She had suffered with the worst case of depression I have ever come across – over 25 years of medication for it.
Half an hour earlier she’d done a major stuff up in her horse’s float / trailer training, clipped the chain up behind his butt while he was still tight and tense and he’d gone beserk, busting the chain and banging his head on the way out. When she got on the video phone to me they were both shivering with distress and she was in despair that she’d stuffed up this relationship that she’d nurtured so carefully and meant so much to her.
Minutes after phoning, she’d made a personal breakthrough into a deep understanding of all the threads that brought her to that moment and her horse had walked over to share and soak up a gorgeous time of intense joy together.
And joy was not a new thing, it’s been a normal part of her life – and her horse life – for quite a while now.
Yet this is a woman who had suffered one of the worst cases of depression I had ever come across.
She was at the end of a whole line of women who had experienced repeated trauma in their lives, that also had suffered from depression. It had been a pattern of trauma related depression that had echoed down the ages, generation after generation. In her case it had resulted in forty years of deep depression, often suicidal, prescribed cocktails of anti-depressants that weren’t able to completely numb off the feelings that would burst through the haze of the drugs.
So the intense joy she was experiencing with her horse that day (did you hear me say that joy is now a NORMAL part of her life?) AND that she was experiencing that joy within minutes of a monumental stuff up – can you see why I think it’s such a big deal?
There’s a simple happiness, even intense feelings of joy to be found BECAUSE of depression.
Depression is an alarm bell, an alert, a “heads up” pay attention please, you’ve been stuffing those feelings down too often, for too long – something is freaking wrong here and needs to be done differently. And when we pay attention to it in the simple way that we teach here, then there is inner peace, happiness and yes, even those intense feelings of joy on the other side of every depression.
Yes you read that right – there’s an opportunity for those same intense feelings of joy that my friend was experiencing with her horse, in EVERY depression…
Joy from depression? Is that even possible?
See me smiling? Here’s how we do it.
1. Attend to and eliminate the physical causes of depression in your life, as per our last blog. When these physical causes of feeling crappy exist for someone, then it’s really hard to fix the mental and emotional side.
2. If you’ve not “met” me before, take 20 minutes today to get started on some inner peace with this totally free meditation.
3. You don’t need a horse for the on-line book Holy Shit Is That Really True? also known as “I Wish You Happiness” – this is an on-line experience of inner peace and happiness.
4. The same FEEL for your horse that makes the great horse men and women great, is the same feelings that feel so crappy when we bottle them up inside us. Bottling them up happens when we don’t understand how to use them. ALL of our horse programs teach you Feel for your horse. While you’re getting to be REALLY good with your horse, at the same time you’re learning how to release those old bottled up feelings that have nothing to do with horses. Click here to look at our “path to excellence with horses” programs. There’s something for every size wallet. Email me if you need a payment plan.
5. There’s also private healing sessions available.
If that’s all too complicated and you just want to talk about what we can do for you, email me
Today’s photo is the guardian angel Whisky and a dear little friend of mine. I wanted a light hearted photo because, although depression is often described as “the black dog”, once we know how, it’s also a pathway to everything wonderful in life.
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