Anxiety and depression run rampant in our society. There are many causes for these conditions - physical, emotional, and spiritual. Therefore, the symptoms need to be addressed on all these levels.

Physical

Keeping your body healthy is fundamental to avoiding anxiety and depression. This means finding a form of exercise that you love to do and doing it consistently. It also means educating yourself about good nutrition and learning about what your body needs to be strong and healthy. The first thing you need to eliminate is sugar.

Eating sugar raises the blood sugar level too rapidly and causes the pancreas to pour excess insulin into the system, thus lowering the blood sugar level too much. When this occurs, the brain doesn't get enough glucose; depression ("Sugar Blues") can occur.

Both anxiety and depression can be exacerbated by eating foods with pesticides and preservatives, because of the demand these chemicals put on the body. Anything that is not natural to the body causes an energy drain as the body attempts to digest and utilize foreign substances. In addition, both sugar and many processed foods create a gut imbalance, sending toxins into the brain that can cause anxiety and depression.

It’s up to each person to discover what his or her particular body needs to be healthy. 

Emotional

Most of our painful feelings, such as anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, and fear are caused by our thoughts. The major way that our spiritual guidance communicates with us instantly is through our feelings. When we think a thought that causes us to feel depressed, anxious, or fearful, these painful feelings are our inner guidance's way of letting us know that the thought is not true, that it’s a false belief. Thoughts that create feelings of peace, love, and joy are coming from truth, and thoughts that create depression and anxiety are coming from the lies we tell ourselves. 

Truth does not come from our own minds. It comes from spirit. When you are operating from truth, and take loving action based on truth - rather than thinking and behaving from false beliefs - you will be well on the way to healing your anxiety and depression.

Inner Bonding is a powerful way of learning what you are thinking and doing that is creating your anxiety and depression, and for discovering the truth. Let's go through a sample process dealing with anxiety.

A Six-Step Process: Anxiety

Step 1 - Tune into your feeling of anxiety. Where do you feel it in your body? Where is your body tense or tight? Acknowledge, welcome, and embrace the feelings of anxiety. Pretend these feelings are a small child who is feeling very anxious and needs your caring. Decide that you want responsibility for causing these feelings.

Step 2 - Choose a compassionate intent to learn about what you are thinking or doing that is creating the anxiety. Let go of believing, for the moment, that other people or events are causing these feelings.

Step 3 - Ask the feeling part of you - your inner child - what you as the adult are thinking or doing that is causing these feelings. Then allow yourself to move into the anxiety and let the answers come from within. For example:

Adult: What am I thinking or doing from my wounded self that is causing you to feel so anxious?

Child: You keep telling me that I am not allowed to make mistakes, that I have to be perfect. You keep telling me that people (or my mate or my employer, etc.) will reject me if I don't do things right. And you keep judging me when I'm not totally perfect. You are so hard on me. How do you expect me to feel? Of course I'm anxious! I feel like I can't just be me, that I have to perform all the time or bad things will happen.

Step 4 - Ask your spiritual guidance about these false beliefs (if you are not in touch with your personal guidance, just ask the question of the Universe) "Is what I'm telling myself the truth? Can I have control over how others feel about me by being perfect? Does judging myself get me to do things perfectly?"

Now, open to hearing the truth from spirit. If you are really open to learning, you will hear, feel, sense, or see pictures about the truth. In essence, spirit will let you know that "People's feelings about you are not based on you never making mistakes. You can't actually control how others feel about you. If someone is having a bad day, he or she may reject you, even if you do everything perfectly. The problem is that you are making others' opinion of you matter too much, and this causes you much anxiety. Yet it is you who reject yourself, by judging yourself and telling yourself you are not okay the way you are. Take your inner child off the hook. Tell your Child that you will love him or her even if you make mistakes - that your lovability is not in your performance but is in your kindness, your caring, your compassion, your understanding, your gentleness.

Step 5 - Take the loving action. In this case, it would be to tell your child the truth that you received from Spirit, and move into kindness and compassion for yourself, rather than judging yourself.

Step 6 - Evaluate, by going inside again to see how you feel. Do you feel calmer when you tell yourself that you are lovable just the way you are rather than having to perform to be acceptable? Do you feel calmer when you value yourself rather than judge yourself?

You may discover, if you start to practice Inner Bonding and tune into the thoughts that are causing your feelings, that you have constant thoughts that create anxiety or depression. Most of these thoughts have to do with telling yourself you will not be okay if you lose your job, lose your relationship, someone rejects you, your stock goes down, your boss yells at you, your mate yells at you, your child yells at you, and so on. Much of our anxiety is about what we tell ourselves about others and events, rather than about the actual events.

If you did an Inner Bonding process about depression, your inner child might say to you:

Child: You always ignore me. I feel like I'm not important to you. You don't pay any attention to what I feel. You either completely ignore me or turn to food or alcohol when I feel lonely or heartbroken. You let people treat me badly and you don't say anything about it. You're much more worried about what other people think than about taking care of me. Of course I'm depressed - I don't think you like me at all. You're always looking to get other people to take care of me and make me feel good. Why don't you like me and want to take care of me?

Wounded self: I just think you're a pain in the butt. It's too much trouble to take care of you, and I don't know how. And I don't know what to do with your feelings. I just can't deal with feelings.

Child: That's why I'm depressed. It's just like when I grew up. No one wanted to know what I felt. No one cared. And now you don't care. So how do you expect me to feel?

Spiritual

We live on a difficult planet. Most people do not have a good support system and sense of community. The way we live can generate much loneliness. You may have health challenges, financial challenges, and relationship challenges. Handling these alone can create much anxiety and depression.

How do you think you would feel if you knew that there was always someone watching over you, someone who had your highest good at heart? How would you feel if you could turn to this being for guidance, comfort, love, wisdom, and strength? Of course, you would feel much less alone and anxious.

You cannot permanently move beyond your anxiety and depression without a strong spiritual connection. Life on this planet is often too scary and challenging without the love, guidance, and support of spirit. We have constant decisions to make, and we need the wisdom of our guidance to know what to do.

You can heal anxiety and depression by learning to take loving care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."