Hello Chris and everyone, It is morning here and so I sent the joys of day to
you. I have spent many hours thinking about this whole conversation since I
last posted and have had some insights. Chris, I agree with all the you say
here. Thank you for taking the time to give us your voice with images included
to add to the understanding.
The insight that came to me during the night was as a result of examining my
own internal emotional reaction to many of the posts here. As I looked into
myself, I came to the thing you noted here......that the shamanic world view
differs in many ways from the Western view. My views, I suppose, are shamanic.
This is another word that now has many associations. But, I am of the
indigenous Saami people of the north of Finland and Russia and I see things in
a contextual view that begins with a point of reference that is different than
the point of reference in Western academics and Western social perceptions. In
my culture, the word for a person like me would be noaidi. I am noaidi.
I was both delighted and once again not surprised by the synchronicity of the
expressions that Chris has given here to the training of shamans. Noaidi is
shaman.
I see this wonderful CT forum as a picture of our colleagues worldwide sitting
in a circle around a fire that calls us to goals of seeing the wholeness of the
circle. I also want to add that it is up to us to examine our own feelings
that arise when we come to this circle. Many of us feel various emotions in
what we believe is a response to something written in a post. These feelings
in our personal selves are important. The opportunity for self examination and
awareness is boundless if we do not leap into a stance of separateness but
rather find a deeper meaning in our person. I believe that we facilitators
have an innate obligation to our clients to continue to grow in self awareness.
This is also when viewed in a different way, an opportunity offered to us as
facilitators to seek our own growth and healing and understanding and insight.
Each step we take is one that benefits all. And as the other takes his or her
step it benefits me personally.
Words help me express what I see but as always they fail to give a full picture
and so communications is difficult. Particular words can cause great diversity
of connotations and so our best attempt is to simply keep posting and trying to
see the greater whole.
Smile at an ancestor today! Blessings, Anni
--- In ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Chris Walsh" <chrisjwalsh@...> wrote:
Hi Annie
I agree we are on the same page when we consider depression to have multiple
causes. It certainly is not all due to constitution but some people do seem
to be immune to it regardless of the amount of stress they endure. I would
add that in any one person there are usually several causes or
predispositions that contribute to the emergence of depression. I used the
idea of depression as repressed anger as example of the problem of seeing
depression as blanketing something else.
I don't see depression as a symptom of one particular thing either. It is
more like a failure of the system of the mind that manages stress. This is
similar to the idea of liver failure. The causes of this liver failure are
multiple and varied e.g. viral hepatitis, chemical toxins, autoimmune
disorders, enzyme deficiencies etc. When the liver fails there is a build
up of toxins in the body, the patient goes yellow (jaundice) and the body
accumulates fluid (oedema and ascites).Of course when this happens the
weakened liver is placed under even more stress causing an ongoing
deterioration of liver function. Similarly depression can develop a momentum
of its own. Once this reaches a certain level of severity, if it is not
treated symptomatically it can cause serious harm. In fact it can be fatal
by a number of possible methods the most dramatic of which is suicide. This
is where biological treatments such as medications have a valid place.
Juxtaposed against this is the fact that a very small minority of people can
emerge from untreated depression strengthened somewhat like the shamanic
illness experienced by training Shamans. The cases that I have observed that
have fallen in this category have all been people who have only become
depressed when exposed to extraordinarily high levels of stress and who have
been able to maintain some discipline in maintaining habits of self care and
living up to their most important responsibilities in spite of their low
mood.
I hope this is helpful
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
806 Lygon St Carlton 3054
(Melbourne, Australia)
ph: +61 (0)3 9347 4300
fax: +61 (0)3 9347 4355
web: <http://www.cwalsh.com.au/> www.cwalsh.com.au
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of anni
Sent: Sunday, 24 October 2010 4:31 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] In conversation regarding Chris's post on
depression
Hi again, Chris has made a few points about clinical depression and I would
like to reinterate the points I had made earlier regarding my views on this.
I have quoted below my views on this more succintly but they are only taken
from my original post. Perhaps my bid at humour in the last sentence is a
lot lame but the point I was making is that depression is the result of
something else not manifest. It may be related to mourning or stress or
post-partum fluctuation or family dynamics or trauma but it is the result of
something else. It is something in and of itself but it is also a sign or
symptom of something else as well. I do not adhere to the underlying anger
theory but at the heart of depression there is "sometimes" a place to
examine the depth of the soul to unearth possible sources. Getting out the
anger is not a solution nor is it rooted in love. I am not sure that
depression can at all be from a weak constitution. I wonder if perhaps those
who allow things to emerge in the form of depression may in fact be filled
with great courage. I am not a psychologist. I am not an academic. I
understand the benefit of diagnosis and medication in treatment of
depression but I also believe in finding the root. Chris, if I understand
you, you and I are on the same page. Depression has many causes and it is in
and of itself something treatable. But I look to the insight of the cause of
it. What has allowed depression to manifest? The rest here is from my
previous post....... kiitos. Anni
--- In ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:ConstellationTalk%40yahoogroups.com> , "anni" <annimukkala@>
wrote:
I do not believe that depression has a single source but that is it always
Depression is, of course, a blanketing of something else.
the result of something left unmanifested. When the source has been allowed
to manifest in some way then the purpose of the depression is released. I
think that attempting to put some kind of definition to depression as the
source is incorrect. Depression is only a symptom of something else.
Depression is like a blanket that covers and puts into the darkness the
source. The source cannot be simply uncovered with 'blanket statements' but
needs to be in each case uncovered with that systems particular dynamics and
hidden entanglements.
(P.S. Again sorry for the bad joke in the last sentence...... it was
supposed to be a hahaha moment. not sure it came off like that)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
