Anxiety and Depression: Honoring a Different Perspective
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The dark aspects of life are a reality within the world we live. Death, violence, pain, and sorrow exist just as life, peace, joy, and happiness do. Yet, we find ourselves quite often seeking to evade the darkness, rather than accept its reality.
It has become common practice in contemporary humanity to run from such dark moments in the form of escapism, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, drugs, and even in the form of the self-help books reminding us to just stay positive. When the truth is sometimes we must sit down, turn, and face the difficult situation head on. As the old Zen Buddhists once acknowledged: Sit in the fire. The fire will not burn us, rather the fire comes to purge and cleanse us from that which holds our forward striving energy back from living our potential.
According to Britannica, neurosis is a “disorder that causes a sense of distress and deficit in functioning. Neuroses are characterized by anxiety, depression, or other feelings of unhappiness or distress…” (Neurosis)
Anxiety and depression are more common in the present day than ever before. But as these dark aspects live on, it is time we understand they are here for a reason. Anxiety and depression, and other neuroses, are not to be suppressed or numbed so we can return to the life we were living when the neurotic condition began. The presence of anxiety and depression in one’s life is a higher calling to change the viewpoint or conviction of one’s conscious mind, that is our ego-consciousness, towards an event or life itself. As Dr. Carl Jung (1970) stated,
“Neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure… It is an attempt of the self-regulating psychic system to restore the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams—only rather more forceful and drastic.” (para. 389)
Therefore, anxiety and depression come about as an attempt to re-center us and move us into alignment with our true nature. Sometimes we step aside from the truth of who we each are, whether due to societal pressures, conformity, or even a false truth our ego attached to. This is okay; it happens. Nonetheless, we must remember that the dark nature of anxiety and depression became activated within our lives for a reason. The moment we see why is the first step in coming to a higher state of personal consciousness, so we can transcend the darkness of a neurosis and enter into alignment with our truth.
Working with anxiety and depression falls under the scope of inner work; that is in this case looking within ourselves to understand why such a disorder would be present in our lives. I was 31 years old when I had my first anxiety attack. I had an intuition surface and for the next year of my life I could not muster the courage to honor it. What it was requesting of me was in direct violation of a moral code I possessed, so I disregarded the intuition. It was at that time the anxiety came over me in full blown force and for the next year of my life I lived with anxiety. I would go grocery shopping and consistently be on the verge of a panic attack. It began to grow worse to the point that I could no longer even do some of my greatest pleasures in life without the presence of a tightness in my chest and a shortness of breath.
When I assumed the inner work, deciding to take it on, and to trust in the intuition, well, it was at that time the anxiety fell and crumbled and never again returned. As you will see below, it was the neurosis itself which had cured me through my effort of conducting the inner work and investigating the anxiety itself. I realized at that time the anxiety was a call to change my conscious view, drop my moral conviction, which was never really mine to begin with, and bring me back into alignment with who it is that I am.
As Dr. Jung (1964) says elsewhere,
“We should not try to “get rid” of a neurosis, but rather to experience what it means, what it has to teach, what its purpose is. We should even learn to be thankful for it, otherwise we pass it by and miss the opportunity of getting to know ourselves as we really are. A neurosis is truly removed only when it has removed the false attitude of the ego. We do not cure it— it cures us. A man is ill, but the illness is nature’s attempt to heal him. From the illness itself we can learn so much for our recovery, and what the neurotic flings away as absolutely worthless contains the true gold we should never have found elsewhere.” (para. 361)
It is time we see anxiety and depression for the voice in which they are. Although it is a loud, dark voice which seems to haunt us, it comes with purpose. Only when we choose to sit in the fire and honor what the neurosis is attempting to say can we discover a personal change which was so desperately needed in our lives.
Wishing you well,
Mark
P.S. Need help with the inner work? I’m here for that.
P.S.S. You can read various accounts of working with the darkness in my upcoming book. The book is a journey through healing, dreams, and the depths of the inner world: The place where we come to know our very own soul…
References
Jung, C. G. (1964). The collected works of C. G. Jung: Civilization in transition (Vol 10). Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1970). The collected works of C. G. Jung: The symbolic life (Vol 18). Princeton University Press.
Neurosis. (n.d.) Britannica. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/science/neurosis
