Drug Addiction Newsweek: Men and Depression

According to a Newsweek, February 26, 2007 article, six million American men will be diagnosed with depression this year; and this is just the tip of the iceberg, because millions more suffer in silence.

American psychologists have been slow to recognize how men’s emotions affect their behaviors, perhaps this is because long ago their predecessor’s decided that having a uterus was the main risk factor in mental illness. Depression was viewed as a female problem, and primarily as a result of fluctuating hormones and overly emotional natures.

Some symptoms of depression can be so severe (such as drug, sex or gambling addictions or alcoholism) that they are frequently misdiagnosed and mistaken for the symptom (i.e., the addiction issue) rather than the true cause which caused the depression in the first place.

Depression has been linked to heart disease and attacks, strokes and high blood pressure all of which affect men at a much higher rate and an earlier age than women. During the past 50 years, American men of all ages have killed themselves at a rate that is at least 4 times more common than women. And yet, with all these statistics facing us, men are still frequently told and definitely still believe that they must be the strong ones, the macho male figure and that depression is for the weak, certainly not for a real man.

What a bunch of bull is that!

The truth is that if you can imagine or visualize your life as a journey and a road that you travel, then you can also visualize that the road from point A (birth) to point B (death) is not always straight. Sometimes, there are mountains or lakes that we must or want to circumnavigate. There are side roads and trips that we might want or need to see. There are detours that we must take. We find that we must adapt to the demands of our environment. During the course of this journey and these detours, we sometimes find that we encounter “trigger points”. These “trigger points” are wounds that have not healed with time. Sometimes they are wounds that we carry around with us almost like a protective shield, but they are not protective nor are they a shield and they can cause you to experience anger, hurt, fear, guilt and depression.

When this occurs, subconsciously we might withdraw into ourselves in interpersonal relationships, or we might become oversensitive and react in a hurt manner without apparent reason, sometimes we become particularly hurtful, without actually wanting or meaning to. When this occurs, you have been given the opportunity, the ability and capability to bring the painful experiences (or trigger points) into the light. With the aid of hypnosis, you can look at these experiences under the soothing blanket of hypnosis and in this way you can begin much more quickly, the healing process.

The first step in this healing process is releasing and forgiving. Forgiveness is necessary to free your spirit. Releasing is the first step in the process of forgiveness and moving forward. When you release the hurt, bitterness, resentment, fear or anger that you are experiencing, you take back control of your own life. You feed your spirit and you increase your capacity for joy, love and happiness beyond measure.

This is not easy. As Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of “Dare to Forgive” states, “Forgiveness… has to be cultivated; it goes against a natural human tendency to seek revenge.” It is for this reason that he recommends getting help to accomplish this.

Trying to accomplish this by yourself, without help, using your conscious mind only can be a slow and uncomfortable process. By using the relaxation techniques utilized in hypnosis and your subconscious power, it is possible to increase the effectiveness of the releasing process. Working from the inside out, releasing negative thoughts that have been harmful and freeing the spirit so that the healing process and take place. “Repeat a positive statement often enough and it will become ingrained in your subconscious” says Adrian Calabrese, Ph.D., Woman’s World, October 18, 2005. This is why I frequently recommend that you listen to a recording or CD, allowing the recorded suggestions to flow over and through you, talking to your subconscious and insuring that your subconscious receives the positive suggestions that you seek to release the negative, start the forgiveness process and change your life forever.

Remember, anytime is the right time for a New Beginning.

Linda Simmon, C.Ht.

http://www.newhypnotherapy.com

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