Depression is now epidemic in America. I know about depression because I have spent a major portion of my life dealing with it. Depression causes you not to have energy to do anything and it becomes a vicious cycle. People who have never experienced depression will say things to a depressed person like, “Come on, woman! Get yourself together! Snap out of it! Go shopping!” They don’t know that you physically feel like you have a 50-pound sack of potatoes on each shoulder and all your muscles are so weary that the last thing you want to do is shop. The catch phrase, “Shop till you drop,” just has a different meaning to you. It’s more like “Drop…before you shop”…into a horizontal position that is, and it’s not by choice, mind you, but sheer total exhaustion of your mind and body.

I used to remember days when my body would be sitting in front of the television set, and I would stare out the glass pane of the door trying to decide a simple task like, “what to cook for dinner,” which sometimes took me two hours to figure out. That was the easy part. The actual preparation of the meal was a monumental feat, as my mind and the muscles in my body were on go slow. Just this simple chore would fatigue me to no end.

 Depression is physically, emotionally and mentally painful not only to the person who is suffering from it, but also to the people around them. The depressed person usually neglects themselves and their intimates, and sadly these people are unable to help the depressed person out of their pain. Simply put, depression hurts. 
 
Now, depression is a medical condition, and though I am very familiar with such things as serotonin uptake and antidepressant drugs, I am not a doctor; therefore I will not address it from a medical point of view, but rather from a metaphysical emotional vantage point which I was taught by my dear Unseen Friend and mentor Lazaris.

 Lazaris says that depression is caused by two things. The first is a “quick and sudden change,” like when someone close to you suddenly dies, or after having a baby, in which case is called post-partum depression. The second cause is probably more common and is caused from “layer upon layer of gauze-like anger, piled up on top of one another,” until one day it becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is the one that usually leads to the chronic fatigue syndrome that I experienced.

Ironically, most of the people who suffer from chronic fatigue are very high-energy people by their nature, but they are not living the life they want to live. Usually, they are taking care of everybody else and not themselves. To fulfill these duties and obligations, they have to shut down their passion which results in anger and rage as they are unable to express their feelings because it is masked by guilt. Guilt is anger you don’t feel you have a right to have. If I am taking care of my child or an aging parent, for instance, these are duties I feel I am obligated to do and therefore do not feel I have a right to feel angry for having to fulfill them. So, not only do they have to use their energy to shut down their passion, but they also have to use it to shut down their anger and rage. It takes so much energy to do this that they are exhausted. I know that’s what I used to do with my energy. I had just enough energy to do basic functions like eating and going to the bathroom, but I had to draw on what little reserves I had to drop and pick up my daughter from school and to cook dinner. That was the extent of my daily activities at that time.

Since depression is primarily anger that you feel you’re going to get in trouble for–you need to give yourself a way to express all that anger. Maybe you could write it out. Talk in the mirror, or with a therapist, or with a friend, or with someone who understands, who will be there with you to express it.

And here’s a technique that might help:

1. Sit or lie down and sense yourself there with a two-hundred pound burlap bag filled with sand on top of you. No wonder you are so tired and you can’t move.
2. Now, imagine taking a small pocket knife and cutting a little slit in the bag, not more than an inch or two.
3. Watch the sand coming out. If you’ve ever seen an hour glass, you notice how it builds up a peak and then the weight of it spreads it and then it builds up again and spreads it. You still can’t move, so just watch.
4. As you watch the sand building up into this huge pile beside the bed or beside the chair, you now feel the bag getting lighter. Visualize yourself jiggling the bag as more comes out. The sand is all over the place but it’s not condensed anymore. It’s not depressing you.
5. When it gets light enough, take this burlap bag which is now collapsed in your lap and start spinning it around your head with a centrifugal force and then let it go. 
6. Immediately visualize jumping up and yelling with joy and happiness, dancing around, jumping, turning somersaults and back flips. Things you couldn’t possibly do in fact of physicalness but in this freedom you can.

It may not work the first time, but as you do this technique the second, third, fourth time—one of those times your subconscious is going to understand what you mean and you are going to break free. One of those times—the depression is gone.

Suzanne Hosang lives in Florida with her husband, daughter and a host of animals. Her life was forever changed when she met Lazaris, a non-physical being who reminded her that she is a mapmaker, dreamer and dream-weaver, vision-maker and reality creator. In addition to her practice, she has written An Awakening, Mapping Your Dream, Volume 1. For more information, visit www.suzannehosang.com.