What Causes Depression

Why You Must Examine The Past to Understand What Causes Depression If You're a Child Abuse Survivor

I want you to do something silly. Go to a movie theater, pay a bargain matinee discount price of $6 to see a horror film, and then cover your eyes and ears the entire time. Better yet, go on a crowded Saturday night and pay the full $10.

Now let's bring in your friend who wants to ask you about the movie.

They start asking you about what the scariest part of the movie was. They ask you to tell them if it's worth paying $10 or if they should wait until it's available to rent at the local video store. Of course, you had your eyes and ears covered the whole time. You have no concept of what the movie was about. You didn't examine it for yourself.

You can't understand what you refuse to examine.

But you already know this. You've shown you know it when you go over to your computer and use the Internet to lookup a word or place you didn't know. You knew in order to understand what you didn't know, you had to examine it more carefully.

But what if I told you the same thing can be done when you're trying to understand what causes depression, specifically, the depression you're feeling right now?

You might say, "great, now I can figure out why I feel this way." Of course, you (and hopefully a good therapist) must examine your past in order to do this. You have to wade through some painful and sad memories.

I know. I know. You don't want to feel painful and sad.

You'd rather plug your eyes and cover your ears like you did during the horror movie. So why bother exploring sad or repressed memories?

If you were traumatized by child abuse, you were likely repeatedly abused. You probably were not allowed the time to psychologically heal from each incident. You were not allowed to process those memories and feelings in a safe environment. Your mind stored them and today they continually weigh you down even though you may not be currently experiencing any abuse.

The bottled-up memories and emotions associated with them are what causes depression in child abuse survivors.

These unprocessed feelings can explain why sometimes you just don't have the energy to get out of bed. It's why you feel sad. Or why you feel lonely all of a sudden without any reason to. This kind of depression hurts. But when you begin to examine those memories in a safe environment, a funny thing starts to happen. You begin to release those unresolved emotions that have been weighing you down. Grief, anger, fear, or whatever it might be for you starts bubbling up to the surface.

Yes, your self-examination may feel like a horror movie you want to plug your eyes and ears through.

But you should keep exploring and processing these memories in a safe environment. It's one thing to intellectually process that your history of past abuse is what causes depression, but it's quite another to emotionally process what's going on. Examining and processing your feelings and memories will help you come to grips with your life and really begin to heal.

It's this emotional processing that opens up the healing process...

And once you've begun processing a lot of your old, bottled-up emotions in a safe and healthy way, you'll start to feel better. The feelings you associate with those memories will lessen in intensity and recalling your childhood won't feel like a horror movie that makes you cover your eyes and ears. That's why examining your past is so important if you're a child abuse survivor. It paves the way for a happier and healthier future. Who wants to turn down that kind of self improvement?

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