Depression and anxiety are all too common in our society with our busy and demanding life-styles. Despite having so much available to us and easy connection to more and more people with the click of a button, complaints of both continue to rise. Though depression and anxiety are triggered by current stressors and circumstances, the cause may be rooted in deeper emotional wounds. These wounds most often originate early in life as we attempt to cope with and navigate experiences in our homes and environments that are out of our control, hurtful, scary, chaotic, embarrassing, and possibly traumatic. We begin to develop beliefs about ourselves and the world around us that influence the way that we think and perceive new experiences, and thus the way we respond to events and challenges in our lives.
The beliefs we develop based on early emotional wounds may make it difficult to accept that life is going well and so worry about when things will fall apart. We may even self-sabotage, or get in our own way, our happiness, success and goals with procrastination and other behaviors because of fear or underlying beliefs about self-worth. We may notice that we tend to get stuck in a hole of feeling down and disconnected and find it almost impossible to crawl out. The feeling may be just a general sense of not feeling well and at our best which can be frustrating to say the least. We may or may not be able to point to a cause of these feelings and so feel overwhelmed with life.
Early emotional wounds, when triggered, impact our lives in many ways and we respond automatically without a conscious decision. These automatic responses are based on beliefs such as “I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough, I’m a fraud, I’m not safe, I’m not in control, I’m inadequate, I’m weak, I can’t trust others” and a host of others. We may not be aware of these underlying scripts but are all too familiar with the ways they affect our lives.
Memory includes the body and our experiences, especially negative and traumatic ones, are stored in our nervous system. When similar feelings as early emotional wounds are triggered, our bodies respond to the perceived threat, real or imagined. We all tend to have our go to response. For some, this is the sympathetic nervous system that activates the fight or flight response and body sensations related to anxiety. For others, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated which causes us to freeze and shut down. The symptoms here, when stuck, are related to depression. We do not have to remain stuck in either shock response and can learn how to better regulate our emotions and emotional response.
In therapy, we can begin to identify and heal early emotional wounds connected to trauma or negative life experiences. This permits us to move toward a fuller and more adaptive way of viewing ourselves and relating to our life. We may not have considered that our depression or anxiety is driven by our childhood, adolescent, or early adult experiences. Healing and relief of symptoms can be found through such an exploration. Therapy can help us to be aware of the thinking and beliefs that limit us and help to remove these limiting beliefs by healing the emotional wounds and opening ourselves to a more integrated and fulfilling life. This healing will connect us with our own strengths and resiliency that is ever available to us and open us to new possibilities of being.
The Boca Raton therapists at Morgan Center will work with you in uncovering, identifying, and healing possible emotional wounds from trauma that may contribute to your depression or anxiety. We want to help you move beyond both depression and anxiety. Morgan Center provides a safe and empathetic space in which to heal and grow and our therapists are skilled in treating trauma and the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Individual counseling can help to alleviate these difficult conditions. Seek help and get relief by calling (561) 717-2900 or book an appointment online now.
