Stay tuned for our “experiment” in our first Online Healing Companion.

Our Holiday Healing Companion will begin on November 9 and take us through the end of 2009.

Everyone working with TDP has a history many of you are familiar with, either by reading Anna’s book, Madness, Mania, and Miracles or by keeping up with the website to this point.  I am thrilled to have joined Anna and Ann Marie to further the work The Depression Project is meant to follow.

I met Anna in January of 2000, one of the first people I met when my husband and I moved to the Austin area.  We quickly became friends and soon learned that we shared a common thread – Anna with her personal trials with bipolar and anxiety, and me as the daughter of a woman diagnosed as bipolar with anxiety and schizophrenic tendencies.  Read the rest of this entry »

Many people with depressive disorders think they are stuck because the condition has been handed down through their genes.  This view is very limiting and can sometimes lead to people giving up on any chance of recovery or living a happy life before they begin!  I’m no scientist but Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. is and offers some new thinking that challenges this notion of genetics. 

Epigenetics research challenges the conventional beliefs about genes and reveals the role of emotion on our bodies and health. In this video, author and cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. explores the importance of perception in maintaining optimal health.

View Now  

With the commonly held belief that bipolar is an illness to be managed for life – it seems impossible that one might ever be able to get beyond the diagnosis and live free from the symptoms, treatments and prejudge of the world.  Read the rest of this entry »

This is a radio interview from 3/24/09.   Anna Miller, Author of Madness, Mania & Miracles along with Gwen Olsen, Author of Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher talk with the Abudance Alley show hosts about all manner of topics and issues related to depressive disorders including bipolar, anxiety and clinical depression.  Listen as we debate the use of medications, alternative healing therapies and share our own recovery stories.

Click here to Listen Now or to download the audio file.  �

Many readers of Madness, Mania & Miracles have asked me to share more information about my journey to success.  They want to know not only how I recovered from mental illness but how I made the quantum leap to live beyond any shred of evidence that I was ever plagued with bipolar, depression and anxiety at all.   This short essay is a response to this question.  May you find insights for yourself in how to align with source and fall in love with your life. Read the rest of this entry »

It Felt Love

How
Did the rose

Ever open its heart

And give to this world

All its

Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being

Otherwise,

We all remain

Too

Frightened.

Hafiz, Sufi Mystic and Poet

The only way out is in. Wearing the cloak of muted agony known as depression, your body constricted, your emotions throb and your mind races. It all feels so overwhelming and with no end in sight. Read the rest of this entry »

I have just returned from a trip to Belize – amazing country, and beautiful people. While in Belize I met with a couple of Mayan and Mestizo Shamans, and several people who practice healing with medicine derived solely from rainforest plants. During our many conversations, regarding the medicinal properties of plants, I asked the question: “what do you do for people who suffer from depression?” In every instance the answer was the same – we do not know this disease, no one comes to us for medicine or healing for ‘depression’. Once I explained what I meant by depression they all agreed that they knew of sadness, and grieving, but nothing that resembled the long term symptoms that I was describing.

Curious that no one recognized depression as a local disease – is this disorder then a phenomena of industrialized nations? Is it what we eat and drink, and all the chemicals we ingest – or is it a product of our insatiability for materialism? Have we finally shopped till we dropped in all aspects of our lives – ending with the realization that nothing we accumulate can account for happiness? Do our feelings of inadequacies or failures as we sink deeper into depression result from a society so entrenched in plastic ideals that we can no longer function?

Let’s take a look at the people who do not know what depression is. Is this lack of a depressive disease in their society due to the fact that there are no local psychiatrists available to diagnose such a disorder – or is it perhaps a more simple way of life? Belizeans are poor by our standards – in a top government job they earn approximately $34,000 Belizean dollars per annum. That translates into $17.000 US. No, they do not live in 2000-5000 sq foot homes, nor do most have cars. However, transportation via bus is readily available and affordable. In addition, they receive lease land from the government at a minimal cost so they can farm what they need to eat. What they have is shared with their extended families, the young people always caring for their parents/grandparents. Warehousing the elderly is another unheard of practice in Belize. The people laugh and play together, and children and the elderly are treated with the utmost love and respect. Although there is poverty among many of the villagers not one time was I approached by anyone with a begging bowl – apparently we have not yet taught them our many bad habits.

I thank the people of Belize for sharing their experiences, and understanding of community causing me to ask so many curious questions about or own way of life. What now? Perhaps we should rethink how we structure our communities and our lifestyles within the societal family. Let’s dialog in the Curious Mind Lounge and see if we can come up with some new ideals that led us to healthier bodies and minds.

Yours in Health and Happiness

Ann Marie Malden

If we consider the conditions of Depression, in all its forms, a “Crisis of the Soul”; what can we learn from this vantage point?

Through my own five year “Crisis of the Soul”, I was aware that despite the external view that I was dis-eased and had fallen victim to this terrible mental illness known by the name of “Clinical Depression and Manic Depression” that there was indeed something more profound at work in me.

Below the agonizing pain of intrusive thoughts and the feeling that my heart was broken in two there was a deep nagging from a place beyond my mind and body. This deep nagging; I’m sure was my drooping soul crying out to be heard. Looking for a way to penetrate my life and fulfill its purpose. Read the rest of this entry »