The document is an autobiographical account of how the author dealt with depression through developing conscious awareness. It discusses two key events: 1) In 1988, the author's son left home and her father passed away from a rare infection, causing her to shut down emotionally. 2) By 1989, she was barely functioning and sought help from a support group to work through grief and issues from a previous abusive relationship. Through conscious awareness workshops in 2004, she realized she had experienced deep depression and learned to bring joy back into her life by being present with her emotions. The author encourages developing conscious awareness to healthily process depression and grief, rather than numbing oneself.

1. 34 APRIL 2015 APRIL 2015 35
‘NOT HAPPY JAN’ memories of that
advertising campaign come flooding
back as I reflect on a time in my life when
happiness completely eluded me. Yes, I
tried to pretend I was happy, and the one
person I was deluding was myself.
In January, 1988, two events occurred
which were to have significant effect
on my life. The day before our
bicentennial my 14 year son left to live
with his father. The very next day my
father was admitted to hospital and
subsequently passed away after eating
three oysters. He had cirrhosis of the
liver, the result of a lifetime consuming a
bottle of scotch a night. One, or perhaps
all, of the oysters he had eaten contained
a rare organism – vibrio vulnificus – I can
still remember its name. The organism
got into Dad’s bloodstream and attacked
the weakest part of his body – his legs -
before it ate away at the rest of him. I had
never seen gangrene before, but the sight
of his legs and the marks on his body
were obvious.
In order to cope, I did the only thing
I knew how – I shut down. I went into
survival mode, and stayed there. Oh, I had
been there before. Nine years earlier I had
separated from an emotionally abusive
relationship and had had to fight for
custody of my two sons; had moved to the
country to put as much distance as I could
for my own safety and security; had lost
my secure job and had to start again. I had
to survive for my sons.
Did I have any understanding that
all that stress was taking its toll on my
emotional health? What emotional health?
I was absolutely useless to anyone and
everyone around me. I deluded myself
that I was coping. I set up a business
and went to work and became busy. I
pretended that everything was FINE!
Relationships were non-existent. I had
one very close friend and marvelled that
when we walked down the street, men
would always look at her, and ignore me!
I was the original ‘ice-maiden’.
I had built an igloo around me.
Oh, I was nice and comfortable
on the inside – and presented a
frosty cold exterior!
Life had brought
me to my knees
By June, 1989, it all came tumbling down
around me. I could barely function. I
found a support group, which got me to
understand that what I was experiencing
was grief. I worked through some of my
issues at that time. Subsequently in 1996,
two years after my mother passed away,
and further emotional shutdown, I entered
into a new relationship.
What I didn’t know at
the time, was that this
relationship would highlight
for me all the emotional issues
I hadn’t worked on from my
first marriage. It was one
turmoil after another, and
one of the biggest issues
for me was that I couldn’t
admit that I had made a
mistake.
In 2004 I attended a weekend
workshop on developing my conscious
awareness. It was through that program
that I discovered that what I had been
dealing with all those years ago was a
deep depression. I had shut myself
down so severely that it has taken a
lot of gentle work to bring me to
experience the joy of life.
I got to see the way in which I had
deluded myself in my second marriage,
how I had pretended that life was
wonderful. I had the pretence of a
wonderful life – and yet it was crumbling
underneath me. I was not only morally
bankrupt, emotionally bankrupt, I was
almost financially bankrupt. Life had
brought me to my knees. It took Christmas
Day, 2009, for me to make a decision that
I wasn’t going to do another Christmas in
the relationship.
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.
Conscious awareness
– a healthy way to deal
with depression
Each of us will face grief – it will come in many guises
and disguises. 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.
by Jan Henderson
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