I have a story like everyone else. Not sure it would help though. So I’ll write about what may help someone?
I have been on a journey the past year and a half, and I have had some breakthroughs, though recovery comes in fits and spurts. Most recently I came across an author and teacher by the name of Marshall Rosenberg. He has a number of video presentations on utube.
He teaches about empathy and connections, and about feelings and needs. He thinks our culture has got things screwed up pretty bad because the system is one of domination and authority enforced by retribution. Everything is divided into good and bad, right or wrong, reward or punishment, and it fosters either passive acceptance or rebelliousness, and our feelings end up as often than not in anger, guilt, depression or shame.
So he teaches people to focus on what they are feeling. To identify in the most elemental terms what one is feeling. He says that negative feelings like anger, depression, guilt or shame represent needs that we have which are not getting met. So he wants people to focus on their needs, identify what they are and how they might get them met, and then telling those whom we may request help from, about our feelings and needs, and then “request,” not demand, that the person help us with this need or that one. They may choose not to, or can’t for some reason. But the point in requesting help instead of getting angry and demanding help — is that we really can’t force anyone to do anything, and if we present our needs as a demand, we are surely likely to provoke resistance in the other person.
Besides Marshall Rosenberg, I began my journey with Susan Anderson whose forte is counseling people including children and teens who have been abandoned, either by divorce, or emotionally abandoned by parents, or people truly physically abandoned. She has a website as well under Abandonment Recovery. I also read a book about Milton Freeman, the father of contemporary therapeutic hypnosis. The sub and unconscious play a huge role in our emotional responses. Chemical balances, such as hormonal levels, can play a role in how we feel as well.
Susan Anderson’s site was a helpful start toward recovery for me. Marshall Rosenberg’s message goes straight to the heart of things. He mainly is focused on how we communicate [he calls it “non-violent communication’], but his insights on feelings and needs in relation to depression might be helpful as well.