I  Healed Depression Without  Medication

By Marilyn L. Redmond

Depression is not recognized from the origin of the condition, but by the symptoms in medicine. Through my own experience and those of my clients, I found the source of this dilemma.   Years ago, I never heard the word depression but my misery and despair were running my life. I was emotionally 3 years old until I was in my fifties. I felt like life would always be terrible, horrible, and awful. Being raised in a family of mental illness, domestic violence, addiction, with abuse, was all I knew.

Therefore, I married what was familiar to me. I recreated my childhood in a marriage with the same dynamics.  As abuse escalated, my husband was trying to kill me and I was trying suicide to escape.  The anxiety I felt led me to seek help. The psychiatrist prescribed Valium.  I know now, that this stuffed my feelings so I could endure all the pain.  However, becoming addicted to the pills was a surprise.

I was looking for help and found myself in another dilemma. I ended up in treatment for addiction to mind and mood altering drugs and learned they acted on the body the same as alcohol. The truth was one pill and one drink was the same as six times the effect. I was in the last stage of alcoholism. The treatment doctor said to take a pill or drink would kill me. The answer in treatment was to follow a spiritual path to replace the medication and drinking. The 12 steps program of recovery became the basis for my recovery. With 39 years of being sober and taking no prescriptions, I have a life beyond what I thought was possible. In my search for answers, I sought to find the cause of my conditions including depression.  Surprisingly, I found the answer to all sickness.  "It is all healing involves replacing fear with love.  " A Course in Miracles" P. 147

I had never felt loved as my parents were never loved and could not pass that on to me. I was walking in the dark. Now, I was on a search for the truth. When I limit the mind, I am not of one mind and that is sickness. I made the decision to heal my mind from being split and bring oneness into my life. This meant releasing the darkness in my mind for the light to dissolve the darkness of fear. Fear was depressing the light from my reality. My fear from abuse had built walls around my heart because I thought love hurt.

I did not want to be hurt again. I could change my feelings. In reacting, I actually was pushing away the love I truly wanted. Opening up to the light of truth was a long process of releasing all the fears from my past to replace them with love and grace. It was possible to move out of the dark depression by turning to the 'Father of Light'.  The light is within my soul and the soul is a piece of PURE LOVE in my heart that created me.

Learning where my thoughts were coming from brought a new perception. In examining my beliefs, I found they were not benefiting me. Some were thoughts I had taken on from my parents or religion. Learning to recognize unseen negative influences could also be released along with their .influences was the answer for moving into reality.  .

The progression of identifying all the fears, anxiety, guilt, shame, and other negativity emotions for releasing them took time to process. I was separating the truth from the false. As I brought in the light with each one, I felt better  like a light bulb being turned on, I felt the difference. My perceptions of myself transformed into seeing me fill with the love of creation. My error of limitation had stopped my progress in growing beyond my fearful life.

Real forgiveness is to overlook the errors of the past, When reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. You come into the reality of awareness. This awareness heals. It is the awareness of truth. For years, I was afraid my father would beat me as he beat my mother. I was afraid to be close to him. In praying about it, I found that their fights were between them and were never about me.

In forgiveness, I found the truth and later came to see how much he always loved me. I gave up the past for a new day. The truth brought the light. I was always loved by my father. I saw he always treated me like his princess. I no longer saw this situation as a defenseless three year old.   With the light replacing the darkness,. I came into the awareness of reality.

I find the lesson in each experience and more and more light has come into my life. Today, I have no darkness from past fears, but accept the perfect love of God and know that I am dearly loved. I live in joy, gratitude, compassion, love, in celebration, in the presence of my Creator's light and love. Love heals.

My book "Paradigm Busters" at Amazon has the details of how I achieved my victory over depression https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Rev.+Marilyn+L.+Redmond&i=digital-text&crid=8MUSPYY42KU8&sprefix=rev.+marilyn+l.+redmond%2Cdigital-text%2C156&ref=nb_sb_noss