By Julie Peters | Source

Attending to the spiritual meaning of our depression may teach us something about ourselves, our families, and our lives.

Feeling depressed is a common experience that most of us go through at one point or another. But depression can also be a mood disorder—a constant state of numbness and lack of energy or enjoyment of life. Medication and other therapies can be very helpful for treating depression. However, in addition to working with the medical aspects of depression, it’s important to also consider the possible spiritual meaning of depression.

Exhaustion and the Inability to Rest Well

A symptom of depression is exhaustion—being depressed can often make us feel as if we can’t do anything but lie in bed. In severe cases, we might barely be able to think. Without a blood test, it can be hard to determine if depression is caused by something like anemia, which creates a state of weakness and exhaustion in the body. And depression can certainly be triggered by exhaustion itself, caused by burnout, stress, or unprocessed grief. Grief in particular often calls for more rest and care than most of us are allowed by our jobs or daily lives.

Consider these questions:

• Are you feeling exhausted, used up, or unrefreshed by rest and sleep?

• Has something happened to make you feel very tired?

• Do you or can you rest as much as your exhaustion wants you to?

• When you try to rest, does your mind race with anxiety, fear, or self-criticism?

• Have you attended to the needs of your body with adequate rest and nutrition?

• If not, why not? What has prevented you from caring for your body in these ways?

Numbness and Unprocessed Emotions

Many people think of depression as a long-lasting sadness. In reality, depression often feels more like numbness, hopelessness, and a lack of motivation. Sometimes it can feel a little like sadness, but its function is to “depress” emotions and the body’s energy. Depression can sometimes cover up a deep emotion that our systems have decided is unsafe to feel. This is commonly grief or anger, though it could be other core emotions, too, like joy or attraction.

• Are you aware of something you should or could be feeling, but just can’t?

• Has something happened in your life that you haven’t let yourself fully process?

• How were big emotions treated in your family when you were young? Were you held and supported, or ignored, sent to your room, punished, or yelled at?

• Do you feel that all your emotions are truly safe to feel?

• If not, why not? What do you think might happen if you were to allow all feelings to surface?

Anger

Aside from grief, anger is very commonly the core emotion that depression protects us from feeling. Anger is the emotion that helps you stand up for your needs and protect your boundaries, and many of us suppress it because we’ve been taught it’s inappropriate, scary, or simply isn’t effective. When we lose touch with our anger, we can also lose touch with our needs and boundaries. Helplessness follows, and depression ensues.

• What is your relationship like with anger?

• Are you aware of needs that aren’t being met or boundaries that are being crossed?

• Do you feel that it is fundamentally okay for you to have needs and express them?

• If you were to express your needs, do you feel they would get met?

• What would it feel like or look like if you let your anger tell you something about your needs and boundaries?

Spiritual Change or a Loss of Faith

One way to think about depression is that it is a lack of spirit, a loss of meaning. The spiritual meaning of depression could be that we’ve lost our spark, faith, or spiritual trust in ourselves and the world. Studies have shown that while having a sense of spirituality can protect some people from depression, it can also make some of us more vulnerable when our core spiritual beliefs are challenged. Depression may be a way of trying to process some sort of spiritual shift.

• What is your relationship with spirituality? With your purpose in life?

• Has something happened that caused you to lose your sense of purpose or spirituality?

• Have you experienced a spiritual betrayal in your life where your faith somehow let you down?

• Has a spiritual community you were connected to let you down in some way?

• If you no longer believe what you did before, how do you now make sense of the world?

• Where can you find meaning if it’s not where it was before?

Learned Helplessness and Relationship with Power

Depression is often rooted in a sense of powerlessness. Learned helplessness is a perceived lack of control; a sense that pain and suffering are inevitable even when they could be avoidable. This defeated outlook could be caused by one large traumatic experience or many smaller traumatic experiences in which our power was taken away. This could lead us to internalize narratives about the inevitability of disappointment, failure, and being treated badly.

• Did you learn at some point that negative experiences were inevitable no matter what you did?

• In either childhood or adulthood, have you had relationships where you felt your needs really didn’t matter?

• Do you have an inner narrative about being a failure?

• What is your relationship to power and choice in your life?

• Where do you express power and choice in your life?

• What comes to mind when you think about making a choice or exerting power?

• Where in your life can you begin to reclaim power and choice for yourself?

Intergenerational Energies

Like many other conditions, depression can be passed down through genetics. Family systems (biological or not) also tend to pass down coping mechanisms, patterns, and unwritten rules. Our depression isn’t always caused by something we are personally going through; sometimes it’s been passed down by the people in our family, trying to find a place to heal. Healing yourself, then, is a way of healing your ancestors; of changing the way these patterns are passed down to the next generation.

• What does depression look like in your family system? Consider your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, siblings, and maybe even great grandparents.

• What happened to those in your family who had depression? How are or were they regarded?

• Were there major cultural events or traumas that could have instigated familial depression?

• How was depression talked about (or not), treated (or not), or dealt with in general?

• What does it feel like to consider that your depression may not be entirely yours?

• Would healing your depression (feeling things, being joyful, standing up for your needs and boundaries) require breaking a family rule or two?

External Spiritual Energies

Some believe that there are entities out there that can cling to us, especially if we are sensitive and open to them. These entities are not all good, and when they mess with us, it can cause an unusual heaviness, sense of sadness, and general feeling of not being ourselves.

This energy could be an ancestor trying to reach out to us, or we could be taking on vicarious trauma from watching the news or someone else going through a difficult time. It could also be a random entity picked up somewhere, especially if you have been doing spiritual practices without appropriate protections in place.

• Did your depression seem to come out of nowhere?

• Have you been spending time in environments where people are suffering or processing pain?

• Is the confusing sense of not being “yourself” a new experience in your life? Or have you felt it before?

• Have you felt connected to spiritual energies you don’t quite understand or know how to work with?

If the above questions resonated with you, it might help to do some clearing with an energy healer you trust or on your own. A simple way to do energy clearing is to light a candle (you can also use some smoke from rosemary or incense) and mindfully cleanse your energy body. You can imagine a white or golden light clearing your body and your energy field. Intention is important, which is why I love this magic spell: “This is my body, this is my energy.” It can go a long way toward clearing anything that isn’t yours.

Depression is a major illness that can be either long- or short-lived. It requires attention; make sure to care for it in whatever ways resonate for you, be it energy work, medication, or therapy (or all of these!). Attending to the spiritual meaning of our depression may teach us something about ourselves, our families, and our lives.