Q&A 9 – What is depression?

What is depression really? Is it a problem? Is it a sign there’s something wrong with us and our psychology?Or is it something else? In this episode, Alexandra reflects on her personal experience with depression and what she saw about the role it plays in our divine design.You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and full transcript below. Show Notes* Beginning with the understanding of our innate wellness * Alexandra’s personal experience of depression * How depression can be like sailing the ocean * Why resisting any experience, including depression, only increases our suffering * Can depression be seen as a safety mechanism? * What is caterpillar soup and how does it relate to depression? * On how the drive to overeat and depression are relatedTranscript of episodeWelcome back, Explorers, to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today the question is: what is depression? It’s going to sound like initially that it doesn’t really have anything to do with resolving an unwanted habit. But the two really are tied together. And I’ll bring that together toward the end of the episode.So the first thing I need to say is I’m not a doctor. This is not a prescription, this is not a diagnosis.What I’m really going to do today is explore what depression looks like, to me based on my own personal experience. And I always, always, always want to encourage you, dear listener, to go to your own wisdom. It’s great to listen to, and to get information from, other people, of course. That’s how we learn. And then I always feel like the second step should be that we bring that home to ourselves, and see how it fits with us and see how it fits based on our own experience, and explore it with the aid of our own personal wisdom. And find out if what you’re hearing is true for you or not, it might be completely different. So I encourage that, as you’re listening to this episode. The second thing I want to say before we jump in is just that I’m talking about depression, specifically not about sadness, or grief, which I experience as being very different from depression. So that’s just something to keep in mind.We’re beginning with the premise, or understanding, that we are all being lived by a Universal Intelligence. I need to begin there because that understanding is really important to the rest of what I’m going to explore. So the same way the planets are being spun and the grass is being grown and the flowers are being bloomed, that same universal intelligence or energy is flowing through all of us. It’s innate, meaning you don’t have to create it, it’s not something you have to search for, or manage in any way. It’s just there within all of us. And that’s another important point that it’s within everyone, every single human, every single creature, I think, and living being on the planet is imbued with that Universal Intelligence.We wouldn’t say that some trees are part of nature, and some aren’t. It just doesn’t work that way. So if you think you might be the exception to that rule, that is definitely not the case. So that’s the foundation for what we’re going to explore today.And what that really looks like is that we are whole and well, always, that this wellness, that is the innate essence of who we are. So even when we’re ill, even when there’s illness within our bodies, we are still innately whole, no matter what’s going on with us physically. So given that, very often, though, depression can feel like a problem. As though something has gone wrong with us as though, there’s sand in our gas tank, that there’s something that’s brok...