How to Heal Depression
I'm Light Stone. I'm a human excellence coach, meditation instructor, QHHT, and Internal Family Systems practitioner. I also lead legal psychedelic journeys in Boulder, Colorado, and I travel the world with my wife, Satine Phoenix, hosting couples, breathwork, and heart connection retreats. It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Stone Protocol, a channel dedicated to giving you all the tools necessary to achieve human excellence.
Today, we're going to be talking about how to heal depression. Before we talk about healing depression, we need to understand what exactly depression is. There are a couple of different distinctions. First, there's standard depression, and then there's significant depression. Classic depression usually lasts only several weeks.
It's characterized by a loss of enjoyment, sleep, and a general malaise about things you previously enjoyed that now don't bring you any joy. This can last days to weeks and be incredibly debilitating for those suffering. Major depression, on the other hand, can last months into years, even decades. Continued feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and emptiness characterize this. Instead of just sleep problems, there can be insomnia, the inability to get out of bed. Instead of just poor concentration, it can be incredibly debilitating.
Major depression is profoundly painful for those who suffer from it. I have had major depression for much of my early childhood, adolescence, and adult years. However, as I got older, I was dedicated to healing these parts of myself, these wounded parts, so that I could be happy, not only for myself internally but to gift my best interests to my family and friends. I want to make an important distinction here between depression and anxiety. Depression is much more past leaning.
When we focus on the past, either pain or trauma or loss that we have suffered previously, whereas anxiety is focused on the future, a perceived loss that could happen in a couple of days or some unknown time before us. In The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon, he states depression is a response to past experiences, and anxiety is a response to future fears. In How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan expands on this, stating that both reflect a mind mired in rumination. One dwelling in the past, the other worrying about the future. What mainly distinguishes the two disorders is the tense. This is a crucial distinction.
We can be constantly caught in this negative rumination, also known as the default mode network in our brains. The default mode network is a pattern of behavioral thinking, actual linkings, a circuit continuously going on a set path inside our mind. When that default mode network goes through our amygdala, our fear response, it can cripple us. The amygdala is a beautiful part of our brain that helps us avoid immediately dangerous things. It is the threat detector of our brain.
Information passes through the amygdala before it goes to our prefrontal cerebral cortex. The prefrontal cerebral cortex is much larger and requires more time to process information. Now, if we see a snake, we have to jump immediately, so the amygdala makes snap decisions. The only problem is that those of us with PTSD or severe trauma in our background are much more amygdala-focused. Our amygdala is much more significant, so we can be very reactive or amygdala reactive to things in our environment that don't necessarily offer the same amount of threat as we might feel that they do. Because of that, our default mode network will constantly be going through this threat detection center and activating it, creating a heightened sensory arousal in the inner body that is incredibly painful.
Breaking free of this default mode network is incredibly useful when dealing with depression. For me, physical exertion, going to the gym, or even walking is a beautiful way of breaking us out of old behavioral and thought patterns. When things remind us of what makes us depressed, we constantly retrigger the parts of our brain locked in that default mode network. Going out and getting some exercise is a beautiful way of changing how our brains operate.
I also greatly advocate the therapeutic and healing use of legal psychedelics, psilocybin mushrooms, and legal MDMA, when used in a therapeutic session, have been shown to have remarkable effects on treatment-resistant depression and major depression. Much of how this operates isn't known by the scientific community. However, it seems to be that it actually disrupts the default mode network and can even regrow serotonin receptors. It is incredible how these medicines, some of which have been used by cultures for thousands of years, if not tens, if not hundreds, thousands of years, in healing practices, are now, just now, getting fast-tracked by the FDA for use in our culture. The use of psilocybin has benefited me, and I am so happy that it's now legal here in Colorado. I have had such amazing effects using psilocybin in a therapeutic setting that I lead legal psychedelic healing sessions as part of my work on the stone protocol.
Due to the profound healing I experienced, I felt I had the ethical duty to pass along the healing I've received to other people. I don't like SSRIs and other pharmaceutical medications to heal depression. It can sometimes be beneficial as a crutch or scaffolding to get someone over a difficult situation. Still, I find that many of my clients and friends then build a dependency on these serotonin reuptake inhibitors instead of understanding what the root problem is. Let's take a moment to look at from an integral family systems therapy perspective what that root problem is and how we can heal it.
From an IFS perspective, we have so many parts inside of us. When we have wounded child life parts, they can blend with us and transfer their pain from the past into our present-day conscious experience. Additionally, we can have protective features to become polarized, arguing with each other on the best course of action. Sending profound negative experiences into our consciousness, we can have another protective part that douses our body, a numbing sensation that makes us depressed. This can be that dark cloud hovering over you, a feeling of malaise, or many other depressive symptoms that can last for weeks, months, and years.
From the protective parts perspective, this is much more beneficial than feeling the deep pain of that wounded part. Usually, those wounded parts are children or adolescents, and our internal system creates the protective role, usually pretty soon after that traumatic wound. Because of this, during the sessions I lead for other people, these protective parts think that we are still the same age as the wounded, and when I facilitate communication between the conscious self and the defensive function. The defensive position is often amazed to find out that my client is an adult and with help and with some very, very, very skillful coaching. The protective part is usually more than willing and eager to repurpose itself.
Now, it must feel safe to let its guard down and allow the conscious mind to experience the wounded outcast part that suffered the trauma. I know that integral family systems parts talk can be a little confusing for those who aren't used to it, but basically, when you are traumatized or have a negative experience, a part of you takes the brunt of that force and kind of seizures off or fractures off and then often gets pushed aside from the conscious mind. The experience that was suffered was too painful. Sometimes, these can be suppressed memories like my sexual abuse, but other times, it can just be something hovering in the distance that blends in whenever we are triggered. This is more common, but both can be incredibly painful for the client.
The crowning jewel of internal family systems is unburdening these wounded outcasts. The unburdening process is about going to them with the help of a facilitator and hearing and understanding their story. We usually have to feel the pain that they experienced when we were a child. Again, these are our parts, their parts of ourselves and our memories. But then we bring the conscious mind into that experience and rewrite the experience.
This is called memory reconsolidation. It allows our internal brain system to rewire so those experiences don't go through our magdala. This relates to the default mode network I talked about earlier. So, instead of those memories cycling through the insula and the amygdala, they no longer have to go through our fear response, so we no longer get activated in our central nervous system.
Instead of being on guard in fight, flight, or fear, we can move slowly, understanding that, as adults, we are fully equipped to handle whatever these situations are. As children, our worst-case scenario is that we would be abandoned and die, so we are playing with the worst of stakes at risk. We'll think we'll die, but as an adult, it's rarer for something like that to occur. However, we can walk around constantly in a state of arousal in which we feel we're going to die, with our conscious mind not understanding why our body system is under so much stress and duress. I will continue making more videos on this, and I don't want this video to get too long.
Ultimately, if you are feeling either depression or major depression, there are some simple steps you can take right off the bat that will help. Try to change your default mode network. Go on a walk, go to the gym, and try to do something that will change how you view your immediate surroundings. This is not going to fix the situation. However, it will give you some immediate relief.
There are also other supplements that you can take, such as 5HTP, which can raise the serotonin levels in your brain along with lion's mane supplements. Finding an excellent coach or therapist specializing in internal family systems is vital if you want to heal these deep-mooted parts in the long term, however. And if you want to rewire your brain, doing a psychedelic healing journey is the best bet, in my experience. My wife and I lead individual and couple psychedelic and breathwork retreats here in Colorado, where it's legal.
I highly encourage you to check out our website and see if it fits you well. If you suffer from depression, you do not need to suffer alone. There is help. There are things that you can do immediately that will raise your quality of life. And then there are long-term solutions that will help you heal the internal wounded parts of you.
I know this because I speak from experience. I have had major depression, suicidal ideation, and so much more. It was only when it finally came to face that head-on that I realized I had no choice but to heal these parts of myself and dedicate the time and energy necessary to recover. I wanted to heal for myself so I could be happy and healthy. I tried to recover for my wife, for my children, and for my friends. So I could give the best parts of myself to them. It may sound trite, but if I can do it, so can you.
If you have any questions about depression, please post them in the comments below. I love answering questions from our community, and I'll make a video dedicated to those questions!
