High - Functioning Depression Podcast

What is high-functioning depression?

High-functioning depression is essentially when you are a high-functioning person who is depressed.  So you have a life that looks good, and feels good some or most of the time but inside you feel completely depressed and you even have the symptoms of depression.

Symptoms

Pushing your life forward despite feeling disconnected, exhausted, and heavy

• Intense imposter syndrome and fraud complex 
• Working past your limits to overcompensate for a lack of self-worth/emptiness
• Perfectionism 
• Feeling empty, dark, despondent when alone
• Using closet addictions to manage a sense of emptiness, or to run away from pain
• Fear of sharing your emotional world or true self - fear of appearing anything but happy 
• Inner-Conflict - feeling of being at war with yourself 
• Feeling unworthy of life 
• Perpetuating an image of a perfect/put together life. 
• Chronic Fatigue/Brain Fog
• Fear of being truly...

Oh the pressure. 

The relentless pressure. 

To do it "right", to have a life that looks good, to have a better body, to be a better wife and mother, to be successful, to be nice, to be good to quit the bad habits. 

Where does it all come from? Where did this demon arise? 
Is it society's fault? Is it our parent's fault? 

Well, actually, this pressure is SELF-GENERATED. And... it's something we are choosing. 

The relentless pressure we experience is, in fact, traumatic. Of course, we may have learned this as a coping mechanism. As a way to control our lives that felt completely out of control at some point in time. I used pressure to succeed as a way to distract myself from inner-emptiness. 

The gaping hole of invalidation, abuse, and neglect.

I still catch myself taking another hit of pressure from time to time. Snorting the adrenaline rush of putting an intense amount of pressure on myself until I crash and burn and in the wreckage realize that I am...

Well I suppose now is as good a time as any to have a conversation about high-functioning depression. 

High-Functioning depression, is basically pushing a boulder uphill while doing all the life things. Life feels exhausting and hard and draining. And there is a major internal pressure to put on a happy face. 

People who experience high-functioning depression have learned to slap a smile on and grind through life. But not the good kind of "boss-babe" business grind that feels empowering and satisfying. More like grinding right through you until you're raw and there's nothing left but bone (figuratively speaking).  Lots of self-loathing. Lots of self-shaming. Usually there's some serious people-pleasing thrown into the mix and working REALLY hard to make sure NO ONE knows that there's an empty black void which you fear will never truly be filled within you. 

The alarm clock rings... you push past the heavy frozen feeling, slap your make-up on and go FORWARD....

Been doing lots of work on ALLOWING in my own personal life these days.
Stripping back all the chaotic conditioning - deeper and deeper. The work never ends. And I don’t mean that in a complaining, low-energy way. I mean it in an expansive and beautiful way. 

The work never ends - I don’t know why we think there’s a destination where we suddenly know and are everything we “want” to be or THINK we want to be. No no my love. It doesn’t work that way. We’re in this for the long-haul. Always stepping up and meeting our true self at the gate. Over and over. And that’s a GOOD thing. But that’s a different topic for a different day.

Back to allowing.
So I’ve been seeing - or it’s being shown to me - That allowing and receiving in this life has nothing to do with laziness or sitting on your ass and expecting things to come to you.
Allowing is about open-handed trust. 

When you step into ALLOWING your...

That gnawing feeling that you just can't. 
You just can't. 

I remember sitting across from my therapist years ago and saying to her: 
"I just can't... I can't... I can't do this"

I was referring to everything. weight loss. life itself. It felt so real. The paradox of feeling like you'll die if you keep going but also feeling dead because you can't move forward. And then still pushing yourself anyway. 

Horrible. 

In that raw moment together - where I revealed to her my truest sense. My truest emotion - or the emotion that FELT truest, I felt like I was in a pool of liquid and the liquid was me. 

She didn't say much, all she said was "but you can". 

Not sure if it was because no one ever said that to me before, or if it was because I finally let my super-ego guard down and admitted to her, myself, and God how I REALLY felt. Honestly. And truly felt. 

But those three words changed me. They changed my life. The realization came over me like a wave and a...

Fortitude is courage in pain or adversity 

In this episode I'm talking about fortitude because it is going to be one of the most important tools along your journey of healing, spiritual growth, transformation, goal setting. Really just living an expansive and aligned, healed and powerful life that lights you up and brings joy to your soul.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW: 
I want to talk to you guys about fortitude because it is going to be one of the most important tools along your journey of healing, spiritual growth, transformation, goal setting. Really just living an expansive and aligned, healed and powerful life that lights you up and brings joy to your soul. 

I want to call you guys up today. Beyond maybe your traditional paradigm of what it means to heal your life. Not simply for the sake of challenging you - But because I believe that many, if not most of you really think much lower of yourselves and your own abilities and what you are truly capable...

Show Transcript Below

The leader is the one who moves first.
The leader knows from an inner-knowing and moves first on that knowing.
The leader is the one who moves - this can be a spiritual moving, a moving of focus, a moving of intention.

The leader is the one who can DELIVER and suffer at the same time.
The leader is highly skilled and magnetic.
The leader is also hiding sometimes.

The full depth of a leader - the full power is very seldom mined.

And those who are called to lead - who are driven and compelled by a singular THING - even if they do not know what the THING is - it calls it coos sometimes, it whispers sometimes, it calls and sometimes it rages and it storms through you at all times.

And there comes a point in leadership - any kind  - parenthood, ministry, business, career, performance, art - artists are very often leaders because they lead us to places within ourselves - they speak the soul’s language. And I do consider myself an artist as well as...

In this episode, I'm explaining and simplifying the concept of traumatic re-enactment and talking about three common forms it shows up in our lives. Obsessing & Trying Really Hard, Self-Loathing & Self-Sabotage, and Fawning and People-Pleasing. 

Episode Transcript Below: 

What is Trauma Re-enactment?

Trauma re-enactment is the idea that when we have unresolved traumatic energy in our system, we tend to repeat or re-enact the trauma. Freud had a concept similar to this called repetition-compulsion. And many theorists think that this is the system’s subconscious way of seeking resolution and I tend to agree with aspects of that idea.

It is my personal belief that we are here to heal. That we have a responsibility to do the work of reconnecting with self and others and increasing our own regulation and embodiment to bring balance and regulation into the world. And to change the trajectory of future generations - our children, and our world. I...

I believe we all have a compassionate core that encourages us to gently untangle the knots of trauma-related resistance (emotions, body sensations, deep wounds and core fears) 

In this episode, I'm diving deep into this concept and sharing some examples from my own life of how my own use of my compassionate core has helped me get through some intense activations, emotions, and sensations when resolving and working through my personal traumas.  

I also talk about where to start if you feel you have no sense of a compassionate core to cultivate it. 

**SHOW TRANSCRIPT BELOW: 
We use the compassionate core when working with trauma-related resistance.
What is trauma-related resistance?
Trauma-related resistance looks like extreme Self-Opposition
A Sense of Complete refusal from self to do things for self. And a lot of times it is a refusal to be with the self - because of a fear of going back to certain places or experiencing certain emotions.
Every single...

A Major component of my recovery/healing from Complex PTSD was the experience of grief.

Grieving was an experience that I kept away from myself for many, many years. It felt safer to berate and judge and shame myself:
“I should be over this by now”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I just need to get over it and move on”
“I don’t have time to cry about my childhood”

I didn’t know a thing about compassion.
About witnessing and holding myself.
About the sacred practice of pouring out the pain.
I didn’t know that what I truly needed was a space to grieve. I didn’t know that the grief experience which I so feared, would actually help my integrate and heal.

I had internalized the shaming messages from years of abandonment, parental betrayal, neglect, and abuse. Shaming myself kept all that pain of deep despair at bay. I preferred the more familiar pain of criticizing myself and pushing myself to keep going. I feared being...