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Disclaimer: This article focuses on the spiritual/energetic implications of depression and grief and is not meant to be read from a clinical or diagnostic perspective. I am not a doctor or a therapist. If you are experiencing these symptoms, I recommend you seek the advice of a licensed doctor and or therapist to treat your condition from a medical or clinical perspective.
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Storytime
I have gone through two very significant, and VERY PAINFUL, spiritual portals in my lifetime.
The first was in 1996.
🎒My grandfather died suddenly while I was backpacking through Europe.
🐈⬛ I developed a life-threatening allergy to cats.
💔 My college boyfriend of 3 years, cheated on me and ended the relationship by ghosting me.
👩🏫 I started my first full-time “real” job as a high school teacher and went to the funerals of three of my students in less than six months.
🏚️ I moved into a new community where I knew no one, and was 200 miles away from any emotional support system and suffered extreme loneliness.
The second was in 2013.
💔 My marriage of 10 years ended abruptly and violently.
🌳 I was exiled from my shaman teacher and tribe of 6 years, left me bereft of my spiritual community.
🚙 I was homeless, without health insurance, living out of my car, traveling across the country from job to job.
💸 My business radically declined.
🌵 My parents moved to Arizona and weren’t physically around to support me.
Most of these things that happened to me were out of my control. They were not active choices I had made. But, the choice I did have to make was how I handled these portals of change. While it was tempting (and natural) to fall into victim-mode and wallow in the misery, the hero’s journey of the process is about enduring the Herculean trials and emerging the other side as stronger.
About halfway through my second portal, in the winter of 2013, a friend sat me down for a “talk”. She used that deeply caring voice, you know the one, so smothered in compassion and concern that it was almost sickly sweet. My empath ears cut right through the over-sweet and felt the off-key pluck of condescension in her tone.
“I think you might be bipolar.”
I didn’t say a word.
She had knocked the wind out of me.
The long silence was a bit too long for her.
“Are you okay?”
I’ll never forget what happened next.
Something deep inside me took over.
My inner Hercules stood up.
I stood up, and I took a really deep breath before I spoke. I was careful to speak very clearly, in short sentences leaving zero room for misinterpretation.
I am not bi-polar.
I am not depressed.
I love myself.
And right now, I’m going through a lot.
It’s emotional. It’s painful.
I am GRIEVING!
I am grieving the loss of my marriage.
I am grieving the loss of my spiritual community.
I am grieving the loss of my home.
I am managing the shifting changing dynamics of my family of origin.
I am figuring out how to pivot my business and career.
I am evolving my internal sense of SELF.
It’s hard.
And I’m doing it!
What I need is support.
I need validation.
I need encouragement.
I need to be allowed to have the space to grieve, and evolve, and shift, and change.
And that was the end of the conversation.
Lesson
You’re not Depressed. You’re Grieving and Evolving.
The key difference between DEPRESSION and GRIEF is the root cause.
DEPRESSION is rooted in a deep sense of not feeling good enough. A lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth, a feeling inadequate and as a result not wanting to live.
Depression is a serious wounding and dysfunction of the core (solar plexus) chakra. Your sense of identity, your purpose, your self-value are all wounded to the point of complete dysfunction. The core chakra, which lives at your belly and is exercises by the relationship between your diaphragm and your psoas muscles, is severely challenged in its ability to do it job in making you feel strong, confident, valuable, and worthy.
GRIEF is rooted in a loss or an emptiness. It is a longing for something that is lost or gone. Grief is an emptiness feeling for the loss of something that was once there. Or even a grieving of something you feel should be there (such as a woman grieving the child she never had).
Grief is a total restructuring of the heart chakra. When someone or something you love is physically not in your presence anymore, you are forced to redefine your relationship. Your heart chakra, which lives at the intersection of your heart and lungs, is how you relate to others by how you breathe in and breathe out.
A key phrase I hear from my clients that helps me decipher whether they are depressed or they are grieving is their language around wanting to “end it all”
A grieving person says they have those thoughts, but could never act on them. This is because they are deep in the feelings of something having just ended. Something has already ended and they are dealing with the effects of that.
A depressed person actually does want to act on them, and often makes plans around those acts. This is because they are deep in the feelings of living and they don’t like their lived experienced. They DO want to end it.
Lastly, grief is common. Depression is rare.
A note about suicide and anti-depressant medication…this is purely my own lived experience.
In my 20s, I took one low dose of Prozac and attempted suicide within less than an hour…something that had never been a possibility for me before. This is part of why I have chosen since then to avoid pharmaceutical medications at all costs. For me, the side effects of medications are far worse than the symptoms they are meant to address.
I was NOT depressed. I did not feel bad about myself or have a low sense of self-worth. I loved myself. I wasn’t suicidal (except while on Prozac). Rather, I was dealing with an immense amount of loss in my life in a very short period of time. I was grieving intensely. The medication temporarily pushed me over the boundary between depression and grief. As soon as I stopped taking the medication, the depressed symptoms subsided, but the grief symptoms continued.
To be clear, the physical and emotional symptoms of grief and depression and spiritual evolution are VERY SIMILAR. Here are just a few.
😴 Sleep Problems - difficulty sleeping, sleeping too much, never feeling rested.
🥱 Fatigue & Exhaustion - extreme tiredness (often with inability to sleep), body aches and fatigue.
🍕 Appetite Changes - lack of appetite, weight loss, over-eating, weight gain, poor diet choices, not enjoying food, eating just to eat.
😢 Moodiness - crying fits, outbursts of anger, episodes of fearfulness, bouts of hopelessness, bursts of unexplained laughter, irrational guilt, etc.
If you add the complex energy of being a Highly Sensitive Person or an Empath as the cherry on top of this sh*t sundae, the expression of these symptoms multiplies exponentially.
It is important to remember that these are just SYMPTOMS of GRIEF…that something deeper is going on underneath the surface of the cocoon…a deep radical shifting and evolving.
And this too shall pass.
Grief is a Spiritual Portal is like a rebirth, only it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies.
The good news is that this will pass, and when it does, you will likely emerge out of the cocoon into a whole new glorious shimmering perspective on life.
The bad news is that you cannot rush this process, AND, especially as a highly sensitive and empathic soul, you must feel your way through it. All of it. You can’t make the pain stop or go away. You must process it.
In this next section, (behind the paywall) I’ll outline the 3 Mindful Practices to Process Grief and 5 Mindfulness Approaches to Address Depression.
If you are dealing with intense grief and it feels like depression,
and therapy doesn’t seem to hit the right notes for you…
perhaps spiritual mentorship through this time would be right for you.
Practice - Homework
3 Mindfulness Practices to Process Grief
Energetically, the most important component to processing grief is to give yourself SPACE. Grief is an immense transformation time.
The best comparison I can offer is that it is like a caterpillar turning into the goo inside a cocoon before it becomes a butterfly. You are in the process of completely restructuring your heart chakra, your relationship to self, others, and your relationship with Love itself.
You cannot rush the process. Rather, you need to be gentle, compassionate, nurturing, encouraging, and supportive of yourself through the entire process. Here’s how I recommend you provide these things to yourself.