This post is a follow-on from my previous post about the causes and cures of anxiety and how the modern medical view differs from primal theory and therapy.
I suffered from suicidal depression nearly twenty years ago. The medical profession through psychiatry put me on medication, and I took myself off after 8 months because the side effects were as bad as the original problem. What frustrated me at the time was that nobody had an explanation as to what was going wrong inside my brain.
Undergoing good Primal Therapy cured my anxiety and depression, and also provided the deeper knowledge I was seeking as to why my brain malfunctioned.
That was twenty years ago and I thought at the time that primal theory and therapy was going to change the direction and understanding of all mental disorders in a big way, and in a short time.
But that has not happened and medico’s and researchers are still groping in the dark, going this way and that way with no firm direction and no over-riding paradigm in which to fit their theories and research. Meanwhile the simplicity of primal theory and what its therapy can achieve completely astounds me when compared to the multiplicity of supposed causes and the confusing myriad of therapeutic approaches that we have now.
The following are some of approaches taken to address the growing depression epidemic in the year 2018.
The Flory Institute in Melbourne is a world-class research facility that is trying to find the causes and cures of mental illness. A recent media release gave ten steps to good mental health. They are, eat a Mediterranean diet, exercise regularly, remain socially engaged, stay mentally active, Quit smoking and drink in moderation, get plenty of sleep, check blood pressure, look after gut health, avoid air pollution and check how well your brain is ageing.
There are two things that stand out for me in the above advice. The first one is that this advice formed the basis of my natural therapies studies twenty years ago. Twenty years on and millions of research dollars later the Flory Institute is backing what natural therapists knew decades ago!
The second, more disturbing feature of the above advice is that nowhere does it mention that reducing primal pain is by far the best way to good mental health. Also there is no recognition that the human brain has three distinctly different areas of brain function – cognition, feelings and sensation.
The headline for the article read “Cracking the Brain’s Code” The brain’s code will not be ‘cracked’ until neuro-scientists understand the three separate levels, and sadly that means the scourge of DEPRESSION will continue until they do.
I have given my books to two Universities and approached various other media outlets to run a story on the three levels, but all approaches have been rejected.
Re-connection is becoming a common theme, or perhaps I could say ‘meme’, in the treatment of mental disorders.
Johann Hari has written a book called “Lost Connections – Uncovering the real causes of Depression – and the unexpected solutions”. Hari describes depression as “one of the biggest issues in our world today. With record numbers of people suffering from the dark cloud, and soaring suicide rates, depression is a crippling disease reaching epidemic proportions”.
Simply put, Hari states that depression is caused by dis-connection from a multitude of things like meaningful work, from other people, childhood trauma and the natural world. The suggested cure is to reconnect with all these things and that is why going out into nature is proving to be of some benefit in reducing the symptoms of depression.
But early childhood trauma, as shown by the Early Childhood Experiences (ACE) research, is the main cause of mental illness. The early dis-connection from unloving parents causes a great deal of emotional pain, and this pain has to be dealt with before the human organism can come back into balance. Trying to re-connect with other people and nature once the damage is done provides some momentary relieve but does not provide a long-term cure.
Hari is somewhat correct in his Dis-connection – Re-connection views but unfortunately he does not understand how the three levels of mind work in creating depressive states of mind.
For the benefit of depression sufferers everywhere, I hope the next twenty years sees in the adoption of The Three Levels of Mind in understanding all mental disorders, and that Janovian Primal Therapy becomes known as the best way to deal with not only depression, but also most other disorders.
It is still unclear exactly which genes play a role in depression and other mood disorders, but researchers do know that there are many different genes that can play a role. By better understanding how they function, gene researchers hope to be able to create effective treatments.
In Primal Therapy terms, depression is repression of painful feelings. That is, we get hurt by others and instead of expressing that hurt, we suppress the pain. That process happens mostly during childhood but also as adults because we are not taught how to recognise hurt and deal with the situation immediately. When people are shown how to express their old pain safely during Primal Therapy, the strength of the depression decreases. This suppression and then expression process is the force that acts on the genes to change. Science does not yet understand these forces that act below the level of genes and biology. Therefore, the current research approach is likely to run into a brick wall.