Never before in our lives have we needed more self-care.
Here’s my “Fearless Formula” for Gabby, whose husband is depressed and doesn’t want to be intimate.
Even if you’re not personally depressed, these are still difficult times.
Even if you are not personally impacted, you have friends and family who may be supported by this “Fearless Formula.”
It’s the down and dirty, bare-bones strategy for keeping yourself healthy and hopeful through rough times.
HUGS HELP
Gabby says,
“Everything has been going great over the last five years with my partner despite his frail health.
We both lost our jobs in the pandemic. His son is getting into a lot of trouble.
He’s emotionally and physically distant and doesn’t want to make love. He’s depressed but doesn’t want to be on drugs.
We’ve always been mutually supportive. But now I feel he doesn’t even trust me.
Please help.”
Dear Gabby,
In 2016, I nursed a dear friend of mine back from suicidal depression for a whole year. We brought her into our home and nourished her with family love and home-cooked meals. I helped her find a psychiatrist and began to understand the utter desperation that overwhelms so many people.
She is doing fine now but says she would have taken her life if not for the grace of our family’s love.
I learned a LOT about depression from this experience. When I brought her home to our house to live, I had NO idea what a struggle the depths of depression are. (If I had known, I surely wouldn’t have taken on such an overwhelming task.)
So what I’m about to lay out works for everyone as a foundation for good mental health, even if one feels sad, lonely, anxious, or downright depressed.
There are levels of mood issues from mild to severe. But everyone’s mood can be improved by doing these four simple things.
The Fearless Formula includes:
- Good nutrition
- Proper supplementation
- Physical touch and movement
- Encouragement and gratitude
NUTRITION
Start with removing alcohol, sugar, and process carbs entirely from his diet. Fill it in with a fresh vegetable and fruit (organic when possible) whole food diet, with quality proteins added. Three healthy meals a day with no toast, cereal, bread, pasta, chips, cookies, cakes, or other junk will improve anyone’s mood. Feed your husband well, and in a timely way, so he doesn’t have energy drops.
Food is love. And sometimes, mood issues stem from the body starving for nutrition and supplementation.
SUPPLEMENTATION
Secondly, many mood disorders are due to a lack of vitamins and minerals, amino acids, precursors to neurotransmitters, and hormone imbalance.
Read these two books, Why Isn’t My Brain Working? and The Mood Cure. They will help you identify what your husband’s issues are and get him the supplementation he needs.
SELF-ASSESSMENTS
SUPPLEMENTS
Start him immediately on a daily multi-vitamin, multi-mineral with methylated B vitamins. Our BOOST, DESIRE, and DRIVE are three options. You can choose one or rotate through the three in a 90-day program. Do NOT take them all at once. Each bottle is a month’s supply of 100% of the daily USDA allowance of vitamins and minerals.
Add Omega 3’s. I take the Nordic Naturals ProOmega 2000. Fish oil lowers inflammation and “feeds” your brain tissue, which is made of cholesterol. Often, people who have mood spectrum disorders are deficient in healthy fats.
Give him the two capsules of the vitamin/mineral and the Omega 3’s every morning, so he takes them.
FISH OIL OMEGA 3’S
TOUCH & MOVEMENT
Next comes touch. Touch is required for humans to be alive. But when someone is depressed, they recede into themselves. You have to physically go to him and hold him or crawl into his arms and have him hold you.
Give him massages every day. Rub his head. Give him face rub. Give him a neck and shoulder rub. Give him a back rub. Give him a penis massage with no expectations other than that he just relax and receive.
There are four kinds of touch: Nurturing, Healing, Sensual and Sexual. Focus your touch on nurturing and healing strokes.
This will make you both feel better and more connected.
And get him moving. When humans are stuck, they are depressed. We are made to move. Taking him out in the sunshine for a daily walk will do you both a world of good. The light and movement, along with holding hands (more reassuring touch), will improve his mood.
ENCOURAGEMENT
And finally, encourage him. Let him know things will work out. Tell him what you love about him. Tell him why you chose him. Tell him the qualities he has that you respect. Explain that he has valuable skills that will be needed again. Let him know that “this too shall pass.” Remind him that life has cycles of ups and downs. Remind him that you have each other. Let him know that his son will turn out fine even if he’s stumbling right now. That we all screw things up as we mature. His job is to break through his depression and get back to health with your help.
Being in gratitude creates heart coherence that moves him from the sympathetic (flight and fright) to the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system. His depression is likely from fear of failure due to the loss of his job.
When someone is depressed, it’s like a switch gets stuck on the negative. Depressed people are so blind to the positive that everything looks terrible. He can’t find his way out without your help.
This is why working with a psychiatrist who has more tools than a doctor doling out anti-depressants can help him.
There are ketamine infusions for mood spectrum disorder, GABApentin, lamotrigine, and other therapies that are not anti-depressants that can help the brain reconnect to the positive. Psychiatrists are much more schooled in these options than your internist or primary care physician. So keep pushing through your system to get a referral for a psychiatrist.
Feed him, snuggle him, walk him, encourage him, and get him on the right supplements as you work to find a psychiatrist who can help him. People think that psychiatrists are just doctors with couches to whom you spill your inner secrets. But that is not true. Psychiatrists are MDs who know about all the supplements and drugs needed for mood disorders. Often they will only need to meet with you a few times to get your guy dialed into a treatment that has him see the positive again.
That’s the Fearless Formula to keep you in your heart, connected through touch, and nurtured by healthy, whole foods.
The Fearless Formula:
- Good nutrition
- Proper supplementation
- Physical touch and movement
- Encouragement and gratitude
Thanks to everyone who’ve been checking on my health. I was well enough to go out for date night with Sir Tim last Friday. I can say I am finally returning to health. It’s been nearly six months since I got COVID, and I am beginning to trust that I will be able to mend over time. I appreciate all the love and caring of everyone.
