Anxiety & Depression
Anxiety, depression and mania thrive on judgements. Love and freedom thrive on trust and openness. Jumping to conclusions about how to deal with overwhelming situations can lead to anxiety, depression and mania.
A more peaceful and adaptable approach can come from non-judgemental awareness and trust. When we deliberately and directly act on our judgements, in the context of overwhelming pressures, we often find ourselves becoming reactive, defensive and manipulated by circumstances. Technically speaking we are acting out.
Most people think freedom comes from right judgement. Most people think that love and happiness come from knowing, judging and doing the right thing. So under intense pressure, in problematic and seemingly unresolvable situations, they go looking for the right judgement or answer as the solution.
Living a life according to the notion that a conscious assessment of issues will lead to a satisfactory outcome is naive. Life is more mysterious than that and conscious deductive reasoning does not grasp or appreciate mystery.
Only trust in the face of unknowing can penetrate mystery and allow love to overcome and free us from anxiety, depression and mania.
| Back to topFundamental Assumption
Anxiety and depression push our sense and awareness of our felt needs, our sense of reality, our sense of relevance, personal values and truth, out of our conscious minds and into the unconscious.
While our sense of reality is pushed out of consciousness like this it is unknown to us. For us to reconnect with our sense of reality and personal relevance we need to exercise trust in the face of the unknown.
For example, imagine you're considering selling your house, your most important investment. You need to decide about the right agent, the right price, the right market, the right time and so on. All of these issues can be overwhelming. I'm sure you've had the experience. In the face of enormous risks and unknowns we can start generating seemingly endless anxiety and worry. Then all of a sudden you take a break, catch a movie, see a friend, go to the footy and so on. Then as you walk out of the movie so to speak you notice a real estate agent open and ready for business. You find yourself walking past with total indifference. Then you realise you never wanted to sell your house in the first place. The movie was therapeautic, it reconnected you with your true feelings. | Back to top
Starting Therapy
We all experience being stuck with a problem from time to time.
Often people who visit John for psychotherapy will at first anxiously talk non-stop about their problem, presenting a range of their solutions and perspective's. Then at the end of that they will invariably say "I'm confused" or "I don't know". John would then say, "That's great, this is the appropriate time to start therapy because I am going to teach you how to deal with the unknown as real and life giving, not something to be overcome or be anxious about." | Back to top
Getting On With Your Life
When we are anxious and depressed what has been pushed out of consciousness is a sense of our own living story: who I am, what has been my suffering, joy and meaning. This story sits in your unconscious busting to be heard.
Once a person connects with their story, their sense of expressing that story and a sense that they are being heard their awareness grows and are more able to take greater ownership of their experience. It is out of this type of openness to their experience that they know what is personally relevant to them and what they want. Then they are in a better position to make independent and free decisions about involvement in work, relationships and play. | Back to top
Anxious Knowing and Peaceful Knowing
Anxious knowing and peaceful knowing are not related to each other. One does not proceed from the other.
So if you are worried, more worried thought isn't going to get you the result you need no matter how intellectual it may appear. Part of the nature of worry is that it denies what you need so how can it lead you to validate your felt needs in your solution?. Anxious knowing pushes out of consciousness peaceful knowing. It pushes it into the unknown. So how do we reconnect?| Back to top
The Unknown and Trust: what do you find yourself seeking?
John treats the unknown as real and life giving. He embraces the unknown as the place where you will find your felt need. He equips you with a procedure for getting there yourself. In your unconscious is that emerging need.
Therefore the admission that you don't know the answer becomes the starting point for the therapy not the enemy to be constantly fought with and/or denied. It gets easier if and when you are happy to let go to the lived experience of unknowing. The more you try to figure it out so to speak at the point of awareness of being stuck and unknowing the more you generate the anxious state you are trying to overcome and to rid yourself.
When we are under pressure, knowing presents itself as instantly gratifying. It takes enormous maturity to stay open when everything around you is calling for an instant answer. Desperately and prematurely clinging to an unreal position in relation to reality will produce anxiety. Staying open to one's experience of natural emotions like fear, shame, guilt and joy in the face of unresolved pressures will lead to creative problem solving because our feelings stay in touch with reality as our mind stays open. We find ourselves led to the answer or resolution. We find ourselves doing what we need to do for the better, naturally. We find ourselves seeking what we need to be happy. The truth presents itself as a gift, not as something we figure out for which we claim authorship. | Back to top