Are You Depressed or Traumatized?

Live Holistically is a multi-author site.
This post was written by: Susan Blue

Several years ago, I was recovering from an accident. I noticed how depressed I became after the worst of it was over. My mind was ready for me to engage in the full activities of life; but my physical and emotional energy was lagging way behind. I couldn’t keep up and felt pressured to be more productive than I was.

Then it hit me! My mind was off somewhere where my body wasn’t. My mind had me well and able, so why couldn’t I just do ____ ? With two courses of physiology besides pathology and having had an Emergency Technician II Certification, I realized I knew better. If I was treating someone for their soft tissue injuries, I would be telling them what I was just realizing for myself.

Let Your Body Have the Time It Needs to Heal

I found myself dragging after mornings of having a fair amount of energy to do the doing. It was my body’s way of telling me to slow down, cool it, rest. The energy I was putting out was needed internally for cellular repair and rejuvenation.

I had a couple of situations in my rehabilitation and recovery that I had to push myself. The sluggishness and doldrums that hit after scared me. I was so depressed! I didn’t feel resourceful in meeting those situations. I felt that I was getting through by the skin of my teeth just to get the important things done. Clearly, I was overextending myself and my body was letting me know it in no uncertain terms. That made me question how I let my health become a slave to my sense of responsibilities.

Monitoring Personal Energy

I juggle several interests at the same time. There is work, business developments, volunteer organizations, home, friends and community, a class, art and sewing projects. No kids and no spouse. It gives me a certain freedom. The down side is I do it all.

Choosing what we do in the time we have is a necessary skill. We usually call it Time Management, but in reality we can’t manage time, it just is. What we really manage is our activities, the defined outcomes and physical actions during time. It makes more sense to me to monitor or manage my energy. Especially as I am on the young side of being an old crone.

Monitoring means that I have awareness and I self regulate. When I talk with someone who is suffering depression, I notice that their mind has high expectations and their physical energy doesn’t match.

When Trauma Occurs

Often they have a picture of who they were before: the accident, the job change, the baby, the illness, the breakup. They can see they had coping skills in place. They can even tell you what their resources were and how they worked.

So what happened? I would say that the changes had elements that were overwhelming and freeze set in. Their resources to meet the situation were not enough and shock occurred. Shock is the disruption of linked cohesion among the parts of ourselves. Sensation, imagination, behavior, emotion and memory become disjointed.

Traumatization is repeated shock that is driven deeper and is compressed into our body and brain. This creates a memory pattern of distress in the right hemisphere of the brain.

The Set Point of Negativity is Located in Your Brain

Some time last year, I read a featured article in Times Magazine. On the cover was a Tibetan Buddhist monk with electronic measuring devises on his head. The article was about the negative set point, its location and how it could be moved in the brain. For a person with a lot of negative thinking or depression, that set point was in the right hemisphere of the brain.

With the practice of meditation, the set point would shift its location, coming closer to the left hemisphere. For the monk, his set point was in the left hemisphere of his brain. He recognized situations as challenges with varying degrees of difficulty, but had no negative thoughts about them.

About Your Attentional Muscle

We can focus on our job or maybe a hobby that requires precise skills. The holding of that focus is our attentional muscle. We can further develop our attentional muscle through meditation. Meditation is holding a singular focus or no focus. During meditation, we can observe the machinations of the mind and the intellect. We can also observe other layers of our existence: memories, emotions, etc. These things will come and go on their own. Eventually they will settle. But our attentional muscle is on the breath or on nothing; unless you are doing a meditative exercise of self examination to develop awareness.

Usually we let this attentional muscle get involved with whatever the brain shows us. There can be the mind’s mechanism of disjointed thoughts, memories etc. This aspect is called Chitta in Vedic knowledge. This is different than the aspect of the intellect which is analytical, does planning, figures out problems.

Remembering that we observe these two brain functions puts us in our being, our essential self. When we are in our being, the mind, nervous system, emotions settle. If we can be there for a period of time, we will feel refreshed or at least calmed down. We remember we are more than our thoughts. We are more than our emotions. A sense of space opens up. We are decompressed.