The Call of Depression
Depression, anxiety, lack of motivation. Have you been hit by them? I have. They landed me in a 12-year suicidal depression. And, the question I’m asked, on occasion, from a person who has read my work and perhaps followed my podcast, The Badass Counseling Show, is,
“Sven, the way you speak of your parents is that they were remarkable people who did so much right as parents. Yet, you also talk about being in a 12-year suicidal depression, at some point, that you had to pull yourself out of because you couldn’t find any therapist who could really help you. If everything goes back to childhood and parenting, as you say, then how could this possibly make sense?”
I love that question, if for no other reason than it shows the person is paying attention.
The answer is rather simple.
How Childhood and Parenting Can Lead to Depression
My parents were not saints. They’d be the first to tell you. But here’s the thing, they were people who had very little sin. (And, I don’t mean that in a religious way, even though Dad was clergy, but just in a general sense.) They didn’t hurt other people, deliberately, and strived not to do so accidentally. They didn’t take advantage or lie. One brother of mine said at my father’s memorial service, “He was an honest man,” which is high praise coming from a son. They both studied, professionally and for personal enrichment, parenting, and early childhood development books and took classes on those subjects.
Yet, as well as they did, they’d be the first to concede that they still made significant mistakes. It would be reasonable to assume that the mistakes made with one of their six children were different from those made with another. Thus, these statements are in no way inclusive of what my siblings might comment.
For me, the grand problem that led to my later demise into depression and eventually suicide was that my dad never got his love cup filled as a kid, and thus came into parenting with a deficit, leading him to steal attention from his six kids and, especially, his wife, for decades. Thus, at the Erlandson dinner table, or when riding in the car, or in the garage prepping all the newspapers for the paper routes we all had, or really any other time, any conversation would basically come around to Dad talking, seemingly endlessly, and often with the same stories I had heard a million times, whether about the farm when he was a kid, growing up during the Depression and the war, or seminary/ministry, or just how a car engine works. My father was never hurtful or critical, never. But, damn, he just never shut up, to the point where one would have to be sorta rude to get him to stop or to get any measure of attention in the conversation. He freely told us he loved us, freely hugged us, laughed with us, and more than cared for all of his children and wife. That was never in dispute, but he always talked; and so, in a large family, it was hard to feel seen and understood, or like you ever got enough attention.
As if perfectly interlocking, Mom enabled it by doubling or quadrupling her efforts to give more attention to the six kids and dad. I think, over time, she taught him, drip by excruciatingly slow drip, to listen a little better. But she never fully shut him down and forced him to give more attention to his kids than he took. And so, as great as they were as parents, they failed. I grew up with an undeniable neglect of attention, which is why I was such a massive attention whore as a kid, annoyingly so, to no one more than my siblings, I have no doubt. And the lust for attention became such a massive driver in my life, for decades, until it didn’t nearly as much. But, the throttling back of that longing would not be fully birthed ‘til my 40s, even if its vestiges are still present today, whether on TikTok or my laughably obvious vanity.
Feeling Empty Inside
On top of this deficit of attention-giving was the simple fact that I was the last of six children, five boys, and one girl, which meant I was always put in my place, not as smart as my older siblings, not as worldly, and just often feeling like an idiot or a drag/tag-along.
So, before I ever hit my teens, I became whatever the hell I had to become to get the maximum amount of attention. I was in theater, played two musical instruments, sang in choirs at school and church, was in both my hometown orchestra and the greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony. In those years I was playing three or four sports, per year. I volunteered at my church and sang at old folks’ homes. I was an Honor Roll student, voted Most Talented in our class in junior high, and had a very big mouth, was known for being both argumentative and cocky. On top of it all, I was a juvenile delinquent who would jump trains, steal regularly from stores (both merchandise and money), break into schools and churches, and throw eggs at cars. But, I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and generally didn’t get caught. Yeah, I was a real peach.
By my mid-teens, the thieving and tomfoolery abated and I just became this guy whose work ethic exceeded his natural abilities, thereby making me look smarter or better than my god-given abilities in many areas. And it worked. I got a lot of attention, but hell if it was ever enough.
Eventually, by 19, the whole thing imploded when I walked away from the Air Force Academy, where I was a Superintendent’s List cadet, (both academic and military excellence) and Division 1 athlete on an Associated Press Top-5 ranked football team. No matter how much attention I was getting, both in Colorado Springs and back at home, I was empty inside. It just all tasted vanilla. And gawd, what a blessing it did. I had the grand good fortune of the longings of my own soul for inner peace and fullness overtaking my willpower’s drive to get that ever-elusive attention.
Hear that again…my soul took over my will. My will was madly driving for more attention by getting more success; my soul was calling me down into something deeper and more powerful, but it would only come by sacrificing pride.
It could be argued that the next 20 years were that depression I mentioned earlier. Be that as it may, I count the most intense years at 12. After leaving the Air Force Academy and turning down admission to an Ivy League school’s business school, I didn’t get nearly the attention from people, and became actually quite unimpressive, right when a man’s career, success, and glory should be taking off and even soaring. But, I was in a massive, long… very necessary depression.
What was my depression?
Extremely intense.
I felt everything so powerfully. It was dripping in passion, pain, focused and deep thought, immobility offset by extreme power and drive, voracious reading and writing, and complete lack of any index of clarity. Nothing but fog, for two decades. Oh, and lots of daggers from external sources – spouses, family, in-laws, friends, and definitely from career overseers. I wrote books, graduated from college and many years of seminary, unwittingly started a counseling practice, got thrown out of ministry three times in defense of gay rights (long before it became fashionable to do so), radical theology, and a general mentality of “attack life aggressively with high energy” (ala sports, not the bad kind).
So, in April of 2001, I opened my veins, bled for an hour, and didn’t die. Yes, suicide.
And, at that moment, with Dave Matthews playing on the crappy stereo in my blue Pontiac 6000, I came to a conclusion. It could hardly be called earth-shattering, or even really an insight at all. It was just a statement of the obvious. It was just a conclusion to a long thought exercise that had consumed years upon years. I saw clearly,
If I was going to choose to live, I gotta make decisions differently.
That was it.
Different decisions. No heavens-opening, lightning-striking new revelation. Just an obvious life-changer: choose differently. It was a realization that hit me hard, not because I wasn’t aware of the thought before, but because I was finally experiencing, truly feeeeling this answer at a visceral level.
Choosing Me First
I would discover later that meant, rather ironically, choosing me first, rather than choosing to get the attention of others first. That was the distinction.
Up to that point, quite unknowingly, I had been choosing to get/possess/have (attention) rather than choosing to be (me). So, because I wasn’t being my authentic, or self-authored, self, up to that point, I was being whomever I needed to be in order to get what I needed to get to feel good. I was using a drug to get high, really. The drug was attention. The pain the drug was medicating was the inner feeling of being unseen, not important enough, not respected, not wanted, not accepted, never quite fitting in, and always wanting more attention. Always.
So, I more and more fully permitted myself to let it all hang out. I had always been an out-there rebel. But rebelling and being successful to get attention is nowhere near the same as being your authentic self in your own freak-ass way, whatever that might be. Rebel and weird are two totally different forms of letting it all hang out.
Of course, by that time, I had already alienated any friends or family who would’ve disapproved. I had already sacrificed much of my pride a decade or so earlier; so I didn’t have to worry about that. I had given myself permission to ‘do nothing,’ as the handwritten 8 ½ x 11 stated that I taped to the wall in my apartment bedroom in my late-20s, exhorting me to stop and clear my head. I would still go on to lose another wife, and the kids and walk away from ministry completely, finally. But, a lot of the heavy lifting was done.
What would follow were my most fruitful writing years and the growth of my own creative voice, as well as the slow growth of the counseling practice and speaking opportunities.
So, Sven, what’s the fricking point you’re making?
I know this is going to sound odd on the surface. But I want you to take a moment and digest what I’m about to say. I am of the absolute belief that, generally,
the most powerful depressions
all come from trying to get rather than trying to be and become.
Depression is trying to get something to make the pain end or at least to feel happy, for as long as that lasts.
It is about trying to have something that will, hopefully, make me feel different from my general or normal state. True happiness and peace come from being, not striving to get. True happiness and peace come from being a life that you have no need or desire to escape or feel differently from.
In rather simple language, we all seek to get high or get numb, to escape the feelings we feel in our normal lives. We use gambling, cheating, booze, pot, pills, overworking, over-parenting, busyness, chaos, over-exercising, TV, over-gaming and all manner of things to get high or to escape the misery of when we’re not doing those things. But, with those, there’s always a hangover or a crash that plunges you right back into the reality you were trying to escape.
Thus, what we’re all really seeking is a high with no hangover but with a carry-over – i.e., a higher level of just plain existence. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we seek to have a life that is itself a high, a joy, even in its inevitable hard times. We seek to be high and stay there, not get high and crash, so to speak.
Thus, depression, as I have lived it from the inside out and counseled thousands of people from the outside in, is nothing more than disconnection from your authentic self.
Happiness, peace, fulfillment, clarity, power, and lasting joy are the living of self.
Depression is disconnection from authentic self
And the striving to get something to make the emptiness of disconnection go away.
True happiness and peace can only come from
The courage and commitment to choosing the path of true self, damn the price.
There is no doubt that external events and traumas can cause depression. But, even in those, having pastored and counseled many people through the most severe grieving and loss I can say that the lack of peace and the growth of unhappiness still stem from the neglect of the self’s need to grieve and purge the pain, not just physically but in words. A sort of heaving of the soul is necessary, for as long as it takes. And that alone is an act of courage. Far too many neglect or outright run from that authentic longing of the self to vomit up the pain and longing of the soul.
Thus, even the soul’s call to grieve is still a calling of the authentic self. Everything, at its root, is the voice of the soul, that deep inner place where the individual and the universe/god/higher power become indistinguishable. To not live from that place is to live disconnected from self. It is to live in a forever unrest. Depression is the disconnection from the authentic self.
If that’s depression, what is anxiety?
Anxiety is the kissing cousin of depression.
Anxiety is that deer-in-the-headlights internal awareness that I gotta do and do more. I need to do something to get something so that I feel something better than what I’m feeling right now. Again, pardon my rather crude analogy, but it’s, “I need to get high,” which is the person saying, “I need to get away from what I’m feeling inside, especially when I have to think about things I don’t want to think about because they make me feel shitty inside.”
The anxiety is the hamster on the wheel, the squirrel foraging for nuts before winter, it is the frantic need to do anything to run from those thoughts and feelings inside.
Depression is the feeling of emptiness, no-joy, longing, aching, and lethargy that spring up from inside, that comes from disconnection from the real self. For the real self longs to purge the pain, long term, even if it means sitting in it in the short term.
Anxiety is the ego’s, or the mind’s, engine that attempts to solve the problem – i.e., to make those yuck feelings go away.
Depression is the result of disconnection from self.
It is the actual having to experience what that disconnection feeeels like.
Anxiety is the fevered ego’s attempt to make that absolutely yuck feeling go away.
Anxiety is the drive to do something so as to get something
so as to feel something other than this.
Thus, depression and anxiety often go hand-in-hand. The anxiety is fed by the deep ache of the depression. The depression feeds off anxiety’s successes and highs, and the inevitable crashes and hangovers that only further highlight the disconnection from the authentic self.
>> Healing From Depression And Avoiding Suicide
The reason people get stuck in depression and anxiety is that, while they may be feeling the emotional charges of past memories and the core beliefs they were taught about themselves, they’re not actively engaged in flushing the feelings and emotional charges out of them. That is the difference between depression and healing.
Lack of Motivation
And so, what happens?
If the emotional charges are never actively flushed out, whether through deep counseling or the tools I teach in my Love Cup book, they begin to take over. When depression takes over, the human body runs out of energy. There has been plenty of scientific evidence to confirm this. Any person who has ever been through even mild depression can confirm this.
>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
If anxiety is one response to depression – i.e., the intense fire to make the depression feelings go away by doing and getting; then lack of motivation is the depression overwhelming the person, such that no doing or getting is even possible. It’s an utter shutdown of the system, which may be facilitated by any number of bottles, pills, addictions or lethargy-driven checking-out.
Lack of motivation can take the form of doing only the minimum to get by in life, because of the overwhelming nature of the depression feelings. Or, it can take the form of living out a life that is utterly unfulfilling but is marked by the inability to conjure the effort to go after what one really wants, or perhaps even the freedom of thought to know what one wants to go after.
What are the Origins of the Disconnection from Self?
So, where the hell does this disconnect from self come from?
I look at it this way.
As I discuss in my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, it’s as if when we’re born we have a computer chip inside us that is encoded with everything we are and everything we are meant to become, as written by the absolute uniqueness of our DNA, our place and time in the history of humanity, and the absolute specificity of who we are surrounded by.
But, because we can’t read that chip as a little shaver, the parent has to wire that chip into the parent’s chip. The parent begins to teach the child how to live. Thus, at birth really, there is an almost necessary disconnection of the child from self. But that disconnect (and wiring into the parent) was only ever meant to be temporary.
Or, rather, the wiring into the parent necessary for survival only works as a short-term strategy. The individual child was encoded with a path and purpose that only that individual entity can read or ever know. Thus, purity of life demands a constant de-wiring of that child from the parent and concomitant re-wiring of that kid back into their own chip.
And that, my friends, is where the problems start – either in the failure to de-wire the child from the parent and facilitate the re-wiring of the growing young one to him- or herself (control); or in never wiring the child into the parent’s chip, in the first place (neglect).
In those first 10+ years of life, the child longs for and thrives in that deep, fulfilling connection to parent. At its best, it is the exchange of information, love, experiences, and meaning. And, if the child does not experience this, he or she not only feels alone but lost in the world. This is an extraordinary pain for a child. It is unfulfilled longing that cements in the soul. But then, some kids experience a lot of this connection, but not enough.
However, other kids go through a different experience.
They get the connection to parent, as well as the learning, growth, and love. But then, around 12 years old, or so, when the child’s brain begins to think abstractly, the curiosity begins to seek interests and attention outside of the family. As these influences flood into the person now no longer a young child, the young one begins to see him- or herself as distinct from the parent, different from those whom he or she used to be fully connected to. The young person begins to want to differentiate himself or define herself as distinct from them, while also similar to and part of them. If this very natural process is not facilitated, or even allowed, the problems start, not just normal teen stuff, but the slow storms begin to swell deep in the breast or soul of that early teen.
And, the more that child is held down or held back from that differentiation of self from the parents, the more the depression inside grows, even if it is kept hidden by a hard-fought, well-crafted façade that might appear quite the opposite of what’s going on in those deeper inner waters. If the teen is too greatly held back from connecting to his or her own self, or, rather if the teen is held back from exploring different modes of thinking and acting, as are being encountered in the teen’s ever-expanding circle of friends, acquaintances, learnings, and experiences, the teen’s natural sifting process to see what feeeeels right to me, as me, will be short-circuited.
In short, if the teen’s world is kept small by the fearful parent or if the trying of new things and personalities, so to speak, is not welcomed by the one in control (read mom or dad), the teen begins to feel an increased disconnect from self and increased longing for self.
To make matters worse, while the young person is feeeeling all of this going on inside them, the problem is exacerbated by the inability to find words for the experience, thus creating a sort of constipation of the soul. The soul is not allowed to naturally express (in Latin, ‘express’ means ‘to push out’) its uniqueness and further is unable to push out the words to even say what the deeper problem truly is. And, the depression begins.
How do you know if you have depression?
Let me take this opportunity to remind my readers I am not a psychologist or anything even remotely related to the Western medical profession. Therefore, this is not to be considered, in any way or form, medical advice. This is just a portion of the accumulated wisdom of the spiritual traditions and knowledge of many cultures, alive and dead. My field of study and expertise is belief systems, the movements of the soul, and the human, particularly when young.
So, that said, how do you know if you have depression?
Just plain energy. You may be able to conjure it, as necessary. But, it doesn’t flow freely, as it normally does for you. So, for example, you might be able to rally to go to work and pay the bills, but the moment you come home you make some food and go straight into the bedroom, close the door, climb in bed, and turn on the TV…until you have to wake up and do it all over again.
Or, perhaps you experience depression – i.e., disconnection from self – as a career or relationship life that is marked by closed doors, stops and starts, increasing frustrations, or a general feeling that you’re fighting your way upstream for weeks, months, or years. There is no flow.
Or, maybe your experience of depression also includes an utter inability to make a decision, until it’s absolutely necessary. Even then, the decision is uncertain or reluctant.
In all, to experience depression is to, in one way or another, “not feel like myself lately” or to be “out of sorts.” That’s layman’s terms. And, if you’ve never experienced this before, it can be quite disorienting.
Depression of the soul absolutely impacts energy, above all else. Your energy changes. Your spirit changes. It’s just undeniable. You feel it.
So, how does depression differ from burnout?
Having spent my life in the helping professions (counseling, ministry, and collegiate athletic coaching) and having had parents who spent ¾ of a century each in helping professions, as well as having siblings in them, burnout is something that has been part of the conversation of my life from as far back as I can remember. Mom, Dad, and their myriad friends, colleagues, and parishioners spoke of it. It is seen surely in any profession or path, but the environment of the helping professions, specifically a passion for work that often doesn’t come with the immediate, visible rewards of other professions, such as a decent paycheck or tasks accomplished in the short term, makes it uniquely ripe for generating burnout.
And, truth be told, at the most basic levels, every profession, even the most non-interactive or isolated can come with elements that require ‘helping’ or the giving of personal energy to another person.
One need only be moved into management of some sort to see this happen, as managing people invariably comes with the necessity to invest interpersonally in other humans. Apart from the tasks needing to be steered, management requires the transfer of human energy from one person to another. When we listen, when we take time for another’s problems, when we ask questions, when we give a hug or heartfelt kind word, when we invest our time to aid another in sorting out their problems (rather than just throwing blanket ‘shoulds’ or platitudes at a person), it can feel good but it can simultaneously come with a slight or large draining of energy. The more it happens, the more depleted a person can become, especially if that person does not have the soul disciplines I talk about that enable them to flush out the thoughts, feelings, and worries of and for those around you. The more this happens, the more you begin to increase burnout. If you take on the problems, pains, and feelings of others for an extended time without having ways to eject that heaviness and replenish your own energy stores, burnout will set in.
One need not even move into management.
Burnout can come even at the lowest of levels on any list of job titles. It comes when the person is working their ass off, on and on, investing him- or herself into the company or endeavor without there being a return on investment, in one form or another. In other words, you’re giving way more than you’re getting, and that goes on for some time. It leads to feeling used, taken advantage of, taken for granted or just not feeling appreciated. And so, burnout sets in. Depletion of energy takes over. Perhaps even bitterness or contempt can seep into the depleted person’s spirit. This can happen to any person in any profession working any job. You give more than you get, for a long time, and you’re gonna burn because you’re burning off your life energy without replenishing it.
Well, if you start thinking of depression that way, it’s no grand leap to see how burnout can happen even in a long-term relationship, such as marriage or friendship. One gives, and the other takes. Lethargy, feeling unappreciated and used, and bitterness can creep in.
Or, one need only have children and actually invest time and energy into rearing them to know that burnout can feel like life is sitting its fat ass right on your head, so you can’t breathe, can’t move, and you feel sucked dry. You invest so much of yourself, too much, really, because you’re not purging the frustrations, sadnesses, and setbacks, because you just go, go, go. But, so often in parenting, we do not make the time and commitment to those paths and priorities that replenish our energy. It is so easy to feel in parenting that giving more is always better, which it isn’t always. Further, the rewards of the hugs and smiles from children or the myriad of other payoffs can feel like reason enough to keep pushing. But, as with anything, it so easily can cause burnout.
Parental Aside
(As an aside, this increasing investment into the child and near addiction to the return on investment [in the form of hugs and love, etc], thereby creates a highly problematic situation where the child becomes the parent’s de facto ‘boss’ by the child being the reward system that more and more drives the parent. This can create an insidious seep wherein the adult becomes dependent upon the child, oddly enough, for approval and appreciation, as that is the parent’s system of replenishing his or her energy. This can feel like a nice little system when the child is young and all too eager to give energy, time, approval, and appreciation to the parent, not to mention near-absolute fealty. But, the inevitable drumbeat of teenage differentiation from said parent means the parent’s reward system – where they are dependent upon the child remunerating mom’s efforts with praise, affection, and submission – is on shaky ground.
In teen years, as mentioned above, the child will quite naturally pull away from the parent to find connection, identity, and love sources in friends, young loves, and mentors – i.e., to begin to find self and that which inspires that young one’s own soul. Thus, Dad can feel like he is left high and dry. The kid doesn’t want you as much and is giving their attention and love to others. Thus, the parent’s reward mechanism – the child – is no longer as smoothly operational as it was.
The return on investment can fall off a cliff, and the parent is left feeling increasingly burned out: investing lots, getting little back. Both the reward system and the sense of identity the parent got from the giving to and steering of the child are slipping through the mom’s fingers. And it hurts! It can feel like the very lifeblood flooding out. And, massive feelings of unappreciation by the child and feeling taken advantage of by the child can grow in the parent; bitterness creeps in toward the very reward-giver they’ve been dependent upon for well over a decade. So, the parent seeks to control and hang on to the child, so as to keep the love, submission, and attention coming back to the parent.)
When the parent disconnects from even moderate pursuits that replenish self by the self, the soul dies a little bit more, or so it eventually feels. When the human soul is locked into any form of external reward system, whether from the company, the spouse, the child, or society, the potential for burnout is always right around the corner. But, when the path, relationship, or work is embarked upon for its intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction, the risk of burnout is almost wiped out, because it comes from listening to the self. The more that listening to self increases, the more the individual also attends to the soul’s needs for replenishment outside of the work or relationship. That is to say, if you’re truly connected to your self, your own soul, and the speaking of your own energy, you listen when it tells you to rest, get away, go play, exercise vigorously, or engage in things that feed your own soul.
But, if the disconnect from the soul’s calling to you to flush and replenish is allowed to increase, depression/burnout will set in. Your energy will begin to decrease. It’s inevitable.
Reactions to Depression and Anxiety
When depression and burnout slowly inch into your life, it becomes very easy to grab the extra cup of coffee. When life feels like it’s in a constant state of anxiety, it becomes very easy to pour the extra drink or three, at the end of the day…or perhaps the middle of the day.
As depression and anxiety both take over, it becomes easy to daily toggle between grabbing things that jack you up and inserting things that calm you down. You start more and more using quick fixes to make you feel this or that.
What you’re fundamentally doing in all of this, at the most basic way of framing it is, you’re fiddling with your energy, really – getting more and turning it off, getting more, then turning it down, day in and day out. You easily and quickly become dependent upon external energy sources, rather than the intrinsic energy replenishment of being on a life path that is rooted in a deep connection to the authentic self. These uppers and downers, of sorts, can range from:
Cigarettes/vaping of nicotine
Coffee/energy drinks
Alcohol
Pills
Pot/THC drinks and other depressants
Cocaine and other drug stimulants
Porn
Cheating on a partner
Gambling, and more
Every one of these and other pursuits can seem harmless to the one engaging in them, especially when the amount is small. But if the disconnection from self increases, if the depression and/or anxiety take over, more and more, it becomes very easy to lean more and more on these synthetic energy sources (synthetic because they do not grow out of listening to the soul, but not listening to the soul’s daily calling to work and replenish, pursue and play).
Thus, simply put, one of the quickest and easiest ways to determine if you’re in a depression of the soul or are slipping into one, and whether anxiety is taking over your life, is to ask yourself if you’re leaning more now on outside things to get you up or bring you down. All of these are indicators of disconnect from the soul.
Depression is the Soul’s Natural Way of Trying to Heal Itself
See, it’s very, very critical to understand one thing when it comes to depression and anxiety when looking at them from the perspective of the soul. Depression is the soul’s natural way of healing itself or attempting to do so. It is the calling down into oneself. It is the soul trying to stop the path forward because this path forward is not the authentic calling of your own deepest self. Your soul is screaming to you, “This path you’re living ain’t you. This ain’t us! We, this entity that soul and mind and body are, are living a life that ain’t us.” And, in the eternal struggle between the soul and willpower/brain, the soul always wins in the end. That is to say, it will be heard. It is the system governor.
To go down into the depression and ask it what it is trying to tell you about you and your life path(s), is to find a resolution to and way out of the depression. The depression and anxiety lift as one reconnects to one’s own inner voice.
Mind you, this disconnect from self is happening most insidiously not in the actual paths and pursuits, but in the generally unseen core beliefs driving or influencing the draining paths and pursuits, which is why I spend so much time talking about and helping folks dig into their deepest core beliefs that they’re not even aware that they were taught about themselves.
The soul is always talking. It speaks quietly through your energy in each moment, each day, speaking whether this action is the energized path or the depletion choice, even in small things. The more we ignore it, the greater the energy loss, eventually leading to lethargy. Thus, to know self is to listen to and heed simply that which gives or takes energy, on the whole.
The more you listen to and heed your own natural energy talking, the greater the peace, happiness, and natural replenishment. The less you do so, the less energy, clarity, and fulfillment you have inside of you. It’s that simple. The less you listen, the worse the depression and anxiety get. Ignore it to your peril, generally in the form of increased dependence upon synthetic external energy sources to prop you up through life. Not a happy existence.
Are you deliberately mining this experience of depression, burnout, anxiety and/or lack of motivation for what the soul is trying to convey to you, what your own self is trying to teach you about you? How is this energy state a blessing in disguise? Put pen to paper and start tinkering with these questions. You must go down into it, deep dive into what core beliefs are driving you to live a life that is clearly not you.
Courage and the Integration of Soul and Life
The human animal naturally self-directs, in the micro and the macro.
Joy feeds energy and feeds path, which feeds joy and more energy. The only thing that causes us to disconnect from self and its natural energy replenishment is to hear the siren song of the voices of others that become embedded in us that do not speak in concert with our own voice, but often drown it out. If you’re depressed or anxiety-ridden, it’s simply because you’re living someone else’s voice in your life. There’s a proxy battle going on inside you for ownership of the company that is you. Somebody owns you or has owned you, and your soul is attempting to reclaim ownership, and that never comes without a price.
But, alas, that is the price of self – the rejection of the voices of others that have become embedded in you, conditioning you to act and live outside of your soul’s calling. The price of authenticity and the natural energy that comes with it is to take back what someone has claimed for their own – your life. And, they ain’t gonna like that!
This is why everything – indeed, everything – on the journey of the soul hinges upon courage.
You cannot speak the ‘no’ of the soul to others until you have courage. And, life begins at ‘no.’ For, inside of ‘no’ to them is the word ‘I.’
No, I don’t want that
No, that isn’t fair to me
No, I don’t like how you treat me and how that feels
No, you’re not allowed to do that to me
To find your ‘no’ is to find your ‘I.’ It is to begin to restore communication with and connection to your own soul by finally prioritizing your authentic ‘I,’ rather than getting the approval/acceptance of others by working for their acknowledgment of you. That requires the courage to truly believe in the eternal flame burning deep inside you that says there is an ‘I’ and it is good, and only ‘I’ can know it, and I want it more.
The reason it requires such courage is because you already know, in advance, that you will get pushback from those you seek to reclaim yourself from. You already know they will shame you, deny your truth, increase their attempts to control you, and so on. They may even walk away.
Or, startlingly, you may walk away from them. They no longer fit in your life. Or, you no longer fit in the box they want to keep you in. And, as the glow of that divine inner flame increases, you become increasingly okay breaking out of the boxes of their control and their beliefs about who you are or should be.
Integration of Self Successes
I cannot even begin to tell you the successes I have seen in clients, friends, and the like who’ve embarked on this hero’s journey toward integration of self.
Each and every one of those journeys by courageous individuals is told and re-told in the epic sagas of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Matrix, and even Harry Potter. Whether on-screen, in a book, or in real life, all are stories of the quest of the hero/heroine to find self and reclaim it from the former controllers.
Just this week, I had a client realize at 63 years old that he has just retired from the grand edifice of his career only to realize it was because he was fervently chasing the approval of a now-dead father, the whole time, locked in dad’s box of what it would take to get it. He then discovered the price of that never-arriving approval of Dad was the sacrificing of his wife and now-adult children. But, through months of deep work, he has re-found himself and is returning contritely to his children to own and atone for the damage he did. With this about-face has come a new sense of purpose and a sort of melancholy joy. He is righting a ship that has long navigated the wrong course, and it feels good for him to do so.
A dear friend, this past month, quite apart from any counsel from me but all on her own, facing a radically increased intake of alcohol over the past couple of years and the visible impact it could have on her young child, and the potential loss of that child, has put down the bottle and also put aside the belief that she needs any longer to live in fear of her mother and her incessant voice in my friend’s life.
A young man I have worked with, off and on, over the past several years, finally committed himself to no longer running from the pain inside him from four brutal deaths in his early twenties, committed himself to no longer smoking weed from sunup to sundown, committed himself to go into the enormous discomfort of sitting in counseling and really looking into the pain of it all. Almost immediately, he began to notice small shifts, a bit more lightness, a bit of relief. And so, he committed to one more session, and one more after that, trusting the journey inward enough to withstand just a bit more time in the discomfort and a bit more relief. This is all virgin territory for him, and he’s doing it, courageously.
A young couple in their 30s had grown so distant and broken down in their careers and personal lives that lies, fake masks, stimulants and depressants, overworking and more had all but destroyed their marriage. But finally broken down completely, they each committed to the individual journey of finding self, even if it meant ending the relationship. And, they each stayed in it, each progressing at their own individual velocity and times of rest. Over the course of six months, they both changed radically in ways neither of them could’ve seen coming, each hit by the freight train of authentic self slamming into them, demanding expression. Today, literally just six months later, their marriage is thriving in ways it never had, even in the very beginning. Because, each is finding and living the authentic self, more and more, even as they right the problems created previously by the pre-conditioned selves they had been living. They are individually and together breaking free of the boxes they’d been taught to live in by parents and step-parents.
And that brings me to one final point…
Cleaning up the Depression Messes – the Grand Price of Course Correction
I had a client, several years back, who had built a small company into a $50 million success. But about a year prior to working with me, he had hired a CEO to run his company, thereby freeing him to take on more of the capacities and interests that he desired. Similarly, about a month prior to working with me, he had gotten engaged to a woman he had been dating for a few years. He had also gained a lot of weight and was spending a good amount of money on interactive porn sites.
Well, we dove into the work of helping him differentiate between his own authentic voice inside and the voices of aging parents, who still commanded his attention and servitude. As we began to clear out the crud of past traumas and voices, his energy began to increase. He began to have more clarity in what felt right to him, as well as more strength to stand up and say ‘no’ to the demands of others.
All of this led to the shocking and terrifying realization that he needed to fire that same CEO because my client stopped ignoring the signs that the CEO was a usurper trying to steal his company from him and undermine his relationship with his top people; he needed to walk away from the woman he had promised to marry; and he needed to take his parents off his financial tit.
I did not push any of these realizations or the actions that sprung from them. All of it came from deep within him. These insights and courses of new action rose from his own soul. They just felt right to him as he sat on them and allowed himself to soak them in.
So, he swallowed his pride, screwed on his courage, and began to do the dirty work of course correction. You see, new-self had to clean up the messes created by the conditioning of old-self. To correct his life course was just about doing the work inside himself, but integrating his outside life to match his interior life, or calling of his soul. And that integration of outer and inner came at a great price with much hue and cry from those impacted by these bold actions of new-self and by the financial losses that came with it all. But he was committed to new-self, and he executed.
Today, he is freer than he ever thought possible, because he is experiencing energy rising up from within. He has a peace he had never known even existed. He has restructured his life and pursuits differently from anything he had ever imagined before. The porn is gone. The weight has come down dramatically. There’s a natural lightness to his step and life.
If you desire new-self, authentic self, you will have some cleaning up to do of the messes created by old-self. And that will hurt. It’s inevitable. And that’s why the pain of living so long as old-self must increase to the point that the pains of creating new-self seem small compared to continuing down the miserable life of old self.
Are you there yet? Are you finally ready to climb out of the depression, anxiety, burnout, and lack of motivation, as well as all the neurotic pursuits that have gone with it?
Are you finally ready to heed the calling of your soul down into the truths it bears and the new life it promises?
It’s time.
How to Get Started on the Path Away From Depression?
To begin, get the audiobook, ebook, or paperback of There’s a Hole in My Love Cup. You can also get There’s a Hole in My Love Cup in Spanish. It will walk you through the process.
Start listening to the podcast, The Badass Counseling Show. We learn by listening to and finding solace and inspiration from the stories of others.
And, here’s a chapter from Badass Wisdom for you to listen to…
Thanks for reading.
-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.com
