Depression and Spiritual Awakening: One Woman’s Story of Overcoming Abuse and Depression Through the Practice of Conscious Forgiveness

By Elzbieta Pettingill

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

“Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”- Buddha

If you suffer from depression, or know someone close to you who does, then you came to the right place. No, I’m not a psychologist, but if you are anything like me, chances are that your faith in psycho-therapy has diminished, if not disappeared completely. I’m here to share with you my own experience of dealing with chronic depression, how the hopelessness that comes with it had made me attempt suicide numerous times, what steps I took to overcome this so called “mental disorder,” and what impact all of this has had on my spiritual awakening. My experience has driven me to find a true peace of mind and the sense of true happiness that can only be found within ourselves.  

Did you know that you can heal your depression entirely?

Better yet, did you know that you can accomplish that entirely for free? Yes, that’s right; with no cost whatsoever. From my experience, you don’t need health insurance to cover your medical bills, pay for the prescription drugs and for the visits to a psychiatrist. You don’t even need the money to put gas in the car to get there. Also, you don’t need the money to take you out of the unwanted and depressing circumstances, either. As a matter of fact, as strange as it sounds, the less you have, the better off you are. Materialistic things often serve as distractions, and can be misleading. They often prevent us from focusing on what matters the most, which is looking within ourselves for the answers.    

Everything that you need – you already have. Yes, you do.

Let me explain.

Depression comes from within us. We know about it, quite a lot these days, but it’s not something we can really see, is it? We are only able to see the symptoms; the consequences of it. Depression is something we experience through our feelings. We cannot see our feelings; we can only see what impact they have on us. If it’s a good feeling, we might see a smile, if it’s a bad one, we might see tears. If feelings of being depressed come from within us, then why do we continue to search for an answer – for a cure – out there, outside of ourselves? Why don’t we look within ourselves instead?

Why does our society encourage this madness? Why are we being constantly brain-washed, by the media, by the pharmaceutical companies, by the chosen few whose last names are followed by letters like MD and PhD? These and other representatives of the Establishment, such as the church, the government, you name it, want us to believe that what we need is out there as opposed to inside ofeach of us.

The Business of Health Care

Isn’t this a conflict of interest? If in order to get well, we have to continue to pay those who are providing us with a “solution”, how soon do you suppose it would take for this solution to start being effective? Never….? The entire existence of the “solution providers” such as pharmaceutical companies, doctors, therapists, counsellors, etc. depends on the demand — our need of them.  Would they really be willing to tell us that we already have everything that we need to get well?

What we truly need to heal – not just the depression, but ourselves, our lives, our relationships – is not easy, but it is simple. We need to practice forgiveness. True forgiveness, like depression, can be found only inside of us. Forgiving means expressing compassion and love, which is an absolute acceptance. We all know at some level that love heals. So we must know that we are able to heal ourselves by using this tool. Practicing forgiveness is free, and always available to us!

From my own personal experience, it is possible to attain such healing.

Being depressed is not a fun thing. It’s almost like living in a vegetative state. It’s painful, not just emotionally but even physically, to simply exist. Your decreased level of energy makes your mind dull and your body unwilling to perform necessary tasks. Nobody seems to understand you, no matter how hard they might try. The more people shy away from you, the more you tend to withdraw. You feel misunderstood, alone and hopeless…

I know how hard it is to live while being depressed all the time. Throughout my life, I have suffered from suicidal tendencies, and I’ve acted upon them several times. I was diagnosed with major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. I know that my grandmother suffered from major depression her whole life also.

As a child, I had no clue as to what was wrong with me. I thought it was like this for everyone… I thought everyone hated their lives and themselves with the same passion I did. It wasn’t until I reached my twenties that I learned what clinical depression is, what the chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters does to the brain, and all that.

After being hospitalized for an intentional overdose on sleeping pills, I was subjected to countless in-patient and out-patient therapies. Doctors kept prescribing me drugs like Zoloft and Prozac, hoping that the medicine would keep me alive, at least until they would figure something that would be more effective. There was no permanent solution though. Psychotherapies turned out to be just as short-term effective as the prescribed drugs were. Crying my eyes out on some leather couch, in the company of some sympathetic certified therapists, might have been relieving, but only temporarily. I’d feel alleviated for a day or two, only to crash again even before the next appointment. The cognitive behavioral therapy seemed like the right answer for a while. Recognizing some maladaptive behaviors, choosing explicit goals, all that may have been useful but not helpful enough.

I couldn’t help but to wonder why, of all those highly educated doctors I was seeing, not one of them ever looked me in the eyes and told me: “We can beat this thing. Depression is curable. You won’t have to live like this for ever.” 

After years of this living nightmare, and two major brain seizures caused by yet another suicide attempt, I was ready to admit that whatever I was told I should be doing wasn’t really working. 

For more than three decades, I was not able to make amendments with myself or my life. I could not make peace with the fact that my life was nothing but a big struggle. For a very long time, I didn’t even know that in order to heal, I had to forgive and truly accept not just myself and others; I had to completely accept my life for what it was, instead of continuing to try to change it at all cost. Nobody taught me that. I was taught the opposite in fact. I was taught that I had to do everything I could to improve myself and my life. I was taught that my life and I were broken and needed fixing. Even all the spiritual and self-help books I read could not prepare me to truly understand what forgiveness and acceptance is about. Those books have guided me and had shined some light on it, but only through putting forgiveness and acceptance into practice could I understand it for real.

Nobody told me that my depression wasn’t just a curse, some mental handicap. As it turned out, my depression was a true blessing – a true gift – but I had to make that discovery on my own.   

The Seeds of Depression

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