With the increase in tragic incidents involving suicide, one Newfoundland woman felt a sense of responsibility to share her own experience of depression, along with information about a possible solution to relieve the suffering and despair.
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The best way to describe my own experience of depression would be to say that it somehow managed to turn everything grey. Literally – it was like all of the colour in the world was suddenly drained away and all that was left was the colour of grey.
I remember exactly what it was like to have to struggle to get out of bed, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to desperately keep wishing for something to put an end to the terrible pain which I was feeling every single day.
One thing I know for certain is, regardless of the circumstances that surround it, depression equals pain. I remember feeling so thankful to be able to find things that seemed to help; I think when we find ourselves experiencing that kind of pain, most of us would be willing to do just about anything to make it stop. So I became determined to find solutions that felt right for me. 
Sense of Purpose
The most effective strategies I found at the time came in the form of simple things – things I had learned from a doctor who had been hired to provide assistance to myself and my colleagues after losing one of our own to suicide years before.
He recommended things like eating three square meals a day, getting a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night and exercising for at least 20 minutes a day, three or four times per week. All of these seemed to help, and eventually I also ended up cutting out alcohol, using a journal and changing my diet as well.
Every positive change I made helped me to become stronger and feel more empowered, but it also gave me a sense of purpose and much needed direction at a time when everything else in my life felt so chaotic and uncertain.
It wasn’t until several years later though that I actually discovered Strategic Intervention.
I want to share some of the things I’ve learned through Strategic Intervention with you, because I honestly believe that if I had had access to this information back when I was suffering from depression years ago, I would have been able to drastically reduce not only the amount of pain I had to endure but also the length of time I had to suffer from it as well.
Positive Change
Strategic Intervention, created by Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes, is a project dedicated to extracting the most practical and effective forms of strategic action and communication from a wide variety of disciplines. Tony Robbins has been recognized globally as an authority on the psychology of leadership and peak performance, and Cloe Madanes is a world-renowned psychotherapist, author and teacher of family and strategic therapy. Together, along with Cloe’s daughter and son-in-law, Megali and Mark Peysha, they train coaches in the use of Strategic Intervention to facilitate positive personal and cultural change throughout the world.
After learning about Tony Robbins and Strategic Intervention and seeing the results that people were getting from this work, I decided to take the training myself and eventually became certified as a Strategic Intervention Coach. This work has not only changed my life, but has also enabled me to help my friends, family and clients to dramatically improve their lives as well.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be offering some really valuable tools, strategies and information that you can use right away to begin changing your situation. I would like to start by offering you this:
We Do Have Some SaY
Most of us are taught to believe that emotions are something that just come to us and we have no control over them, but that is actually not the case. Emotions are NOT something that come to us – we go to THEM. This is really important to understand and it’s also really good news, because it means that we do have some say over what we get to experience on a daily basis!
Even though there are literally hundreds of emotions in the English language, most of us tend to experience the same ones over and over again. Without knowing what causes us to experience these emotions, we end up getting stuck in patterns that keep us miserable, lost and depressed. Pain may be a necessary and inevitable part of our lives, but I can guarantee you that suffering is definitely NOT.
Please come back next week to learn more.
If you have a question for Tamara Dodgson, she can be reached by emailing: [email protected]
About the author: Tamara Dodgson is a Certified Strategic Intervention Coach and Life Strategist, trained by Robbins Madanes. She has spent the better part of a half century studying, researching and learning about personal growth and development, self-help, spirituality, leadership, success, achievement and philosophy. She is a writer, speaker, life coach, mother, fitness enthusiast, nature lover, and book fanatic. She is also the proud author of ‘Designing Your Life – A Guide to Help You Consciously Create Your Future’ and teaches workshops in Strategic Intervention in her hometown of Conception Bay South. You can connect with Tamara on Facebook at Forward Coaching & Consulting Services, on her website at www.tamaradodgson.com, or via email at [email protected].