Exploring Depression in the Head, Heart, and Gut — Emotion Series #11

Welcome back to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. In today's conversation, Joe and I focus on depression and how it shows up in our thoughts, emotions, and nervous systems. We talk about how to examine our direct experience to uncover the root causes of our depression and how to get unstuck by relating to ourselves in a new way. We also offer tips and stories about how to show up for friends or loved ones who are feeling depressed. I hope you enjoy it. All right, good morning, Joe.

Good morning, Brett.

Ah, yeah, I'm tired. I did not get that much sleep this week. We're preparing for the wedding. There's a lot there. There's a lot work stuff going on. There's a lot that's happening in my family health-wise. Um, uh, a lot of that's not looking really great. So there's, there's definitely just a lot. And, uh, this is my 5th hour on Zoom. Oh, so far today. But the good news is it's my 5th hour of Zoom with either you or Tara, which is pretty cool. That's a pretty cool kind of morning.

Nice. Oh yeah, it was a good, it was a good session this morning. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot as well. Um, and I've also enjoyed that we've been getting some requests from, from folks for, for topics and something that's come up a lot recently has been requesting that we talk about depression.

Oh, wow. Okay, great. It's, uh, it's one of my favorite topics to talk about.

So that's wonderful.

Yeah.

Which is bizarre. We've, we've touched on it, but we haven't actually had an episode for it.

So I think, I think if I recall correctly, our first episode ever, our first iteration of a first episode, was on depression.

Oh, that's right.

And it was like 3 hours, and everybody, all of our friends who listened to it, were like, dude, you got to make this shorter, and this is like, you're wandering. So we just never came back to it. Yeah, this is perfect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think we've got our shorter game dialed a little bit. Yeah, despite that, we're continuing to talk about it for a while, so maybe let's just get right into it.

Okay, let's do it. Perfect. Right.

All right.

That was a professional— that just for everybody who's listening, that was a professional segue. Okay. Just—

yeah, yeah, we— I paid good money to learn that segue and license it from the professionals. All right, so let's do it. What's— what is— what is depression, Joe? What is this about?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting with that one. I think it's something that I, I want to define. I want to be really particular about how I define this thing. And I, I first want to say that I'm not talking about it as like in a clinical psychological way, meaning like I'm not— what we're about to do is not to diagnose somebody. So I'm just going to tell you about my experience of working with people who have worked with or suffered from depression. And what I've noticed is that there's lots of good definitions of it, but the thing that I would say is that I would define it very particularly from the place of the head, heart, and gut, if you will, or the, the human brain, the mammalian brain, and the reptilian nervous system brain. And I think that it makes a lot of sense to define what depression is from those three places and to separate that from the symptoms of depression, because I think oftentimes what's happening is people are really working on the symptoms of depression and they are not working on the root causes. And so my definition is how I see the root causes. That's, and that's why it's the definition, not this, not, not, I'm not defining by the symptoms.

Got it. And, and we're describing these three nervous systems, the, like, sort of like the human, the mammalian, the reptilian. We also refer to that a lot in this work as the head, heart, and the gut.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's start then. How, how would you define, uh, depression, or introduce depression as it relates to the head?

Yeah, so, so again, you know, there's like in the clinical approach, psychological clinical approach to depression, there's different levels of depression, and, and some of them can really get into losing touch with reality. And I've had a friend go through that. And so I'm not speaking to that at all. But when somebody can self-identify as depressed, and that's what I'm speaking to when I define it this way. So in the head, it's negative self, it's like a tremendous amount of negative self-talk. It means that the voice in the head is very negative and and very regular. So that's how I would define it. And so in those things, there's going to be a lot of shoulds, a lot of, uh, that negative self-talk is going to have a ton of shoulds. It's going to have a ton of why didn't you do this, abusive voice in the head that's happening a tremendous amount. Um, it's gonna be, uh, oh second-guessing everything that happens. So it's, it's just that, just very abusive, very critical, uh, self-talk.

If someone is listening and they're like, I don't have a voice in my head, uh, how might that still show up in the mind if it, if it's not something people identify as having a voice or words?

I think with depression that there is a voice, and it is like, I don't know, I've never met anybody who's had that level of depression Oh, that's not true. I have met a couple people, um, but they have done a lot of work to let go of that voice in the head, like to have, have a different thing than the voice in the head working. So I know some people who are long-term meditators where the voice in the head has really moved away, but the depression is still there. And when we talk about it, that's where I'd say the heart and the nervous system come in. So it's like all three levels. Um, but if somebody There are some people probably are like, "I don't have it. What do you mean voice in the head?" Just because they've never really explored that. And what I would say is just be silent and listen and you will hear yourself tell yourself something. And that's what I'm talking about by the voice in the head. And if you start paying attention to that, there's going to be a lot of, "You should have done this. You should do this. You should really make it this way. Why didn't you do it this way? What's going on here? You didn't do that right." lot of, you know, hurry up, hurry up, get that done, why haven't you done this yet, you're 40 and it's already blah blah blah blah, you're 35 and you've already blah blah blah blah, did you see how they thought of you, they didn't like that at all. It's going to be that kind of perpetual negative self-talk. Yeah, yeah, so that's, that should be— yeah, that's what's happening on the head level of somebody who's, who's, who's working with depression.

Yeah, okay, so let's, let's then move down to the heart. How does it show up on the heart level?

Emotions. So it's particularly stuck anger, occasionally stuck grief. But if you're listening to this and you're like, "But anger is bad," or anything like, I would say it's a 97% chance that it's stuck anger. And that's the first place to go. So it means that basically all the negative, when you're feeling angry, it all goes towards yourself. And so since it never gets released, it never finds out, it never finds a way to move away from you, because since you're not allowed to express it, it all goes inward. It all— it all keeps on coming back at you. And so that lack of expression of anger, and that can be for many reasons, and there's the anger episode that we have, um, it can be because my dad was angry and I'm never going to be like that, or it's It's going to be like, "I was told my anger wasn't acceptable here. Temper tantrums weren't welcome." There's a lot of reasons people don't get angry, but it means that there's no expression of anger. And in that, I'm saying, I'm not suggesting that you go out and start yelling at people. You can express anger without doing it at anybody. And that usually has, in modern society, usually has the quickest change of depression than any other thing is like moving and expressing that anger on a regular basis.

And so you just described like almost all cases or most cases. What about the other cases? You said stuck, stuck grief. What does that show?

Sadness. And, and oftentimes underneath the anger there'll be some sadness too. Uh, yeah, so for some, for maybe 3%, they're just, they can't get sad. There's no There's no capacity for tears or crying or that kind of stuff. And so that can create some depression too, but typically, like I said, it's anger. And if the anger moves, then the tears will come naturally.

So how would you know if this applies to you? If someone's a listener and they're like, well, I just don't— I feel depressed, I don't feel like there's any anger there, just— it's just about bad things happening to me, or it's about my situation, there's there's nothing to be angry about, what would you, what kind of exploration would you offer?

Go get angry. Tell me what you think. Yeah, so typically when someone's like that, I can't identify the anger. Typically I would point out all the ways that they're passive-aggressive, all the ways in which they use being stuck or despondent or apathetic or rebellious or not being on time, how they have somebody in their life who's their authority figure that is constantly upset with them because they haven't been doing the thing that they need to do. I would— and the fact that they're not in touch with their own wants, but they're just constantly have a life where it's set up where there's people who they're disappointing and then they beat themselves up for that disappointment. I'd say all of that is anger. All of that is repressed anger, as well as like being at the feeling of being stuck all the time, um, you know, the feeling of, of not being able to change their situation. All of those things to me are, and are all anger that's repressed. And so if you— what I normally do in a, in a coaching session is I take away their capacity to be passive-aggressive and I'll just push them. I will keep on pointing to the anger and eventually they get really, really upset with me. They're like, "Ah!" And then I'll go, "Yay, look there, you're angry. That's what I'm talking about right there." And then they'll start smiling, they'll see the thing. But all of that's really not necessary. If you're depressed, just get angry. Even if you're like, "There's nothing to get angry about. I don't know how to get angry. I can't get angry. Really, I try, but it goes away." No, just Just like pretend you are in a play and your job is to get angry as heck and angry until you have complete clarity. That's the role that you're playing. Your body's going to want to collapse, but see yourself as an actor trying to play this role and give the most compelling performance ever. And great, your mind is like, "This isn't true." That's fine. I'm just acting. That's fine. But move the anger and see what happens. That's the experiment. Don't worry about what your head says for a minute. You've been listening to your head. For those who are depressed who are listening to this, you have been listening to everything the voice in your head says for whatever years, and this is exactly where it's gotten you. So if you think that's the thing to listen to, you should expect the exact same results you have right now. So instead, see what it's like to listen to your anger for 40 minutes. See what happens.

And of course there to bookmark our, we have a couple of episodes on anger in the emotion series that would give you some further signposting on ways to make that something that doesn't reify shame or, you know, create the, like, prove the story that your anger is dangerous.

Yeah.

Um, or cause you to hurt people.

Highly recommend listening to the anger episodes if you're gonna do this. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we've spoken to the, how the head and the heart are involved in depression, where— how it shows up in those parts. How about the, the nervous system, the reptilian nervous system?

Yeah, so a good story on the nervous system. I was like doing my first company and I went to an acupuncturist, and the acupuncturist said, oh, your adrenal glands are kind of getting, getting beat up here, so here's some stuff for your adrenal glands. Gave me some adaptogens. And, and, um, and I asked this 'Cause it was my first time with acupuncture. I'm like, "If you're a Western doctor, what would you do?" And he said, "Well, I'd wait for a while and then you'd start drinking a ton of coffee and then maybe energy drinks and then you get depressed and I'd give you antidepressants." And the way he saw the system work was that anxiety is a big part of the depression now. Whatever it is, 25 years later they're starting to treat depression with anti-anxiety medication. So like the Western people are catching up a little bit, but it's still not actually replenishing the adrenal system according to acupuncturists. Um, but yeah, so the, so the idea is that if you've been running on, um, adrenaline over and over again, you get to depressed. And so the couple ways that you can see this typically with folks is that if you're constantly under self-attack from the voice in your head, you're constantly under stress. I'm not doing good enough. Each one of those is this little adrenaline boost. The other way that that's really typical is I cannot tell you how many CEOs I know who when they retire, they spend a lot of time in their pajamas and they're not motivated and then they beat themselves up for not being motivated because their adrenal They're just suffering from not— like, their adrenals are spent, and the negative self-talk, you know, doesn't help them recover. And so that's another way to look at it is, you know, I remember listening to Billie Jean King, and probably a lot of people don't know who she is anymore, but she was a women's rights activist who was a professional tennis player, and she was really advocating for women's rights and some version of the feminism at the time. And I was listening to her talk in the '90s and she was playing, I think, in the '70s or something like that. And she said, "Yeah, today I wake up tired and I know I'm not tired from yesterday, I'm tired from the '70s." And I know a lot of folks that are in that kind of a situation. So that would be another way to describe it. Unfortunately, when people go into that, then they start beating themselves for not being productive, not being active, not da da da, instead of actually just allowing themselves to recuperate, which can take months.

Yeah. Another question for another time, but I just wanna say it is like, how, how many CEOs are like, what proportion of CEOs do you see that are not in adrenal fatigue in their role?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not gonna answer that right now. I don't—

great.

That would take me down a crazy tangent. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's for another time.

Yeah.

All right. So we, we've spoken to the head, heart, the gut, the head, heart, you know, the nervous system level. What else? What, what are some other levels on which we could kind of define what, what you see?

I don't know if this is a definition or a symptom, but I, I would say it, it's, if it is a symptom, it's one that you, if you treat it, seems to go to the core problem, which is the connection level of it. Most of the people who start getting into some sort of depression start isolating themselves. And they either isolate themselves by just being alone a lot, or they isolate themselves by— or they isolate themselves by making sure that the interactions that they have are not fulfilling, don't have deep connection. But in one way or another, they're isolating themselves. Their negative self-talk has made it so that they are very ashamed, and so they don't speak about certain things. They're not open with anybody about what's happening inside of them, and they don't have a sense of community. And so that is a great way to address depression, is to actively work on building your community and making sure that those connections are deep and meaningful. And so I think that would be the social way I would describe depression. And like I said, I think it's a bit of a symptom and a bit of a cause. But, and so I don't know exactly how to define it in that way, but I do know that if you address it, it really can change depression a lot.

Well, being, being both a symptom and a cause can make it, can cause that, can make it that there's a feedback loop that can go in either direction. The negative feedback loop of disconnection and isolation, or the positive news here is that you can get into a positive feedback loop.

Yes.

Uh, which is really what a lot of the work that, that we do involves is a lot of group work, a lot of group connection, and really opening up the capacity for that connection to impact your nervous system and set you down a a more positive feedback loop.

Yeah, I think that's the thing about depression in general is that there's a feedback loop to it. Like you start negatively talking to yourself and then you start believing it and then your performance is less. And so then you talk more negatively about yourself, which means you are like, again, go even deeper into non-productivity or not being who you wanna be, right? If you tell yourself every day like, you're shit, you're shit, you're shit, you're shit, you're gonna start acting more like shit. You know, if every day you say, don't get angry, don't get angry, don't get angry, you're like, you're constricting. And it just, all of it feeds on itself, which is an interesting thing. Some of these, you know, some idiosyncrasies don't feed on themselves like this, but this one really feeds on itself.

Yeah, it seems, that seems true up and down the nervous system too. Where if you have anxiety, you're not even aware of the anxiety, the kinds of emotions and thoughts you're going to have on top of that anxiety are going to be anxiously produced thoughts, which are going to be the kind of thought that will trigger you and cause more chemicals of fear to release in your body that you may or may not be aware of because your emotions are stuck. Yeah. And that, that cycle also then perpetuates.

Yeah. And they, and they're all related, the negative self-talk, makes you feel like you're under attack on the nervous system, creates more anxiety. The more anxiety you have, the more you're trying to get out of it, which makes you feel stuck. There's so many ways in which this all feeds each other, which I think what makes it apparently challenging to get out of. It's not actually challenging to get out of. I know so many people who have totally turned the corner on this and can do it in really short periods of time.

I, I, I can imagine a number of listeners who maybe they were having a hard time accessing their anger until you said it's not really challenging to get out of.

Good. Yep. Getting angry is easy. I don't believe that you can't get angry.

Exactly.

Um, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, so what are some of the other symptoms? How, how Cause one of the things that I just notice is often, and especially like when I have been in a place of feeling somewhat depressed, it's just amazing how difficult it can be to see through the forest and actually notice it and be like, oh, that's what's happening.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, so what, what are some other, what are some other symptoms that you might see in someone's life?

Yeah. Um, so one, a couple things on the symptoms of the thoughts. That you believe them, but if you really take a close look at them, you'll notice that they're automatic, that they're not based on data, and they contradict each other. So you'll notice that the negative thoughts all seem to have that. It's, um, and they're constantly attacking you instead of actually trying to adjust. Like, the voice in the head isn't trying to adjust itself, it's trying to adjust you, which is abusive. So that's something to see. As far as kind of straightforward Symptoms, you have a lot of pessimism, you have some forever thinking, it's never going to change, it's always going to be like this, how am I ever going to get out of it? The feeling of being stuck. You have a soul dysmorphia, you can't see yourself clearly. You have friends telling you how awesome you are and you can't believe it. The short attention span, like it's very hard for people to focus when they're depressed. Um, there's the adrenal fatigue. So those are all some of the things, you know, like, uh, I don't have the energy to do something, I don't want to do this, uh, like that feeling. All is based on— it's all based on— are all symptoms of depression. And oftentimes that's what people go after. They're like, oh, you know, I just need to think positively, uh, or, um They say, "I wish I wasn't so tired. I have to do something to stop being fatigued," or, "I feel stuck and I don't want to feel stuck." They're constantly working on the symptoms, but they're not saying, "Oh, what is it like to not speak to myself negatively? What is it like to move my emotions? What is it like to put myself constantly in places where my nervous system can relax? How do I stop believing the voice in my head?" Those things are what are far more likely to solve the problem than trying to say, how do I become more optimistic? Or how do I see myself more clearly? Or how do I focus? Or how do I not be fatigued? And so that's typically why people think it's really hard is because they're treating the symptoms instead of the cause.

Right, right. And then there's, there's a thing you said a moment ago about how, you know, all of the thoughts, you'll see that there's no data behind them.

Yes.

Uh, and I think that's the partial truth, or the partial not truth to that is that there's data behind them, but it's selective data. So the belief that it's hard to get out of comes from that it has not worked to do what you've been doing to get out of it.

Yes. Yeah. So there's the data, like You're 40 and you don't own a house, right? And so that's true and it's data, but it's very selective data. It's not like— it's not seeing everything that you have done, right? It's always looking at the negative side of the equation and never looking at the positive side of the equation.

It's—

you're treating yourself the way you wouldn't treat somebody else typically.

Yeah. Or it's, I've tried this, this, and this. I've tried this, that, and the other thing to treat my depression and it hasn't worked, therefore it's hard. When all of the things that you may have tried may have actually been to treat the symptoms in what, in the way you just described, or may have been strategies to change your, change your circumstances. Sometimes they might've even been like perfectly orchestrated to not work.

Right. The other thing I would say is that most, the other way to to present the same thing you're saying is you are, in every way you've tried to fix yourself, you've assumed there's something wrong with you and that you need to be fixed and this is how you're gonna fix it. And that won't work.

Yeah. But that can be such an alluring thing to be like, oh, you know what? There's gonna be a plan. I'm gonna execute on that plan. And then when the plan is finished, voilà, freedom.

You can have that. It just can't start with the assumption of there's something wrong with me that I have to fix. If it's, oh, my voice in the head is not competent and I need to help the voice in the head become competent, that's a very different approach than there's something wrong with me that I have to fix. And so typically—

Right, because the very premise of that, there's something wrong with me, is the exact kind of thought that triggers the fear in the nervous system, triggers the The self-attack triggers the—

it literally is the depression. There's a way to think of it as there's something wrong with me is the depression. And so any fight with— any fight to make, make yourself better is part of the self-fulfilling prophecy of depression. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so, so if, if we, if we kind of boil it down to the belief that there's something wrong with me being the the core here. What are some things you can do? Let's say that belief just feels really persistent, and maybe your mind kind of sort of gets it, but nah, you just can't fully let that in.

Yeah.

Or explore it. What, what are some things that you can do? Yeah, so that would be something other than treating the symptom.

I spoke to some of them, so, and so I'll probably speak to them again and see what else comes up. So on the head part of it, you can do simple things like stop using, like noticing every time you use the word should and see what it's like to change it to the word want, to look at the negative self-talk and really question it and notice how it's nonsensical. So like literally write down, here's the 20 negative, most persistent negative self-thoughts and then literally debate them with yourself. Take the other side and say, "I'm going to see if the voice in my head is actually accurate," and really debate with it. At some point, you get to a place where any of the negative self-talk, you're just like, "Yeah, that's bullshit. That's bullshit." There's a little bit of truth in each of them, but the general premise is bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And that makes the change happen really quickly when you can see that. Other ways to deal with it is when you have the negative self-talk, right now, most likely you listen to it and agree with it. "Wow, you really fucked up." "Yeah, I fucked up. Okay, I got to do something about that." Instead of, "You fucked up. That's really shitty management. That's not how you should manage me. That's like bad coaching." Or, "You fucked up. Are you talking to you? Is this the voice in the head talking to itself or is it talking to me?

Did I fuck up or did you fuck up?" "Did I fuck up while listening to you for the past 10 years?" Exactly.

Or, "You fucked up. Why shouldn't you have done that?" And you could literally just respond to the voice in the head, "I see that you're really scared and that's okay. It's okay that you're scared." There's lots of iterations that you can try, but one of the things with the voice in the head is that if you treat it differently, it starts behaving differently. And so most of us just kind of accept, acquiesce to the voice in the head. And then we do this kind of what Fritz Perls talked about was she was like overdog, underdog. That overdog is like, "You should do this. You should do this." And the underdog is like, "Yeah, I should. Fuck you. Yeah, I should. Fuck you. Yeah, I should. Fuck you." And the fuck yous are all the ways that you sabotage yourself. "Yeah, yeah, I really should do that." And then you don't do it. "Yeah, I shouldn't watch video games." Then you keep on watching video games. Video games. That's the underdog's role. And so most people, once they start realizing that the voice in the head is the issue, they try to change the voice in the head, but you can also change the response. It could be like, "Yeah, you really shouldn't have done that." It's like, "Yeah, I really, really shouldn't have done that. I'm such a bad, bad, bad, bad person for having done that." Or you can be, "You shouldn't have done that," and your response can be, I don't know, sing them a musical. Say, "Wow, you repeat yourself a lot and yet I still don't listen to you apparently. Maybe you should try a different way." Thousands of responses. So for the head, those are some of the ideas. In the heart part, it's move the anger, move the anger, move the anger. Best way is to listen to the parts of our podcast about anger. I think I don't want to go into all the ways to do it. It's very big, and I'd rather have them listen. And then for the nervous system, it's really about accepting pleasure. It's really about putting yourself into really calm states— nature, massage, time in water, cold plunges, hot saunas, stretching— you know, anything that like allows you to feel the pleasure. And what I notice is that Oftentimes that pleasure is taken away with shame. And so, you know, the simple things that you can get a lot of pleasure from, like eating or breathing or walking or talking to a friend, is all like interrupted with shame. So it's like, how do you take pleasure in your daily life and all the little things that are there? And just on a just fully physical, like, enjoyable— oh wow, just listening to the way that my voice is vibrating my Vocal cords right now has a pleasure in it. That breath has a pleasure in it. So how do I pull the pleasure? How do I— it's not pull— how do I relax into the pleasure of the moment is a really great way to work with the nervous system.

Yeah, so what I'm seeing here is sort of this arc from the head into the heart into the nervous system. One pathway that I hear you describing is that you can work with the relationship we have with a voice in our head So it might be like, oh, you really fucked up that opportunity. And you'd be like— but if you, if you listen to it, if you really work through that relationship, you'll recognize, oh yeah, I hear that you really, really wanted that opportunity. And there'd be some emotion under that, and that would move it down to the heart. Like, yeah, there's some, there's some heartbreak, there's some grief in not getting what I wanted, or in not showing up the way I wanted to, or whatever, whatever it was that the voice really wanted for me, and all the other parts of myself.

And there's also like, fuck you, voice in the head, for talking to me like that. What the fuck?

Yeah, yeah.

There's also that anger.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when that all moves, when that emotion moves, there's spaciousness in the nervous system And that third piece that I hear you talking about is allowing there to be pleasure in the nervous system. It has been so used to being constricted in such a way as to be congruent with that abusive voice in the head and the stuck emotions in the heart. And now there's a— yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, there's— that's true for some folks, and then for some folks it's all about just moving the anger and then they can feel that, you know, that like I wouldn't give a— I don't want anyone to think there's a particular order that works. So I would— all of the— any, any way you want to do it is great. My experience in modern day is that the, the anger moving is probably the best and quickest, um, response. The, the other thing is obviously community. It's like deeper connection. We talked about this. The last thing that someone can do is just really increase their connection, increase their sense of community, be more vulnerable, whether that's like a 12-step program or, you know, a course with us, or, or there's a thousand ways— men's groups, psychologists, whatever you can do to actually share what's going on with you and feel supported.

Whatever is a good match for you.

Yeah.

So, so how about the case where you have a friend who's depressed?

Yeah.

Or a partner. What would you have to say about that?

Yeah, so again, the issue here is what I spoke about earlier, which is if you come in with a premise that there's something wrong with you and I'm here to help you, or I'm here to help you, which means that there's something wrong with you, it means you're not capable, then you're only deepening the problem. And so there's a guy whose name escapes me unfortunately, but he was a, He was a Quaker. He had this really strong community. And so when he got depressed, all these folks came in to help him out. And he said they all hurt. They all made the problem worse. And because everybody was coming in and telling him what was wrong with him, and because they're like, you could do this, you could do this, you could do this, here's how you could help, you know, everybody, good intentions, but what What a depressed person hears in those moments is this, "See, this is what's wrong with me. This is what's wrong with me." And so instead, he said the only person who helped him was somebody who just came in and washed his feet every Tuesday. I think it was, you know, which basically was the only person who was saying, "You're great. You're perfect just the way you are. You don't need to change anything." And he said that was the only person who was helpful in his depression. And so, so oftentimes when we're trying to fix somebody who's depressed, where we don't want to feel it, we think there's something wrong with them, we're aggravated at them at some point, we want it to change. And so we're sending them the message that they're broken, which only amplifies the whole problem. And so however you do it, the idea is to send the message that you're whole.

Yeah, I love the foot washing thing. That's like an amplification in the other direction. Yes, he could have just been like, yeah, I'm here with you, you feel depressed, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with you, right? He did, he went, he went big, but, but he just went like, went big.

Yeah, I recently had a client who did that on, you know, had this moment working with me where they've gotten in touch with this just very deep love, this really deep sense of like love and service and devotionalness, and, um, which is cool, and came and had been spent— it had really done a lot to help their friend who was depressed and had revisited them after a couple months. And that's what they did. And that just— that was how they were moved. It wasn't like a prescription. And, and I think he didn't wash but bowed to the feet, you know. And, and so, yeah, any way that you can just send the message that like, oh yeah, you're You're great just the way you are. I can love you unconditionally in this place is, is really the— is what they need to learn to do for themselves. And so you can be that, a representation of that for them, an example of that. You can lead them in that way.

Yeah. And what if you can't? What if you find yourself just unable to love the part of somebody that is— that feels they're bad or wrong? Because it makes you feel scared or oppressed or—

Yeah, well, I'm not responsible. Hey, it's not your job to fix anybody, so there's that. Um, and that's a really good signal at the thing you can't love about yourself. So if you, if you're really into it for your own freedom, then the best thing is to learn to love the part of yourself that you can't love in them. And that is, that, that'll provide a lot of freedom for you. Uh, but yeah, your job isn't to fix somebody. So if you're not able to contribute to them in a way that is beneficial, then not doing harm is great. You know, maybe it can just be like a text message every once in a while that says, "I love you." You know, like, it doesn't have to be like, "I'm hanging out with you for 5 hours every week and listening to you tell me about how everything in your life sucks." Yeah, which if it came out of the obligation, it would still be another way of saying they're broken and that you're here to fix them.

That's right. Even if it's by being there with them in the way that you heard on the podcast.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Can't come out of obligation.

Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome.

Awesome. Well, this was fun.

Yeah, it was good. It was nice to— it wasn't 3 hours.

Yeah, it wasn't 3 hours. It was much more bite-sized and manageable than the first iteration.

Yeah.

And it was a joy for me to record.

Yeah, it was a pleasure. All right, hopefully you can get some sleep and rest and get off Zoom.

Nope, but maybe someday.

Well, at least enjoy it. At least enjoy it.

I am.

All right.

And then my nervous system will get some rest sometime.

Okay. Mwah.

Thank you everybody for listening. If this episode brought up some thoughts or questions for you, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to us on Twitter @artofacomp or you can email us at podcast@artofaccomplishment.com. Take care. See you next time.