My friend Jacleen Allen wrote an amazing article on the power of the mind. She has gratiously allowed me to share it with you all here. I’ll leave it to Jacleen from here.-
If you want to follow some of her work you can find her at http://www.successzoneunlimited.net
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I’ve experienced two major episodes of depression in my life, one as recent as last year (2008). Both of these episodes, I was able to pull myself out of without taking drugs.
The first time it happened was 17yrs ago, when I was just 25. It was in response to finding myself a single mum, my greatest fear. I was devastated and was very hard on myself for allowing this to happen. After weeks of trying to pull myself back together and feeling very weak and apathetic, I eventually asked my mother to drive me to the doctor (I felt unable to drive myself). I was diagnosed with post-natal depression, but I knew it wasn’t that. The doctor prescribed antidepressants, which I didn’t want to take, but I didn’t know what else to do. After a week or two I still was not feeling any better and was told I had to give the drugs time to work. About that time I discovered Louise Hay’s book ‘You Can Heal Your Life’, and I knew I would no longer take the drugs.
The book on its own did not help me to cure my depression, but it set me on a new path of personal responsibility, very empowering. I also joined a meditation group and suddenly my world expanded. I realised I was much more than what I had previously thought. The group became my lifeline and slowly I made progress. It was not a quick recovery and I tried many other things along the way, including counselling and hypnotherapy, but eventually I did feel better.
I met a new partner after 7yrs on my own and in the next few years I studied and practised several different natural therapy modalities and found myself attracting people who were dealing with physical symptoms caused by emotional distress. I was dealing with a lot of stress myself at the time, all of it self induced. I was being very hard on myself for not making any money from my work. Then my son was born and I gave up on my practice, but not on being hard on myself. Eventually it affected my relationship and we separated after 8yrs together. I was a single mum once again. However, it wasn’t that that set me off on my second bout of depression. It was financial struggle.
I was in the middle of my life coaching certification training and I’d just researched and written a 25 page document on how effective life coaching was for stress relief. But this had gone beyond stress relief. Even my meditation classes weren’t helping. I needed something else. Again, I didn’t want to take medication but did not know what else to do. So I went to a doctor for a physical checkup to see if there was something going on but my physical health was fine. She offered a referral to a psychologist but instinctively I felt this was not for me.
A few months earlier I’d attended a seminar where I’d learnt about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and I searched for a coach who had done this company’s training. Fortunately for me, I found the perfect coach who taught me, with just a small exercise, a huge lesson in self-talk.
“The most influential person who will talk to you all day, is you. So, you should be very careful what you say to you.” -Zig Ziglar
I was asked to notice and acknowledge in a notebook when I heard myself saying negative things about myself in my own mind. At first I found it extremely difficult because I wasn’t even sure if I was doing that. Oh, it was definitely happening, but it had been going on for so long and I had ignored it for years. I described the feeling in my head as “white noise”. After a week of what felt like a literal battle for my sanity I felt even worse and was wondering if I’d wasted my money on this coach. But then she pointed out that I was focusing on how I felt, rather than on the words I was hearing in my mind. She told me to try again before our next session.
This time my intention was clear. I was no longer focusing on how I was feeling, and sure enough I did start to pick up on negative things I was saying to myself. At first there were a lot of negative things I was picking up, but over the following days I noticed that as I acknowledged the negative self-talk the “white noise” was becoming less and less intense. Then spontaneously I began to create affirmations that counteracted some of the things I was picking up. For example at one stage I heard myself saying I was a loser… My affirmation became “I’m a winner”… and I repeated that to myself over and over again. And to my utter surprise, I began to remember and notice all the times that I was a winner and suddenly I was feeling really good about myself.
This was a huge revelation to me, because before I had always believed that my emotions ruled my life. I’d heard that thoughts led to feelings, but I’d never believed that because I’d never connected thoughts to self-talk. Now I know that to be true because I’ve experienced it. This small exercise gave me back my power, and it was so simple!
I now practise as a Master NLP Practitioner and Life Coach. I specialise in stress relief although my passion is working with women in business, or women wanting to be in business.
Footnote: It’s ironic that Louise Hay’s book ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ was the doorway to my healing 17yrs ago. Louise’s book is all about how negative self-talk affects the physical body, but not so much about how it affects the mind. There are no positive affirmations offered on how to deal with depression in that book.
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