Kendra started to cry at this point, and little Kendra continued. "I’m so mad at you! When are you going to care about me!"

"So," I said, "You are a caretaker with your husband and friends. You take care of them but neglect yourself. You allow them to control you without standing up for yourself. Can you see how this would lead to depression?"

Kendra was quite stunned by this information. She had believed that her depression was caused by outside events rather than by how she was treating herself. She thought it was due to a chemical imbalance and to her husband’s controlling behavior. She may have indeed had a chemical imbalance that resulted from stress of not taking care of herself, but imbalance was likely result rather than cause of her stress and resulting depression. Her husband was indeed controlling but it was her response to him and others that was cause of her depression, rather than her husband’s or friends’ behavior.

Kendra began to see that until she had courage to take loving care of herself, she would continue to be depressed. Through practice, she learned to open to Elder One for guidance about loving behavior toward herself. As she began to take loving action for herself - for her Inner Child - her depression gradually diminished until she was able to get off medication. Now, when she feels depression coming up, she knows that there is some way she is not taking care of herself. She speaks with little Kendra to find out what it is and with Elder One to discover loving action. When she has courage to take loving action, her depression goes away. Kendra has learned a powerful, spiritually-based method for healing her depression.

"Michael, when you were a child, you were helpless over your parents brutality, and you were also helpless over yourself in many ways. You couldn’t just leave and go live with someone else. You couldn’t walk away without further punishment. However, today, while you are still helpless over others, you are not helpless over yourself. You can walk away from a situation that doesn’t feel good, or you can speak up for yourself. You can also explore difficulties with your family. You didn’t have any of these options as a child. But unless you accept your helplessness over others, you will try to control them, and anger is way you’ve learned to do it. Anger is your automatic controlling, addictive response to protect against feeling that old helplessness. You will continue to be angry until you accept your helplessness over others - over what they choose to do and who they choose to be."

Helplessness over others is a very hard feeling to accept. For many people, it feels like a life or death feeling, because as infants we were completely helpless and if no one came we would die. Some of us cried and cried and no one came and we felt helpless over living or dying. While today helplessness over others is not usually a life or death experience, feeling can trigger our infant terror. Most people will do anything to avoid feeling of helplessness, even though we are no longer helpless over ourselves. Yet until we accept our helplessness over others, we will try to control them, and anger is a major way many people have learned to attempt to control.

It took Michael time to learn how to take care of himself - how to embrace and accept his helpless feelings rather than ignore them or cover them up with anger. As he learned to take loving care of himself and his own feelings and needs, he became more accepting of other’s feelings and needs. As a result of accepting himself and others, and of learning to feel and manage his painful feelings, his need to control others gradually diminished.

In course of working with me, Michael learned to access a personal source of spiritual guidance to help him not feel so alone and to know how to take loving care of himself. Michael found that when he was connected with his spiritual guidance, he was much less likely to act out in anger. He found he could manage his difficult feelings of aloneness and helplessness far more easily when he felt love and support of Spirit.