More on Depression

Depression seems to be rampant today throughout the world so I thought I would discuss it a bit more.  What I have found after treating many people who claim that they are depressed is they have a typical imprint that drives it.  I should say depression is underlined by many imprints that all tell the same story……. I am about to die.

Before I do go further I want to note something that I found in many depressives that led me to my conclusions.  I did measurements during their Primals and found one key reaction:  the deeper they got into the kernel of their depression the lower their body temperature. Sometimes lower by 3 degrees. It would seem dangerous but it was not.  But why that drop?   And more important why did they usually soon come back to the so-called normal range after the session?

It would seem that these patients were headed toward body fail as though they were dying; and the vital signs followed suit.  But why that?  Were they near death lying in my padded therapy room?  Yes and no.   In their memory imprint, they were certainly dying. And when into the feeling they were again dying.   But this time with a different ending; they were coming alive and out of their depression as they were immersed into the feeling:  “I am dying, suffocating, can’t breathe and can’t move“. Yet so many do die or kill themselves as that feeling has a stranglehold on their systems and wreaks damage when they are not in a therapy that can resolve it.

This is a strange dialectic: dying to come alive.  But if you do not feel dying you cannot be liberated and come alive.  Why?   The imprint/memory dominates.  It actually happened and it is an embedded memory.  Until you eliminate what is dragging you down, you cannot overcome it.  This is an iron primal/biologic law. The imprinted memory has to be totally relived even if it takes months to feel it.  It cannot be done in a day or a week.  It is so powerful that it makes a person depressed.  And what is depression?   Hopelessness and helplessness.    So, it is not strictly depression: it is hopelessness called depression.   So we cannot say you are depressed therefore you feel hopeless. No. Hopeless is another name for depression.  I have seen patients descend deep in the brain and their “depression” becomes hopelessness as they touch the real imprint: “ I am dying and there is nothing I can do.”

That is what the memory is suppressing and that suppression makes it such a mystery.  Our system is suppressing the memory of approaching death and its terror. When my patients start to feel deep depression; what I call first-line brainstem depression, because its origins are so deep and remote, the body accommodates to this approaching disaster and slows down to conserve oxygen and energy. It says: “Hold back, do nothing vigorous or your life will be endangered. Don’t breathe deeply.”  These are the elements of depression that trail us throughout life.  We don’t want to do anything,  go anywhere and begin any chore even though it is urgent.  They feel energy-less, without motivation.  It can never be as urgent as the imprint of near death.  It is so importuning that the depressive considers suicide without fully knowing what the true feeling is.  It just feels terrible and unbearable. And he does not know how to stop it. He thinks that only death will stop it: strange, to kill oneself over the possibility of feeling death approaching.   I know how to get out it: feel it, get into it, but first you need to know what to feel and that takes a while in therapy because it is so recondite as to be unbelievable.  And at first it is a distant and foggy element.  Not recognized for what it is.   And there is no one to tell you what it is or when to feel it.  It is a memory waiting its biologic turn to be experienced.  It is above all, not just some idea concocted by a therapist where he admonishes the patient to change his ideas to get out of the depression.  It is not just a mental affair; it is neuro-biologic.   The person feels “down”  and wonders why?  I know.  He was seriously drugged very early on and he feels it all the time as an imprinted memory.   He drugs himself or runs from it because he does not know what “it” is.  How could he know that he has to feel it again, only this time alongside a professional who will help and who will not allow anything untoward to happen to the patient.

Remember, that what happens to us outside, even during life in the womb, changes the DNA methylation and makes it internal.  The memory is now inside and stays there.   There is a kind of merger, if you will, so that experience and heredity become one.  Suffocation is now a fixed memory.  I see it in patients on the verge of early feelings who cannot stand the doors or windows closed without becoming anxious and terror filled, the same feeling imprinted deep in the brain.

Otherwise he gets into a feeling and experiences low body temperature and it mystifies him.  And the doctor, perplexed, offers drugs to help him out.  He should be helping him “in”.  Hold on:  I assume that it is a trained primal therapist who knows the danger signs.

Meanwhile the depressives often get into serious drugs to keep the imprint at bay.   It is always there and raging down below.  Of course the depressive is a downer because not exerting himself was life saving.  It is not that the depressive feels hopeless:  it is that depression is hopelessness.   That is why he deals with all of the time.

You mean to get rid of something you have to go into it again?   That makes no sense; except it makes all the sense because the feeling was far too much to be accepted and integrated when it happened. It could have led to death.   And what is that memory?  A mother drinking or smoking; unavoidable and inescapable for the baby.  Or anesthetics at birth, which almost completely shut down the baby’s whole system and his breathing included.  A hundred thirty pound mother allowing drugs into a 5-pound infant.  What may be perfect for her is almost lethal for a young body.  That is why as an adult patient the pain can only be felt a small bit at a time until it is totally integrated.  The defense system is now mature enough to titrate the input and keep it manageable.
A mother taking even mild tranquilizers can produce the same effect.  I guess it all boils down to recognizing the imprint and its enduring and painful content.  It is life endangering for two reasons; the pain will eventually lead to serious afflictions such as heart attacks.  Or, it will lead to suicide attempts in an effort to stop the agony.  Choose your weapons: feel it or ??