Depression symptoms can be described by the acronym FESTIVAL:
The symptoms are just tip of the ice-berg. A person with depression may face the following issues:
How Do We Get There?
Most of us go through life with big dreams, intense desires and hoping to get to the desired destinations as soon as possible. At times we may go a bit too fast, trying to do so much, acquire so much that we start forgetting about our body needs, numbing our emotions, even not paying attention to what we do and why we do it. In this process we start losing ourselves.
We may strive, achieve, party, shop, until… some of us find ourselves feeling unwell, or realizing that we have a few years before retirement but are still far from our financial goals. We may see our friends who were not able to work out their relationship, after years of fighting, putting each other down and superficial or manipulative relationship, suddenly, when kids went to college, split-up and go separate ways. You see this heart-breaking story of relationships crumbling like a pack of cards, repeating itself around you (or maybe even with you) over and over, until you start losing hope that happiness and love even exist.
On top of this, the aging parents may start requiring your extra care, or you move to a new place where you feel like an alien from the outer space, and everything just keeps piling up beyond your capacity to handle, while your ability to do so is on its last string.
Can This Mess Get Any Worse?
You may go to your doctor and say: “I’m falling apart.” Five minutes later you leave with a prescription and advice that you need to distress. You swallow the pill, but it does not do much for you. Or it does work and you start taking meds regularly, but you dread skipping a dose and the associated withdrawal symptoms.
Then another crisis happens, exhausting you even more, and pills can do nothing with it. Emotionally, you barely manage this hit, your nervous system goes totally berserk. You hardly sleep, your energy level is below 0, the digestive system is either sluggish, or opposite – you cannot leave the bathroom. You hardly can get out of bed in the morning and have to drag yourself to do anything. You may even have tried to use cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana to numb that unbearable pain and to be able to manage the life basics. You have been applying all those “mood lifters” and “feelings numbers”, even have done some great counselling, but you still cannot bring yourself back to the normal you, and your body chemistry and hormonal system are out of whack. You forgot what a true smile is, and communication with others became a chore to you.
You may have so much on the plate that you do not know where to even start. This means that you need a Fresh Start – a total Health and Wellness Makeover. And we can help you with this!
How Can Fresh Start Program Help You?
1. Feel Heard, See Hope, Learn How to Change
When guests come to Fresh Start, they look for 3 things: to be heard and understood, to start seeing hope, and to get skills they can take home. We aim to offer all 3:
- A safe healing space where you feel supported and safe;
- To hear your journey and share how to build on your strengths;
- Tools you can use to transform unhealthy patterns and behaviours
2. Emotional Wellbeing through Physical Health
Dr. Michael Gershon from Columbia University has discovered that our intestines contain approximately 100 million nervous cells (which is more than in our entire spinal cord), 30 neurotransmitters (just like brain), and 95% body serotonin is located in the bowels. Those neurons are going all the way from esophagus to the anus, approximately 9 metres, and are called the enteric nervous system, or the “gut’s brain”.
Dr. Gershon states that besides regulating fluids and enzymes released during the process of digestion, the “gut brain” influences a big part of our emotions. In fact, 90% of our primary nerve, the vagus, is carrying information from the gut. Scientists affirm that very soon psychiatrists will need to expand their treatment of emotional issues to the second brain. This is just one example how interconnected are our body and emotions. You know well that stress may cause constipation or diarrhea.
Trying to address your emotions while ignoring of your body organs suffering would not be super effective. This is why during your program we not only work with your emotional wellbeing, but also aim to stabilize digestive system, address unhealthy sleep patterns, as well as hormonal and nervous system imbalances.
Issues Hide in Tissues
Session after session, our guests get surprised how interconnected is emotional state with physical wellbeing. After working for 15+ years with people suffering with emotional issues, we know it is virtually impossible to work on one without the other. We dedicate a lot of time to physical body.
Each program we see how when working through the body, with those tense tendons, or cleansing of the digestive system and liver, people start releasing not just tension and toxins, but expel a huge amount of emotions not serving them anymore.
For example, one of our guests came with major knots in the upper back she carried for many many years, her shoulders and neck were hurting all the time. More she let go emotionally, the better her body felt, more relaxed her muscles got, until in combination with structural body treatments and energy work, the knots eventually completely disappeared.
3. Heal Your Soul, not just Your Mind
Healing our brain may not be enough. The word mental is majorly about control, mind over matter. Control over what we do and say, and our ability to cope. However, rational behavior change attempts only go so far, until something or someone triggers that invisible monster inside of us and we explode, hurting other people and feeling guilty and disappointed in ourselves.
Without deep down transformation and getting in touch with our emotions and soul, we may feel functional and reasonably stable, but rarely happy and free. At Fresh Start, we believe that it is essential to take time to observe and feel our emotions, give them space and have compassion towards them and ourselves. We need to understand that emotions, just like physical pain, are symptoms showing us that we are deviating from the place where we’ll be happy. It is important to decode the language of those emotions and not to shun away from them.
4. Magic Starts with Opening a Stinky Can of Worms
We all would like to have more miracles in our life, more magic. However, initially very few of us are ready to say: ‘Darn, I should have studied earlier how to be successful in life, not just career, how to invest into a relationship, not just in my…’
We all want to never experience pain, when we get it – to get rid of it as soon as possible and not have to open those old cans of stinky worms. However, unless we address deeper roots of our issues, not just triggers, we may end up back in the same old rut again. If we only take care of the symptoms, as soon as the pain diminishes a little, our motivation for change will start dissipating, and we’ll soon find ourselves losing vigilance and getting back to where we started.
5. Understanding How We Got There
When the guests arrive to FS with suicidal depression, feeling defeated, experiencing lack of motivation and loss of purpose in life, we see a quiet cry for help: “I hurt, please save me and help me to get well.”
Yes, our very first goal is to help you return to the road of life after being hit. Yet in order not to get to the same type of life accidents, we absolutely need to ask ourselves: ‘I guess, life is teaching me important lessons. How do I get better at…?’
Healing is not all just about counselling or behavior therapy. Healing also is taking the time to look back and understand how we have arrived to today, and what steps we took to get what we have. Then to learn from that journey and adjust our journey moving forward.
When you start feeling stronger emotionally and physically, you may be ready to take it beyond dealing with major past traumas and coping (as you know the last one lasts only so long). When we have time to reflect on the past, we may at times come to realization that our very desires or past choices have contributed to our depression or life challenges. For example, a young person who was constantly reading horror books, started seeing why the world he saw around himself was so scary and full of danger. When he realized what he was feeding to his brain and soul and started looking for more inspiring and positive alternatives, he started seeing more colour and peace in his life. Another lady experienced repeated sexual assaults spiraling her down to seclusion. When she rediscovered herself and the power of her inner beauty, she went into life, walking with responsibility of knowing that she is super attractive and enhancing safety by decreasing trigger factors.
Stuff happens in life, but our life skills and life wisdom help us navigate through those successfully and minimize the impact on our present and future. Good part is that even though we make mistakes, we can reflect and learn from them. As long as we are open and humble.
6. Going Beyond the Patches
Very often, life happens, we get a bit better, move on, and then life happens once again, and this time it gets worse. And we simply do not understand why us, while everyone else around us is fine, while we take another pill before going to work in a well-established company, or ending up in a similar behaviour pattern once again.
There are quick patches for the soul. When you get diagnosed with depression, you are routinely prescribed anti-depressants. Sadly, they do not empower us with life skills, nor teach us how wisely go about our situations. We simply do not feel aggravation, yet the wound is silently still there. That’s why people are so afraid to go off psychotic meds, as they once again may lose control over their emotions and get in touch with those nasty feelings deeply buried inside.
Fresh Start is for those, who got tired of patches for the soul and are ready to start untangling difficult situations of life, doing inventory of their beliefs, values and thought patterns. For those who are open to the true transformation – the one that is not instant, that requires inner work, looking at those painful wounds, full of pus. Yet that transformation happens from the inside out and starts healing deeply your entire life, not just symptoms.
How Vicky Started Healing Her Soul
Why Vicky Improved?
- Commitment and Dedication
- Carefully followed the plan, though more than once she was in tears going through deep healing
- Through keeping her honor to her promise
- Through gratitude
- Multiple therapies applied over a period of time, by caring practitioners using their advanced skills, deep understanding of trauma, psychology and physiology, bound with our emotions
- Peeling the onion of life, a layer after layer, patiently
Disclaimer:
Though we have professional staff with advanced health expertise and most of our guests receive deep health results, the Fresh Start cannot guarantee health recovery from any specific disease or symptom, as the healing process is individual, gradual and depends on many factors. Please be realistic in expectations as there is no such thing as quick fixes when it comes to healing.