Depression, Anxiety and Weight Gain: The Despair Cycle (ver 1)

Here is some helpful info from TylerWoods
Cheers
Philip Martin

Depression, Anxiety and Weight Gain: The Despair Cycle (ver 1)
Today I want to talk about something that so many people tend to have, but there seems to be no name for it. Sometimes we get depressed and with the depression we begin to experience anxiety. Then our self-esteem begins to suffer, we are filled with fear and we begin to over eat or stuff ourselves, we may gain weight so we get depressed, then we have anxiety, then the fear comes in, well it is a cycle, and I call it the despair cycle.

The term despair means loss of hope or hopelessness. It literally means without hope. More deeply, it means without Spirit, without breath, without life. Despair is being without a direction, without alternatives. Not surprisingly, despair is linked to the soul issue of hope.
That is why it is so important to work with spirituality when dealing with all these issues at once because it gives despair some sort of direction.
Mainstream psychiatry and therapies do not see you as suffering from an endless cycle, they just see a set of symptoms and treat them, however, it can be a cycle, and a cycle that needs to be treated correctly.

You know what makes it so difficult about the cycle is that the cycle is difficult to break. Many people have tried to treat each cycle separately. They go to therapist for depression and anxiety then get sent to a psychiatrist to get medications, go somewhere else to help them with weight loss, and go somewhere else to help them find their spirituality and they keep going because they feel each issue is separate. By the time we are done, we are spinning in circles and in many cases, still suffering most of the symptoms.

The problem is you are a whole, you are not depression, you are not anxiety and your are not fear. You are a whole person that needs to be treated as a whole and not just a group of symptoms.
So today I want to talk about the despair cycle and offer you a few ways that you can help yourself.
You know I believe fear gets in our way when we are dealing with the despair cycle. Please know that our biggest challenge is not the fear, but being opened to new information about fear.
99% of fear is not about the now, and it is normally not about the reason you think it is. In fact, most fears are not real. Fear is justified less than 1% of the time you experience it. Amazing isn’t it? Basically, fear is something we create within ourselves, an illusion of the mind. This illusion makes Fear looks and feels real, and We think fear is real because we believe it is real and because we believe it, we feel it. But the truth is…..it is an illusion.

Negative thinking creates fear, which in turn, can create anxiety and depression and low self esteem. Here comes that cycle again, and the truth is, it is based on thoughts.
Thoughts are energized by reacting to them with an emotion. The more thoughts the more emotion, here’s the thing, we have about 60- 70 thousand thoughts a day and if we hold onto that thought for a minute or more we begin manifesting that thought turning it into an emotion and then acting on it.
So it would make sense to begin to recognize your thought process as a way to cope with fear. Have a good attitude and a positive outlook.  You really become what you think
When faced with something frightening, think of it as a challenge that can be changed into an opportunity.

Now speaking of opportunity this is a great opportunity for me to talk about another part of the despair cycle and that is anxiety. I think the most important thing we can remember here is that Anxiety works on an exaggeration. It works by feeding it a story that is not true. You tell yourself a story that has no facts or evidence and you begin to believe in it based strictly on the story you created.
Anxiety is filled with what if’s, so take the what if’s out of anxiety and you take its very roots away. You can do that by simply staying in the now. I know I know it seems to be the buzz word but staying on the now really helps with anxiety. You see worrying about the future or regretting the past isn’t going stop your anxiety, in fact it’s going to increase your anxiety. Want to know why? It’s because there is nothing you can do about the past and believe me, we cannot make the future happen.
So now let’s take a quick peek, we disassemble fear by recognizing our thoughts and use them to create new opportunity and we help deal with anxiety by sticking to the now and listening to only the facts. See how simple this all seems?

Notice I said it seems. Look its taken you a long time to  construct the despair cycle it will take you a while to deconstruct it but I think its great to have a few simple tools to work through some of the basics.

So let’s talk about depression for a second. Did you know that only about 50% of people get help with antidepressants? So what does the other half of people do to cope with depression?
They can use a more natural and holistic approach. Holistic approaches have many modalities, which help treat depression and give the you more responsibility and say in their overall care.
There are so many natural treatments. Of course there are great supplements that are out there that can really help balance your neurotransmitters and give you over all good health. In fact some of the supplements have been compared to some of the antidepressant on the market only with little to no side effects. This is a proven path many are taking.

Movement is important for treating depression and in fact the despair cycle in general. Movement such as Yoga can be very helpful.

I cannot begin to tell you how many of my clients have found that yoga has been a true cure for their depression. Some people say that regular exercise becomes intolerable when depressed but Yoga exercise, starting with as few a poses a day in just a few minutes can become one of the best natural medicines the body can produce.

Tai Chi is another way you can help yourself. You see it goes back to movement. It is Chinese practice and effective for people suffering from depression or anxiety. The practice involves a series of coordinated movement helping the patient to breathe and meditate at the same time. Tai Chi can be practiced by anyone.

Simple walks can even make a huge difference in your depression. Have you ever looked at a pool of water and it has not been moved by rain or ore water, it gets stagnant, yecky stuff grows in it, and it becomes harmful. Well we are made of water and we are much like the pond of water and we need to have movement so our mind our body and our spirit does not become stagnate.
Meditation can help as well in fact A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry shows that for people suffering from depression meditation worked a great deal. Breathing and being calm naturally can calm the mind.

So when was the last time you went to your doctor or psychiatrist and they suggested the use of yoga, meditation, spirituality, supplements, diet and exercise to treat your anxiety and depression or to use it to build self esteem, and here’s the kicker, to use these modalities to lose weight?

Not many professionals will suggest this. Even though there are a variety of studies backing up the facts that a natural approach to health and wellness especially depression and anxiety, fear and self esteem and even weight loss can battled through natural proven treatments.

Battling the despair cycle is not easy and rarely will you hear someone give you a prescription for life. Despair is a mental state which exaggerates not only our misery but also our weakness. With that in mind I can tell you that you are quite capable of and breaking free of this cycle and walking straight forward.

I think it is key to remember that we are a whole, we are mind body and spirit and combined we are a whole, we are not separate parts. That is why a holistic approach to mental health and breaking the cycle of despair is so important.

That’s because once again let me emphasize holistic healing addresses all parts of the individual furthermore holistic healing is not intended to serve as a band-aid or a one time fix. It is an ongoing journey of discovery in search of more answers and ultimately; living better, being healthier, and striving for wholeness.

That is where your spirituality would come in to play. Having a strong spiritual base helps ease depression, helps us heal physical illness, puts a lid on anxiety, makes us fearless when we are frightened, boosts our self-esteem and makes us conscious people. The spiritual path is one of inner self discovery. Its total focus is based upon ones personal process of self discovery and the search for greater meaning. The only requirement for spirituality is a willingness to commit oneself to total self honesty and personal responsibility.

Spirituality is only for those who recognize that life brings to them that which they create through their thoughts and actions, and that they are totally responsible for their own life experience. Most modern day spiritualists will tell you that spirituality has to do with living with deliberation, that is, living consciously and intentionally—not just "going through the motions" of life, but engaging in life with consciousness.

I personally believe if we combine positive thought with positive movement and positive outlook, we can conquer the despair cycle and live a life knowing that there is the opportunity for insight, joy, faith, and the capability to live life as fully as possible.
Walk in Peace
Tyler Woods
From Natural Health and Wellness!