By Bronte Spicer
B.Ed/BSOR, Adv. Certificate in Guiding and Teaching Meditation, Certified Kiloby Inquiries Facilitator.
Award-Winning Writer for Elephant Journal, Author of celebrated collaboration ‘More Than a Mum.’
I thought I’d be on antidepressants for the rest of my life.
Dissolving depression was not even an option. I thought I was one of those people who would always have depression. It had been twenty long years of being stuck in that black hole.
But then I found the Kiloby Inquiries.
Where Depression Started for Me
When I was fourteen, my parents split and life began feeling like I was trudging through mud. Their divorce was a shock to me. All of a sudden, I was no longer in a stable home with a strong family who was certain to stay together. I felt lost and I didn’t know where I belonged.
After school one day, I was lying on my bed feeling like my whole world was breaking apart. The walls of my bedroom seemed to be crumbling and the ground felt like it was coming away from underneath me.
My safety net was gone.
The counseling and appointments to see psychologists soon started. I liked talking about my problems in those sessions and loved those moments of clarity I had about myself and the problems I had. But looking back, none of those sessions took my depression away.
About a decade after my parents’ separation, my Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The terror of losing my biggest love and support tore my insides apart. Soon enough, I was on the doorstep of the local doctor to get a script for antidepressants.
Anti-Depressants and their Personal Emotional Impact
Feeling weak for taking antidepressants was quickly replaced with relief when life got easier with medication. I was able to get up and do life. I took care of myself, began my teaching career, and met my husband-to-be. My sisters were surprised at how well I was coping with Mum’s death.
Yet deep below the surface, my unconscious grief, pain, anger, and sadness was growing.
I took antidepressants for the next decade. While it helped me manage everyday life, I always wanted to come off them. It felt like something was wrong with me and I was cheating life. I tried to come off them many times but failed every time. I still did not know dissolving depression was an option.
Fast-forward to 2019, I started questioning my well-stamped story that I was one of those people who will take antidepressants forever. I contemplated ‘why do some people have a mental illness for a year or two and then get over it? What is stopping me from being one of those people?’
My Next Steps
With a strong connection to my heart’s intuition, I asked for help. I had a conversation with spirit and said ‘Bring me the teachers I need to stop having depression.’
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
Only weeks later, I met a Kiloby Inquiries Facilitator named Matt. When he explained his work, I knew he was my teacher. This is the first time that I learned that dissolving depression was an option.
That Kiloby Inquiries session was the first time someone had metaphorically taken my hand and showed me gently how to safely feel my feelings.
After two decades of professional mental health support, no one had ever shown me how to feel.
Bronte Spicer
The Impact of the Kiloby Inquires
I had always avoided my feelings. I was terrified I would drown in the enormity of my pain and be swallowed up by a big black hole. Matt and partnering KI Trainer, Julianne, showed me very simple techniques that proved my fears to be wrong. They helped me build my confidence, learn to trust myself, and feel safe with the changing emotions or sensations in my body.
One day, after a couple of sessions, I tested the Kiloby Inquiries when I was in the thick of my depression. On this particular morning, I felt this familiar yet overwhelming sense of dread arrive, coupled with the words ‘there’s something wrong with me’ and ‘make it stop’. I was in deep shame about being me. I felt hopeless like no one could fix me and I didn’t want to be me.
This was my moment. My great apprehension was soothed as I recalled feeling safe using the Kiloby Inquiries. I placed my two hands firmly on the kitchen bench, imagined my body to be like an open body of water. I planted my feet on the ground, and let the feelings of dread and shame rise through my body like a wave.
It felt like a tsunami.
The most miraculous thing happened. The tsunami came… And then it went. I didn’t die, drown, or get swallowed up by a big black hole. The sensations simply rose and then they fell. After twenty years of pushing down feelings that I thought were going to kill me, I realized that if I let them come, they come and go.
A Moment of Intense Relief
That moment collapsed my twenty-year bout of depression. All that time ‘my depression’ turned out to be suppressed dread and shame in my body. And stapled to it were mental stories and memories I was afraid of. Once I felt safe with my words, pictures, and body sensations I was free. For those twenty years with depression, all I needed was something as simple as the Kiloby Inquiries.
Dissolving depression and trauma with the Kiloby Inquiries can be helpful for anyone suffering.
