Recently I was interviewed on the telesummit Overcoming Anxiety and Depression with Ande Anderson addressing the management of depression and anxiety. Although I’ve been a clinically trained psychotherapist for many years, my specialty is not working with people who have chronic, long term mood disorders. I do however work with people whose emotions are compromised by continuing to live a life they’ve outgrown. If you stay too long in a what I call a defunct life, the pressure that builds from the soul to move on can translate into what I coined in 1990 as a ‘LifeQuake’: the birthing pains of the soul waking up to the next level of its evolution.
So what is distinct about the depression and anxiety that can come with LifeQuakes and how should they be treated by the professional who is working with such a patient or client?
1)There is an onset. You can clearly remember a time when your work life was stimulating or other parts of your life enlivened you so the stark contrast doesn’t feel familiar.
2) The work you’ve been doing leaves you drained but when you go into nature, your energy picks up or doing Yoga or Qi Gong at the end of a work day refills your tank. Your work and/or relationships may leave you feeling depressed but there are activities that do bring your energy up.
3) People who are part of groups that you no longer feel an affinity with also drain you, especially when they are discussing the philosophy of that group such as a religious organization, sports team, or 12 step recovery program.
4) Your dietary needs change. For example, eating a vegan diet if you’ve been on that program for a while may now not provide enough protein or the reverse. Eating a lot of animal protein in your diet may weigh you down. Because a LifeQuake is a rebirthing process of the soul, the body that houses the soul may be going through an evolutionary process that requires different food to nourish you now.
5) What people care about on social media or in the news begins to feel strange, like you belong on another planet. In a dark night of the soul, the ego-based identity you’ve been operating from begins to die as it withdraws from an old life and begins a journey toward the soul. A numbness to one’s outer life can take over. Clinical Depression can look like this too but the call here is not to take anti-depressant meds although amino acids that address mood can be very helpful. What alleviates this kind of Depression is time in meditation or contemplation within yourself. There are also guided meditations that can help to connect you with your soul and your soul purpose during your Dark Night. In the products section of LifeQuake.com, I offer a CD of guided visualizations, my book in downloadable form, and if you join the LifeQuake Soul Purpose Tribe, you get the 7 week audio course that takes you through how to manage the seven stages of repurposing your LifeQuake.
The key here in distinguishing a LifeQuake from a mood disorder although they may feel the same is to listen. Take the time to deeply listen to your body and pay attention to what I call divine coincidences – a synchronicity in which your soul is magnetizing events from your outer life to guide you. If you choose to not go the pharmaceutical route to manage your emotions, it will be easier to remember your dreams. Ask for direction before sleeping and then write down what you remember in the morning. The Dark Night of the Soul has the potential to birth you into a more authentic version of yourself, especially if you work with your disowned emotions at this time. What may feel heavy can become the very stuff that creates a more radiant version of yourself if you open to the light from the universe. This is the alchemy of leaded consciousness into the golden mind.
Click this link and get your copy of The LifeQuake™ Miracle.
About Dr. Toni Galardi – aka The LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, career coach, speaker and author. Dr Toni coined the term LifeQuake in 1990 to describe “the labor pains” of a soul rebirthing into the next level of its evolution. The LifeQuake Phenomenon was coined in 2009 to describe the interface between the individual and collective evolution of our species.
The music industry would have us believe that romantic love is what it is all about Tony Bennett singing “ It’s that time of year when the world falls in love…”
There are years when the typical holiday movie are not the best inspiration. Sometimes it is the people who serve us unseen are the ones to inspire us to make the most of holidays when we cannot be with loved ones, buy the gifts we would love to share with our peeps, or even have the weather that most reminds us of Christmas.
I have often written in my newsletters about my Italian grandmother and as the holidays approach, she is once again in my thoughts as someone who taught me to love not just my family, but the people we don’t see. My grandmother was left a widow at the age of 34 with four children, a fourth grade education, and no life insurance. She had never worked outside the house and didn’t speak English. She got the only work she could, in a candy factory. Of course it was an Italian candy company, Barricini Chocolates.
As a child, I never thought about the actual work my grandmother did of standing on an assembly line eight hours a day, five days a week for almost thirty years. I just enjoyed the thrill of getting a big box of assorted chocolates from her at the holidays.
What was amazing was that in spite of having to take a low level blue color job at the age of 37, she never complained. She was actually very cheerful, so I imagine that those chocolates she helped to convect were made with as much love as her fabulous cooking was at home.
All over America, there are people serving us that we don’t see. They work in factories, they clean our hotel rooms and our homes, and they work in restaurant kitchens to name a few. Many of these people are immigrants grateful to have jobs, albeit in some cases, illegally. In the 2002 film, Dirty Pretty Things, a hotel maid talks about the people like her that no one sees. What we now know statistically is that the people most at risk for communicable illnesses ( after the obese and elderly) such as virulent viruses, are the working class.
At this time of year, there is much talk about the Christmas spirit and handling our stress while preparing for the holidays. My message for this holiday season is to spread love not just to your family and friends but take the time and connect with the people who serve you in restaurants behind the scenes, department stores, hotels, etc and bless the invisible people who made all the things that allow your car to function, who made your favorite cut of meats and fish, and even the refinement of ingredients like flour, for home baked goods.
Let’s remember to bless the invisible people who serve and make our lives work every day doing mundane tasks that would drive most of us insane if we had to do them for even a week. Take that extra second to spread it in the most unlikely places and direct a loving intention through your eyes to those who are visible like the valet guy… wearing a mask all day, your waiter… wearing a mask all day, the grocery clerk, … you get my drift.
Yes, this is the season of love. Making a connection to everyone, the food you eat, and most importantly to yourself will most definitely create a change in how we do this season. Enjoy the holidays, Italian style by spreading love through your attention, appreciation, and the twinkle in your eyes.
Happy, joy filled Holidays!
Click this link and get your copy of The LifeQuake™ Miracle.
About Dr. Toni Galardi – aka The LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, career coach, speaker and author. Dr Toni coined the term LifeQuake in 1990 to describe “the labor pains” of a soul rebirthing into the next level of its evolution. The LifeQuake Phenomenon was coined in 2009 to describe the interface between the individual and collective evolution of our species.
There is no question that our world as we’ve known it is in upheaval. Just as earthquakes produce chaos and breakdown in structures sitting on big fault lines, so is true with the foundations of our relationships. Just as your career may be in transition, so perhaps are your present relationships. Where are your faulty beliefs affecting them?
Part of the process of cycles ending is that as things are deconstructing. Your life may look like chaos and crisis. If you are married or in a relationship, it can become exponentially stressful if you are spending a lot of time at home together. So what do you do to avoid your partner having a contract “hit” made on your life?
Don’t stop exercising just because you’re depressed that you lost your job or work is down. If you are getting bored with doing the same old routine, try something new. If you’ve been running on the treadmill or at the park, try including yoga twice a week. Not only does it reduce stress but it will in time make your body much more flexible. A flexible body leads to a more flexible mind. A flexible, calm mind is less reactive to your partner, not to mention more attractive than a couch potato body.
Replace coffee and black tea with teas that feed your adrenals rather than stimulate them such as Holy Basil (sometimes called Tulsi) tea, licorice root, or mucuna pruriens (which can also increase your libido). Substitute coconut sugar with honey or refined sugar. Increase your magnesium intake. Most people living in western civilization are magnesium deficient. It is a critical mineral for our bones for sure, but our nervous system needs it to thrive as well. A calm nervous system can minimize the crisis response to this upheaval. You will find yourself less argumentative with your partner if your body is balanced even if the outside looks like total chaos.
Meditation or guided visualizations (the LifeQuake Repurposing Guided Meditations) can be extremely beneficial to moving through a LifeQuake that allows for you to awaken to the new level of your evolution without tremendous resistance to letting go of the old life. It can be a useful tool in your stress management tool box if you take time at the end of meditation to ask yourself in a heightened alpha state, how to handle any challenges you are experiencing with people in your life.
Examine your beliefs about receiving help from your partner. You can’t ask for support, be it financial, emotional, or physical if you aren’t first comfortable with receiving it.
Explain to your partner that you need to change the definition and expectations of your relationship. You may need more alone time. If you ask for it, you don’t have to get it by picking a fight and alienating your spouse.
When we are in transition, we often feel a loss of identity and self worth. Find new ways to feel valuable besides your career such as being a more supportive partner. If you have more time now, write little notes to your significant other letting them know how appreciative you are for your relationship and their love for you. Do things for your partner that you didn’t have time to do when you were working in your old job.
Get out and donate your time to a charity. Giving back to others transforms you from one who is going through a change to one who is a change agent for the world. This level of generosity attracts opportunity to you and moves you into discovering your vocation of destiny. When we are passionate about our work, we are passionate in our relationships. Yes, altruism can be sexy! If you choose to use this time to awaken a new version of yourself, the most authentic version of your relationships have to emerge as well. That is how LifeQuakes birth new versions of humanity itself, one relationship at a time…
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, astrologer, career coach, and the author of her new book, The LifeQuake Miracle: Awakening to Your True Purpose in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval, 2020 Wheatmark Publishing
Click this link and get your copy of The LifeQuake™ Miracle.
About Dr. Toni Galardi – aka The LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, career coach, speaker and author. Dr Toni coined the term LifeQuake in 1990 to describe “the labor pains” of a soul rebirthing into the next level of its evolution. The LifeQuake Phenomenon was coined in 2009 to describe the interface between the individual and collective evolution of our species.
Change.
What feeling gets evoked when you hear someone suggest that you need to make a
change? For most people, some level of anxiety. We want the world to change, we
want our neighbor to change, or perhaps it’s our spouse and children. Yet,
often when we think about making changes for ourselves, a trigger goes off that
change will mean loss.
We
are in a time of massive accelerated change and the mandate for evolving is
exactly tied to the degree that each of us can adapt to these changes. More to the point, can you execute
restructuring those places in your own life that are outdated?
One of my career – coaching clients was a business
owner who owned airports. He reached out
to work with me one month before society as we have known it forever changed.
He was miserable. He had outgrown what had been a very fulfilling career. And
then the pandemic hit and suddenly he wanted the business back. The usual 120
cars per lot went to 5. Every day he had
to make decisions that involved change. He had to lay people off who had become
like family, institute new policies for the skeletal crew, etc. Yet, when it
came to facing changes in his vocational destiny, he became paralyzed with
fear.
One
of the unusual aspects of my work as a career coach is that I use astrology to
assist my clients in preparing for change. In the 25 years that I have been
studying the biochemistry of mastering healthy adult change, my question
continues to be, what is it in the make up of the kind of individual that
allows them to make timely changes more easily?
By observing my clients over these many years,
I’ve been afforded an empirical study of astrology. Here’s what I ‘ve
discovered: Einstein was right; it is a mathematical universe. We are each born
into a unique, mathematically –precise relationship with the planets in our
solar system. Like us, each planet has a vibrational frequency. At the moment of our birth, a matrix is formed
on the etheric body that surrounds our physical bodies. This matrix contains
the interchange of these frequencies so as the planets move through their
orbits during your life, you are affected by them in accordance with your own unique
blueprint. We are not just affected by other people. The galaxy itself is
interacting with you every day.
My
ability to predict change may appear uncanny but it is not based on some mumbo
jumbo magic. The Astrological Research
Foundation has been compiling data for many years on the efficacy of what are
called transits to your chart. For
example, people born under the sun signs of Aries, Libra, Cancer, and Capricorn
or who have major planets in their astrological chart in those signs have been
experiencing massive identity shifts for the past several years. For many, this
has shown up in the form of a major crisis. However, we are all experiencing
massive shifts because evolution is demanding it.
If
you do not have a naturally intuitive sense of your destiny and an ease in
making timely, massive shifts in your life, it will indeed show up as a dramatic
crisis. Fortunately, it is possible to have a context for recognizing and
holding these massive changes and a specific way of preparing for them in terms
of what to do and in what time frame to do it. With such tools, you can
minimize the drama and maximize the potential for stepping into a new life
design that is more authentic to the person you are meant to become.
This
is what astrological information can give you – the context and a time table
for the occurrence of major potential events.
The unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Capricorn has been predicted by many astrologer including myself for several years to bring about the deconstruction and reconstruction of society. I published my first book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: how to thrive not just survive in times of personal and global upheaval 10 years ago ahead of it’s time to prepare and awaken people to the importance of mastering timely change before it is too late. As history has shown us, great sociological rebellions took place in the 60’s that forever changed the landscape of American life with a conservative president in the oval office. Once again, we are being called to examine our values. This time it isn’t specific to women’s freedoms, civil rights, or gay liberation. It concerns all of us.
Are we willing to sacrifice our creature
comforts to save ourselves or will we stay addicted to fossil fuels, GMOs in
our food supply, and other pollutants to our environment? Can we make a
paradigm shift away from that which merely gives momentary pleasure to one that
engenders true joy? Is there a solution that involves change that we can all
get behind?
Although
it is helpful to have personal astrological information that can assist in
preparing for change, the ability to implement these outer changes before they
hit critical mass begins on the inside first, so here are some suggestions for
practices that can stimulate inner bliss:
Develop some kind of morning daily meditation
practice even if it means just reading inspiring uplifting materials.
Get into nature and connect with the natural
world. It will quiet your nervous system and make it easier to hear guidance
regarding your next move.
Eat organic foods and minimize the intake of
any substances that hyper-stimulate your brain and overwork your adrenals like
caffeinated beverages. Hard to listen to your spirit when your nervous system
is in high alert.
Cultivate your relationship
to the dreamtime. Before sleeping, ask for direction on any change you are
considering. Record your dreams in the
morning and then contemplate their meaning.
Sit quietly and breathe into
the anxiety. Call in radiant light right into the place in your body where you
are feeling the most intense emotions. Just keep allowing yourself to receive
the unconditional love from the universe.
In spite of these uncertain
times of massive life and global transitions, you can thrive in the uncertainty
and discover what is essential to your true growth and happiness. This is the
nature of evolution now. Change that brings joy – now there’s a movement I can
get behind…
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, career and transitions coach, futurist, and the author of the updated and expanded 10 year anniversary edition now called The LifeQuake Miracle: Awakening to Your True Purpose in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. She can be reached through her website: lifequake.com or by calling her office at 310-890-6832 and someone will get back to you.
Click this link and get your copy of The LifeQuake™ Miracle.
About Dr. Toni Galardi – aka The LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, career coach, speaker and author. Dr Toni coined the term LifeQuake in 1990 to describe “the labor pains” of a soul rebirthing into the next level of its evolution. The LifeQuake Phenomenon was coined in 2009 to describe the interface between the individual and collective evolution of our species.
