Ugh, do I have to do this?” Ask yourself, what is it that I can create? What is it that I can create today that would bring me joy? What is it that I can create a year from now? But I can start taking the steps to start hearing that today because sometimes our heart’s desires take time to create. And so baby steps towards that is gonna be also really, really great.

I also want to just let you know that depression looks different for everyone. If you met me at that point in time in my life, you probably wouldn’t have expected that I felt that way. And so please know that people experience depression and share it very differently, and you would be shocked by some of the people that are depressed. And so if you’re noticing that you are battling with this or you’re feeling that you’re sad, go and create something. Listen to your heart’s desires. Check in with yourself. Check in with your soul and get really honest with yourself about what it is that you want to be doing. How can you invite more fun into your life?

Also, this may seem like a strange tip, but notice if certain colors that you wear cause you to feel a certain way. So for me, this is something that I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older. For me, wearing a lot of black causes me to feel depressed. For some people, it might bring them a lot of joy. But wearing a lot of black causes me to feel depressed. You might notice, like, hey, when I wear red, I feel more energized. But when I wear blue, I feel maybe more blue or sadder. Or maybe you noticed that with blacks or gray or whites or creams or golds, oranges, there’s all the colors you know, and just notice. And I know that for me if I want a pick-me-up, one of my favorite colors to wear is yellow. That is a color that brings me great joy. And it also works with the solar Plex, which is also standing in your power. And so notice if there is a color that brings you a different type of energy that will help you.

Also, if you’ve noticed that you’re super depressed, get out of bed, take a shower, and get going for the day. Do something that will bring you joy. Reach out to a friend, have coffee, or have tea with someone. This is also going to help because being in the community can also help as well. And most importantly, reach out for support if there’s something going on in your life, there are many free hotlines out there that can support you in finding the help that you require and need at that moment in time. And there’s nothing wrong with asking for help. So I hope that you find joy in the littlest things and that life is worth living and that more joy can come to you as you’re co-creating with the universe. I’m sending you lots of love and light and lots and lots of hugs.

I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode and don’t forget to subscribe. It makes a big difference in us reaching more people so that they don’t feel alone. Love you guys a lot. Bye.