I didn’t know how my decision was going to be implemented. I had no money to speak of, and nowhere to go. In the September I was offered a job on the Gold Coast, and without hesitation I took it. Within a month I had packed my car and was on the highway north. Everything just flowed. The conversation with my husband
was effortless; as was the drive north. The subsequent financial settlement had a few hiccups and what I was able to see was that those hiccups gave me the opportunity of working through issues that previously would have led me to shutdown emotionally. So what is Conscious Awareness?
According to J.C. Banerjee in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychological Terms, 1944, “Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind”. Awareness is defined on www.
psychologicaldictionary.org as “a person with awareness would likely be able to report on his or her internal and external states”.
So how does becoming consciously aware help depression? Being able to name emotions as they are felt is the first step in the healing process. Then being able to identify them as they arise is liberating.
Most of us are afraid of our emotions. We are taught from an early age that emotions such as anger and fear are not appropriate – and yet they are the scourge of our society.
Boys are taught that it is sissy to cry. They are told to ‘man up’. Becoming conscious of our emotions is healthy. By being present to emotions, and sitting with them, allows the emotions to wash through the body and therefore not get stored. There may be deeper emotions that are revealed, and being present to them again allows them to pass quickly. The deeper you go, the more access you have to what really drives the surface emotion, and you also gain access to the infinite intelligence of the body and being.
‘What else is there? One of the simplest techniques to gain
access to these deeper emotions is to ask ‘What else is here?’ and allowing those emotions to surface and naming them. Sometimes emotions can’t be named, and there is resistance to feeling them. ‘What else?’ is a simple question that allows the emotion to arise, be felt and the released through a deep breath. What occurs through conscious
awareness is the realisation that you are at choice every moment of every day. When I realised that I became conscious
– conscious of what I was feeling, conscious of the myriad of emotions and thoughts that previously would have led me to tell stories, led me to withdraw from life, led me to withdraw from others, to shut others out, to shut down to everything. In August, 2014, when one of my
brothers chose to take his life because of challenges with a rapid onset of aggressive Parkinson’s disease, the grief that came was able to be dealt with healthily. Depression and anxiety are very
prevalent in our society. Life does not discriminate. Each of us will face grief – it will come in many guises and disguises – whether it be through death of those near and dear; separation; divorce; illness; redundancy; or other things, but come it will. You can choose to numb yourself
down with alcohol, tobacco, gambling and pills and even food, as well as other addictions, or you can use depression to become conscious. Through conscious awareness we become healthy and happy. I can honestly say that I can strike a line through the ‘not’ in that original advertising campaign, because life is unfolding in ways I could never imagine and I am opening and loving every moment of every day. n
Jan Henderson is a trained counsellor. She has worked with people with anxiety, grief and depression for more than
25 years. She currently presents conscious awareness workshops throughout Australia.
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