Brain Cancer Statistics

The impulse to write about my own past contact of depression and suicidal tendencies has been percolating to the surface of my mind for while now. It's a subject matter that goes largely unnoticed and unspoken for most, until person is directly or indirectly affected by it. I use depression and suicide in the same context because more often or not they tragically go hand in hand, more than we will ever understand or know, from a statistical sense, and in my own contact there was a seamless parallel in the middle of the two very confident elements.

Brain Cancer Statistics

When I think of Kelty's story, or read or hear of a story associated to depression or suicide, there is an instant rapport that identifies me with my own past suffering and the suffering of the individual I am reading or hearing about.

For the first few decades of my life I was haunted by depression and a desire to die. Whenever things got tough for me emotionally or mentally especially in early adulthood, I would always be internally dead ended with an spectacular, feeling of depression and suicidal thoughts. My first cognition around the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness were recognized early on in my life as early as 9 or 10 years old. The feelings of the desire to die, progressively industrialized too surface around the age of 19 years.

While my early childhood would seem by most to be absent of any direct trauma or abuse, I now know the power the mind has to internalize un-integrated emotions and understanding forms back onto itself in unhealthy ways. The absence of any resilience enhancing skill in my life for the first few decades, plainly allowed the energy of "e"motion to be redirected into a feeling and reliance that one of the easiest ways for me to "fix things" was to plainly check out.

While I was never clinically assessed as depressed, the memory and details of my own particular narrative combined with my later exploration into the foray of personal increase and Spirituality now provides me with adequate reference material and insight, to lead me to have a confident level of understanding around my own personal process and story around depression and suicidal thoughts. As early as 6 years old I industrialized an awareness and confusion around my sexuality even though I did not begin my own exploration for someone else 16 years, when I began to express myself sexually as gay man. Also, as a child, I was bullied intensely in the middle of the ages of 7 to 14...

In the context of my own contact of depression and what I have learned to date, I would say these two contributing and interdependent factors became the foundation from which the symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts were kindled. In spite of a tangible decrease in the bullying factor at around grade 9, or 15years old, the "damage" had already been done. I no longer needed the outer bully, because I had internalized the "language" of the bully within and back onto myself and the person I imagined myself to be. Even now while subtle, the confusion, judgment and lack of acceptance around my sexual identity and childhood contact of bullying continues to be expressed and experienced as a ripple affect, taking the form of self depreciating, thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, associations and memories that have a life of their own.

I furnish some detail colour to this photograph only as a way to frame this narrative. In my heart and my gift day process, I have realized many of these details as now obsolete; they have come to be redundant as I have learned skills of emotional resolution, Self love and have learned to redirect my attention not into the pain and suffering of my past but more importantly the rediscovery of Who I Am. That being said and gratefully received, I also clearly identify the ongoing suffering that continues to express itself in the lives of others who have or are dealing with the stigma and disease of this silent life killer.

The worst lesson of my story peaked around in the middle of 23 and 27 years, where I would go to bed at night and wake up in the morning with the same negative thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, associations and memories that only enhanced and perpetuated my contact of helplessness and hopelessness. At this time, an ongoing lesson of unrequited love and a mom who was dying of cancer pushed me deeply into a quagmire of irreconcilable emotions preventing me from experiencing any real joy and attractiveness that life could provide.

There was only ever one, very lame and "failed" exertion in my history to take action on my desire to check out; where a casual cocktail mix of alcohol and sleep aids was used too prematurely sway the finger of Gods timetable on my life. The absence of "real courage" prevented me from added attempts at exploring more successful methods of escaping the melodrama that my story had become. Instead, I masked those thoughts and feelings; I pursued life relentlessly in an exertion to use an internal zest to combat the dragon's fire within me. On the surface I appeared to live a general life, while on the inside I wallowed in the endless suffering and apathy of my shadow side.

I am not a suited devotee in the area of depression or suicide; I am a self proclaimed graduate of "e"motion high. I earned my Masters and P.H.D., in the field of depression in the school of my life. In spite of the fact I spent the first 28 years of my life infecting myself with high dosages of self engendered curriculum that enhanced and elevated my contact of depression, I was fortunate adequate too categorically "make it through", largely in part too an inner motivation and hunger that eventually spring boarded me not into a premature departure, but instead, the world of personal increase and Spirituality at the age of 27.

My heart is both easy and grievous in the light of knowing the subjective relaxation I have now gained from my own story and the contact of ongoing depression that robed me of a simple, idealistic childhood and youth. The equanimity and understanding I have found within the dearth of my own emotional spectrum while now providing relieve and solace, is often gradually disturbed, when I bump into the suffering that continues to ripple through the pages of others, whose stories of depression and its tyranny unfold with similarity and separate outcomes to my own...

Some Facts...

Suicide is the second prominent cause of death for teens in Canada and third prominent cause of death in the Us.

Suicide and attempted suicide has increased 300% in the last thirty years.

An estimated 80% of all those who commit suicide give some warning of their intentions or mention their feelings to a friend or house member.

In 1996, more teenagers and young adults died of suicide than from cancer, heart disease, Aids, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and persisting lung disease combined.

Having a firearm in the home greatly increases the risk of youth suicide. Sixty-four percent of suicide victims 10-24 years old use a firearm to complete the act.

From: [www.thekeltyfoundation.org]

The Symtoms:

Looking down the list of the following symptoms you might be surprised by the "commonality" of some of these in every day life experience. It is the occurrence of these symptoms that may differentiate person who is depressed versus person who is plainly having an contact of one of these symptoms. It is rare that person with depression will have all the symptoms, but base to see any of them produce in consistent, regular ways with person who does have depression.

The recurrence of a whole of these symptoms will sometimes indicate the level of severity of the depression. Symptoms may appear to be more dominant in the morning. There are no hard and fast rules. This narrative is not a diagnosis or clinical resource; it's an exertion to share my story while also moving you to pursue your own journey into healing. If you think you may be experiencing depression; please, seek the advice and withhold of suited professionals along with your own house doctor...

In a "funk" or low mood most of the time. Occurring on a regular basis.

Lack of interest in life, along with activities that once brought joy and happiness.

Lack of motivation in every day life and activities, straightforward task seem impossible to "do'.

Ability to combine on daily activities such as work, practice or hobbies.

Interruption of regular sleep rhythms/patterns: strangeness falling asleep, inability to get back to sleep once awakened. Immoderate sleep sessions. Constant feeling of being tired, lack of "energy" in spite of sleeping.

Difficulty in the contact and expression of affection or sexual intimacy, lack of sexual motivation.

Loss of appetite and weight loss, or a gain of weight as a effect of eating for comfort.

Difficulty in emotion resolution; feelings of worthlessness, guilt and uselessness, Immoderate feelings of sadness and grief. Irritability, agitation and restlessness. Preoccupation with thoughts of death and dying, unnatural fixation on finding death as a solution, spectacular, feelings that "life is not worth living".

Physiological symptoms may vary from mild to severe and include: headaches, heart palpitations, chest and body aches.

The Yoga/Science Story

The path to subjective relaxation lies in our potential to know, understand and Self navigate all levels of our existence. When we fixate on one size of our existence only, using force or coercion we can only expect more sever ramifications to effect from this indiscretion.

We were born to scrutinize Who We Are! Life is the playground from which we can gain the valuable skills, talents and powers to leverage and engage the field of infinite possibilities with awareness, skillful ease and finesse. These abilities are for the most part, learned skills. Ones proclivity to depression either that be genetic or environmental in circumstance, requires successful intervention on all levels of our existence for integration (healing) to occur. The mind must be attended to. The emotions must be embraced and the body must be cared for.

I am grateful for the fact that I was able to continue to elevate the journey of my own life to greater levels of fulfillment and meaning. I have known more than one who has not. When life has no meaning and we have lost touch with the momentum of inspiration that fulfillment in life offers, we are individually challenged to pick up the invitation to reignite its verve. This entry could not maybe declare the many thousands of influences, models, theories or perspectives that furnish understanding and depth to the story of depression, so I shall focus only on one; stress.

According to yoga, the body/mind is not just a field of substance or matter. At its subtlest level it is a coherent field of energy and facts that is associated effortlessly to a Universe of energy and information. From a field of undifferentiated consciousness, life manifests itself as the world of form and phenomena, nurtured by this field of energy and information.

Our body/mind is the instrument from which we can navigate, scrutinize and join together to this vast Universe; the known and unknown, while cultivating and elevating the gift of our awareness. When we contact health, the energy and facts flows seamlessly through this infinite web of creation allowing us to navigate life with finesse and ease.

Unfortunately, the kind of lives we now live do not withhold us on the thinking, emotional and biological levels. The absence of life enhancing, skills based, resilience techniques allow the build up of stress and toxins in our nervous ideas that eventually interrupt the free flow of energy and information. Toxic upbringing or a lack of valuable skill sets to cultivate wellness within the body/mind, leads to toxic lifestyle choices and the gradual breakdown of the vital association we have to the core of our existence.

Eating good food, practice and sleep no longer provides the prevention, safety or elevation of homeostasis within our physiology or psychology. Some of the most moving mainstream work on depression is occurring in the area of explore on the impact stress hormones play in depression. In sever depression adrenalin and cortisol levels are abnormally high. When a nervous ideas becomes overly stressed, we lose our potential to access and metabolize the energy and facts that is normally, effortlessly ready to us.

Anxiety and depression cripples our innate intelligence. When prolonged the body/mind ideas looses its potential to strategize, we lose our potential to navigate and thrive within the thinking, emotional and biological dimensions of our existence. The flight, fright and ice function of our old brain, while valuable when we are faced with life threatening situations, has come to be a rambunctious and out-of-control, organ.

In our lives we are faced with daily occurrences that trigger the stress response within our physiology:

We missed a connecting flight... And we come to be stressed.

The cashier at our beloved coffee shop is on their first shift, not been trained properly and we're already late for work... And we come to be stressed.

It's a Sunday afternoon; the one gas center town is piled up bumper to bumper with weekend warriors and person just jumped the queue... And we come to be stressed.

There is no real danger here, no actual threat to our existence. It's our schedule that has been challenged. It's our psychological idea of how things "should" be that has provoked a premature, biological reaction as masses of stress hormones are dumped into our blood stream.

In our daily lives we all contact assorted degree's of strangeness in the manifestation of our wants, needs and desires. We all contact a spectrum of reaction to the perceived threats to our safety, happiness and self-esteem. Our body/mind dutifully responds with reaction, to these very diverse kinds of stress. At some point the body/mind begins to break down, our nervous ideas can no longer tolerate the Immoderate levels of stress occurring in our lives.

We intuitively know that we have lost touch with the core of Who We Are, if only on a biological, emotional and mental level. Depression is a natural response to the unnatural condition of 21st century living. The addition levels of depression and suicide especially among our youth, is a wake up call that requires our attention. The details are vast and the options diverse, but there is hope. It lies within the wisdom of the body/mind that appears to be the source of our predilection.

As we begin to understand the body/mind, as we courageously scrutinize all levels of our existence: the biological, the emotional, and even beyond the mental dimensions, we will find new ways intuitively and functionally write back to the circumstantial evidence and challenges of our day to day living. We will engage life not from a place of survival only, but instead, tap into and thrive on the inspiration that comes from living integrated lives, lives where we have learned to connect, cultivate, harness and trust the wisdom within us.

Epilogue

In 1989 I learned how to meditate. It was my first aware option to move beyond the theories and learning's of an ever growing wellness philosophy in my life. I was now exploring first hand those ideas experientially. For the first time in life I was excited not by what was going on surface me, but what was occurring inside: I could touch, taste and smell an ever swelling movement of inner inspiration. Within about a year of daily practice, I began to contact an inner transformation, emotions and suicidal thoughts had evaporated; the desire to die was gone...

I could come up with and scrutinize volumes of venture on "the how" and "the why" of my experience, but that's not categorically what's prominent to person who spent roughly 30 years of life treading the symptoms of depression. What's prominent is that my life took on dramatic new directions that I could never maybe have imagined or anticipated. What's prominent is that even the contact of depression is subjected to the same tangible, laws of the world of form and phenomena, the physics of all life experience:

there is a beginning,

there is a middle

and

there can be a successful end to the tyranny of depression!

"Alternative" Suggestions:

Be in your body, learn to love your body:

Create and engage your own practice routine.

Get out of your head:

Spend time in nature where there is an ever-present harmony that your own nervous ideas can calibrate itself to.

Be gentle, Be easy, Be effortless:

Learning to navigate the contact of life requires skills. Many of those skills need to be learned and then practiced with vigilance in order for success to be realized.

Learn to meditate:

There are many approaches to explore, check out a few and choose one you feel drawn and most associated to, it will open doorways and re- produce the bliss of being within your contact and awareness.

Rediscover new ways of being:

There are many ways to take care of the Self. The person you were exists in the past. Who you come to be unfolds in the gift moment now. Practicing a regular habit of "self care" will combat the conditioning you may have experienced creating the space for a new you to be experienced and expressed ~ and a new day and "you" will dawn...

Recognize Who You Are:

You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have emotions but you are not your emotions. You have a body, but you are not your body. Your thoughts, your emotions and your body happen to you. They are symptoms of Who You Are.

Find out Who You Are:

The easiest way to scrutinize Who You Are is to find out what you aren't. Be vigilant. Discriminate in the middle of the thoughts and emotions that are happening to you and the awareness that is you.

Cultivate the value of acceptance:

It's ok to be sad. It's ok to be depressed. It's ok to feel like you are not in control. It's ok to feel needy, unloved, and alone. Learn to scrutinize those thoughts arise and subside, with judgment, evaluation, or assessment. Observation the thoughts, all thoughts, come and go.

Embrace your sensitive side:

Being sensitive is a gift and talent, it is not a burden. There will come a time when your sensitivity will access not the pain and suffering of your past but the bliss of the moment as it is, this is the patrimony of your past.

Seek out your own withhold team:

Surround yourself with people that withhold and sustain you, people who understand and know what it is like to suffer and people who are successfully navigating their own suffering.

Find inspiration in life:

Music? Art? Dance? Creativity? Learn to cultivate and express the creativity that exists within you.

Ask yourself some prominent questions:

Q. What are some of the tangible sources of your unhappiness in your life?

Q. What areas of your life need to be experienced and expressed more fully?

Q. Are you ignoring an inner message that needs to be responded to?

Q. Are there toxic relationships that need to be avoided or complete within your experience?

Q. Do you listen to and cultivate the wisdom of your own Soul?