A yearning for home that never goes away…
Sometimes what we think of as chronic depression is more than situational or biochemical. Sometimes when our depression is resistant to treatment it’s because we are treating the problem on the wrong plane. Sometimes the constant low-grade ennui comes from a sense that we’ve never really settled in here on the earth plane. And, to be honest, we haven’t really decided whether we want to.
Spiritual depression can be something that’s always been there in the background or it may arise sometime after a period of profound spiritual growth.
It can take many forms, but spiritual depression in a nutshell is that feeling of, “I don’t really belong here. I never agreed to be here. It’s dense and hard and heavy here. When can I go home?”
Often, there are a cluster of other symptoms that point to the possibility of this particular quality of depression. There’s no single symptom that is diagnostic. But a cluster of symptoms can be indicative.
- having had a near-death experience at any time in your life
- having had an out-of-body experience at any time (including lucid dreaming)
- having had to parent your parent(s) as a youth (or even still)
- feeling like the black sheep, as though you weren’t born to the right family
- never feeling you belong anywhere (geographically or socially)
- homesickness for a place you’ve never found
- feeling no one person knows you entirely or deeply
- more frequent experiences of the supernatural or paranormal than most people
- a highly developed spiritual curiosity
- a strong yearning for connection to something greater than yourself or for higher consciousness
This kind of depression stems from a Spiritual Abandonment Wound. My therapeutic approach is similar to how I treat the Abandonment Wound, but adapted for this special kind of circumstance. Believe me, I know how you feel. I understand and can help. Nothing you say will sound crazy or too “out there” for me. I know your experience is real.
You may find this lecture I delivered on the Healing the Abandonment Wound to be particularly interesting – I do a whole section on addressing Spiritual Abandonment. Perhaps you hear yourself in here?
If you’d like to work together on this, let’s start with an initial session. After that, count on doing about 4-6 more sessions over a period of about 2-4 months.