Antidepressants & Resistance On The Path To Healing

After an extended conversation with one of my students, where we touched upon the high anti-depressant prescription rates in my immediate circle, I feel urged to investigate what I make of that.

My recent psychotherapy journey flashes before me, and I relate to everyone's resistance from my core. I lack a good description that precisely captures how that feels. It's an innate understanding of the struggle and fear accompanied by a deep sigh. I believe there is something in everyone's life that they would rather avoid. Something that makes your mind spin endlessly until you seek a moment of relief. Whether a conversation went wrong or some catastrophe occurred.

It could be that there is an overwhelming need to help others. Subsequently, helplessness arises when man realizes he has no control. Neither over one's mind nor body, let alone over someone else's. How much suffering can you witness motionless until your body moves before your mind can process it?

To watch someone beat a puppy to a pulp without the option to look away or stop it is comparable to witnessing a loved one befallen by horrible sicknesses or extreme poverty. It is a fact in most cases, you are not able to help. To pour money on poverty struck people is like running water in a cup without a bottom.

Your uselessness confronts you. You cringe, rip your nailbeds, bite your lips, bite your nails, scratch your forehead, shake, spazz, and pull your hair. Of which all you see daily anywhere. The nailbeds of our society are a direct representation of our mental states. Constant avoidance. Instead, it is an escape from a challenge, which exceeds our abilities, or so we think. We tense our muscles at the mere thought of facing it.

Physicians prescribe anti-depressants way too often. However, that might be due to the lack of real specialists. Today's mental health institutions are in a sorry state. To look for a good psychologist in our societies is the equivalent of looking for water in the desert. After you receive the prescription, you get this confirmation from a specialist that, "yeah, you are mentally sick and need external intervention." Consequently, you're pushed even further from the idea that you can heal without medication.

Crawled under a rock with an endless supply of sugar and social media, we avoid the direct sunlight on a brisk morning. Like critters plagued by disease. The disease is the infinite list of unsurpassable obstacles on your way to your dream life, your heaven on earth, which doesn't exist. So you sit there, frozen in terror, confused by the illusion of happiness. Then, you decide to stimulate your otherwise overloaded, foggy mind with intense sensory input mediated by chocolate in the hope it makes you forget, licking and sucking it until your tongue bleeds. During moments of awareness, you break through and shine light upon the fact that you're stuck in a mad cycle. "I might be insane. Sick. Broken." this is the first thing that comes to mind, which is reasonable, given the circumstances.

However, it maddens and angers me.

So why is it that we seek anti-depressants? Is it to numb all the alarm systems going off? Why do neurobiologists, psychologists, gurus, and shamans all point in the same direction? Is it by accident?

I say that the gift of thought is our salvation and curse. A powerful tool with which we can manipulate time, space, and matter. Manifest the most absurd into existence in a separate room behind our eyelids, or so it feels. However, powerful tools come with their risks. As dark magic consumes the magician, so thought consumes man—a constant whirl of analysis and dissection. I imagine a human running through the forest, living in the same environment as bears and wolves. Constantly on the move. Day in and day out. Hunting and gathering. Eyes move side to side as they scan the forest floor for edibles and monitor the sun's position. Ears tuned to perceive the slightest sign of a sound. *Crack* goes the branch, and the head turns instantly to the epicenter. Your body steams hot sweat. You can hear your elevated heartbeat. Unsuccessful for three days, the eternal hunger sharpens your mind. Finally, the lead hunter spots a track—it's go time. After the hours-long pursuit, you finally bag an animal. For dinner, you feast on fats and protein. No sugar. You take a plunge into the frozen lake to wash off the blood. You're alive.

But here we are, stuffed with meds, convinced we're sick. Instead, we should learn how to properly operate these machines called bodies and learn how to navigate the mystery called the mind. This sorry state we are in should be a wake-up call that the trajectory we chose is doomed and definitely not the way for all of us to follow.

Specialists point to connection, self-awareness, and movement. The link to your authentic self, your society, and your surroundings. The awareness of yourself in time, space, and in your life. The movement towards a promising future for you and everything around you.

The lack of connection, awareness, and movement, as well as an inactive and desynchronized system, convince us of our innate inadequacy to face life. As a result, we perceive the mismanaged system as broken and unfixable—failure as evidence that the challenges are insurmountable and deadly.

However, that is just an illusion, crafted to deceive from acknowledging the only way out of it. Sometimes the challenge might kill us, which is why this reaction can save our lives when the goal is to survive and not thrive. Unfortunately, over the years, we failed to switch back to thrive mode and honed our illusory skills to the utmost. We are misleading not only ourselves but also others. Professional actors and surrounding nodders contribute equally to the manifestation of this brutal act. Suffering and isolation engulf the main character and everyone else collaterally. Oblivious of the infinite potential locked up under high pressure.

To overcome resistance is to let your potential manifest itself without standing in its way. It is to designate your mind, body, and soul toward the best for you and everyone around you because that is what you want if you're at least reasonably in synch. However, just like the tight, freshly regrown tendon must be stretched and exercised regularly to loosen up and become reliable again, so you must constantly remind yourself of relaxation and breathing techniques to regain awareness and clarity.

Resistance is an engraved automatic behavioral response.

Thanks for reading,

Hans.