Dealing With Depression

One Woman’s Journey

By Carol Ostrom

Carol Ostrom has studied metaphysics since 1977. She organized the 1st successful psychic fair in Ft. Collins in 1982 (now in it’s 25th year), and is the coordinator of both the Salida Holistic Fair in Salida, Colorado and the Las Vegas Holistic Fair in Nevada. Carol teaches dream interpretation classes and does personal dream consultations. Numerology, tarot, pattern level readings and energy attunements are other modalities she is skilled in. Her journey is insightful and well worth the read.

It’s 1970, my senior year in high school, I’m sitting in health class reading about psychological disorders. Manic-depression sounds a lot like me, except for the psychosis.

Through the tail end of my teens and for the next 30 years I continued to feel I had manic-depression even though any doctor or therapist I might broach the topic with insisted I was not, (because I had not been hospitalized) … although I had almost every other symptom.

One of my areas of study is horticulture. I often joked that I had chlorophyll in my veins since I became depressed when the sun didn’t shine for more than two days, especially in the winter months. I now understand this is attributed to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

Around 20, my mother took me to our family doctor who prescribed valium. I hated how it made me feel; flatline, and emotionless. Over the years I would verbally express my “depressional state of mind”. My family would plead with me to get on an anti-depressant. Each time something inside of me would scream “NO!”. Now I realize how fortunate that I listened to that inner advice.

During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, I experienced phases of extreme creativity, 4-6 hours of sleep was “normal” for me. So was intense rage, along with lots of suicidal thoughts and plans. However, whenever I would start to implement them, strange interventions would occur, such as a friend showing up at my house telling me I had called them. I had not called anyone. It was then that I started to feel I had a guardian angel that protected me. The difficult symptom of the manic-depression was, of course, depression. This would last from a few hours to several days. On the longer depressions I would just sit or lie in bed and do nothing. I would just think and roam around inside my head. At some point … a day or 2 or 3 later, I would feel this shift to do something. Initially as the depression began to lift, I would put a particular album on the stereo (remember this was a “long” time ago!) and start to dance around while I cleaned the kitchen. 

Over the years, I noticed a sequence of feelings or patterns into and out of the depression. I gave these feelings names: falling into the pit, almost falling into the pit, I can’t get out, jumping out of the pit, and the intruder.

In my 30’s I married and started a family. I began to learn about other options through metaphysics and alternate medicine such as: homeopathy, herbs, vitamins, acupuncture, massage, reflexology, etc. The collective consciousness was beginning to shift as well.

By 40, my life had shifted radically. Due to a rare genetic disease, my husband had a liver transplant and died a few years later. I was emotionally drained, angry, depressed and felt betrayed by my husband (“how could he do this ‘die’ to me?”) and betrayed by God (I’m spiritual and a good person), “How could God do this to me?”