How to Lift Depression

By Greg Harper

Twenty years ago I suffered a severe depressive epi-sode and subsequently had yearly clinical depres-sion until about 5 years ago when I underwent a process of deep emotional healing. In my opinion, depression is a curable condition, not something that we are stuck with for the rest of our lives.

A new understanding of how depression works comes from the U.K. In my experience, depression was preceded by unusual amounts of anxiety followed by sleep problems. The "Human Givens" approach in the U.K. emphasizes the importance and the role of REM (dream) sleep, normally about two hours per night. It has long been known that depressed people have extended REM sleep, and that antidepressants reduce the amount of REM sleep.

The primary purpose of dreaming during REM sleep appears to be to discharge unresolved emotions experienced during the day. Increased emotional arousal, such as from anxiety and worry, leads to increased dreaming (REM sleep). Excessive dreaming is exhausting to the brain and it cuts into the physically restorative sleep time – this results in waking up exhausted and unmotivated. Feeling terrible after a poor night of sleep can trigger additional worry, which can then affect the next night's sleep. Thus starts the depressive cycle.

Depressed people tend to be anxious, and if the Human Givens model for depression is correct, reducing this anxiety is critical to restore normal sleep patterns and recover from depression. Anxiety results from triggering of the fight-or-flight response, which occurs through a rather imprecise pattern matching to memories stored in the part of the brain called the amygdala.

Fortunately, these traumatic memories can be resolved effectively with the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or hypnotherapy (the "rewind technique," used widely in the U.K.). Furthermore, EFT can be self applied at bedtime to resolve emotional issues from the day so that they don't need to be resolved in dreams.