Depression and Intense Anxieties Your Quickest Way Out

By Rose Manalo

This book details the account of how the author navigated her way out of the dark, horrible and anxiety-riddled pit of depression from which she suffered for 3 debilitating years. She wrote about how she defeated depression and revealed the shocking scientific, yet very simple principles she discovered behind her healing and recovery.

Writing from the perspective of one who suffered and survived depression, the author offers the reader, sympathetic, yet credible and firm hands to hold, as they grope their own way out of their pit of depression.

The reader will have a clear understanding of the following:

• A healthy mind requires a healthy body. Depression is intrinsically connected to the health of the body.

• Our body is “telling us” specific ways we can help it heal. Depression is simply our body’s “megaphone” sending an urgent message that it needs some immediate care. Paying attention to these sound bites opens up the door to healing from depression.

• A healthy body is equipped to face various stresses without easily succumbing to depression. Avoiding stress is in fact an impractical solution to depression.

• A healthy body requires a healthy GUT (digestive system). Everything that anti-depressants promise to give, a HEALTHY GUT can deliver even better without the side-effects.

• Man is made up of spirit, soul and body. Being physically healthy heals and shields us from depression. Being spiritually healthy keeps that shield safe from unnecessary assaults. Thus, it keeps the shadow of depression miles away from us.

If you promptly apply the steps generously suggested, you will heal from depression. Eventually, embracing them as a lifestyle will keep you out of depression for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose Manalo
• Release date: May 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9786218153066

Rose Manalo

My name is Rose Manalo. You will not see an “MD” or a “PHD” right after my name. It is my hope that you will choose to look past my lack of professional credentials. I am simply Rose Manalo and I conquered depression. However, I didn’t heal from depression by merely “riding out” the wave and letting myself be finally tossed safely onto the shore. No, that’s not what happened. I healed from depression because I took specific steps and did specific things and those very things were what pulled me out of the ocean of depression. My survival instincts refused to just let me drown. I decided to swim my way to the safety of the shore. I participated. I cooperated. I contributed. And that became my first set of credentials that qualified me to write these books. The second is the hard science that proves the undeniable principles behind my healing from depression. These scientific papers, articles and resources were already out there even before I started to write two years ago. They validate all the whys and hows of my journey out of depression. They explain the effectiveness of the tools I utilized to reach the safe shore of healing - of being free from depression and intense anxieties. If I were writing just about the science of it all, these books would still be worthy of your time. But they are doubly-worthy because I am a living and victorious proof of what this rich, scientific data claim: that we can overcome and heal from depression.

Book preview

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK?

This book is for the person:

1. who is so sure that tomorrow can only be worse than today

2. who can laugh a lot (or a little) but cannot wait to be alone

3. who thinks her life’s purpose is purposeless

4. who feels he is drowning in his own mistakes

5. who thinks there’s no safer place than her bedroom

6. who thinks she’s incapable of doing anything right

7. who wants to forgive but can’t see the point

8. who thinks he’s incapable of giving genuine love

9. who finds it hard to trust anyone

10. who dreads meeting new people

11. who feels always fatigued; has weak or numb arms and legs; hears his heart’s pounding 24/7; has perpetual upset stomach: constantly takes deep breaths

12. who often feels something bad is about to happen

13. who is always ahead or behind - never here and now

14. who is surrounded by clutter and dust

15. who doesn’t appreciate having visitors

16. who is uncomfortable with small talk

17. who has constant mental replays of the worst parts

18. who has plenty but feels empty

Depression is not a respecter of fame, security, civil or social status, race, age, gender or even wealth and success. Recent news of suicide by significant personalities give credence to this statement.

How about faith?

I am personally aware that even some people of strong faith have suffered from depression. My own faith in God, despite my severe depression and its harrowing manifestations, was never shaken at any time throughout those three debilitating years.

To some, that statement may sound incongruous, or plain ironic. It felt ironic to me to be constantly weak, exhausted, and in dreadful panic, but at the same time, I know with certainty that my eternal salvation was secured no matter what I was going through in this temporal life. That knowledge - that assurance about my personal standing with God - was as real to me as the horrific characteristics of depression: constant forebodings, 24/7 palpitations, insomnia, extreme pessimism, general body weakness, sudden inability to feel happiness, and that perpetual physical knife pain in my chest.

However, it was that faith which assured me, that if the Lord wills it, He could heal me instantly through a miracle. And when He didn’t, it was faith that kept me anchored and daily whispered to me to wait it out.

And most importantly, it was faith that kept me from actually committing suicide. My regard for what Christ did for me at Calvary - how He gave His life to redeem mine - was what, over and over, prevented me from ending it all. When I accepted Christ as my Saviour and Redeemer at age 17, I received His gift of eternal life. From that moment on, my life was no longer mine. Hence, it was not mine to take.

So, then what is this common denominator among depression sufferers? What is it that depression sufferers all have? What qualified us to be depressed?

This underlying qualifier is our Heel of Achilles. It is our common vulnerability. It is the key to defeating this mental plague. And its elusive face is revealed in this book.

If you have ticked off even just 2 out of the 18 symptoms I listed above, then you most likely have this Heel of Achilles - this particular weakness - as well.

This book is then for you.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

HOW IT ALL FELT LIKE

The years 2008 to 2010 were the most horrible years of my life.

For most of that period, I couldn’t feel joy or happiness. I couldn’t understand what made people laugh or smile. I was constantly nervous. My chest felt like it had a knife perpetually stuck in my heart. My knees felt like jelly and I walked close to the walls, grabbing furniture to keep myself from collapsing onto the floor.

Every day at 2am, I was jolted awake from sleep. It didn’t matter how late I slept; I was awake at 2am and couldn’t go back to sleep anymore. For me, those morning hours were the most difficult part of the day. I was the only one up; I couldn’t talk to anyone. That early unbroken silence made everything seem darker.

As my depression progressed, I became highly reactive, in an increasingly paralyzing way. I felt dread whenever there were sudden sounds like the ringing of my cellphone, objects falling, cats fighting, or just when someone called out my name.

I didn’t like having visitors no matter how well-meaning they were. I did my best to be gracious when we had guests, but my heart palpitated so much more during those times and my fingers and feet felt weaker.

I especially didn’t like it when I had to retell the events leading to my depression. A fresh, exposed wound being sliced and re-sliced is how I felt every time I had to discuss our story.

HOW I GOT INTO THE DEPRESSION PIT

By 2007 my husband had been an overseas worker for 7 years. In September of that year, we bought a bakery franchise and put up our bakery. We used up all our savings and even borrowed for more capital.

We were very hopeful and had no reason to doubt that our biggest venture would be a success. However, being a franchise bakery, we were bound to use the premixes sold by our franchisor. After just one month of operation, the premixes resulted in very poor breads and this had gone on for weeks and brought down our sales. After only 3 months in business, we fell heavily in debt and became unable to pay our staff, our rent and utilities.

To stop the financial bleeding, I closed the bakery and transferred the equipment from the bakery site to our rented house.

In just a few months we went from being optimistic of the future by having a business of our own, to having nothing in our bank account, and neck-deep in financial debt. We were totally in the red!

One night in January of 2008, after dismissing the last of our bakery staff, and padlocked the bakery, driving home, I could feel the sound of my heart pounding in my chest. My breathing was heavy and frequent, and I couldn't seem to have enough air. Then my hands started to shake while I gripped the stirring wheel. My knees lost their strength and felt like jelly. By God's grace alone, I made it home safely. But that night was the start of my 3-year journey through hell on earth.

Two years into my depression, I was approached by a friend. She was struggling with depression for more than 5 years. She encouraged me to set an appointment with her psychiatrist. She also insisted that I start taking anti-depressants. For both of her suggestions I gave a very tight NO. I told her we couldn’t afford it. We didn’t have money to spare for therapy nor for any expensive anti-depressant medications.

A year after her visit, I was healed from depression. A year after my healing, my friend committed suicide. It broke my heart that I failed to relay to her the tools I used to free myself from depression. There is not a day since that I don’t wonder how the tools I used for my own healing could have led to hers as well.

Those tools are in this book, for you.

WHO IS ROSE MANALO?

Right beside my name, as the author of this book, you did not see any Ph.D. or M.D. to indicate an expertise in any of those fields. It is because I am not. I am simply Rose Manalo and all I can offer in the following pages is the truth and my utmost honesty and sincerity as I penned about my journey into and out of depression. Next to my depression which lasted for 3 years, the past 18 months had been the hardest period of my life as I exercised due diligence in my search for the worthiest materials to prove (or disprove) the principles behind my healing from depression. I did so, initially for my own eyes, and now for you and others who could be helped by this truth.

Until we see the truth - accept it and use it - all our efforts to heal from depression will remain misguided. It will never reach the target. We will not get well. We will stay depressed.

But even before we are able to see truth, we must first be willing to consider that what we have been seeing all these years is not the truth. And what will help us to consider, or reconsider? The fastest way is to take stock of the results. How come none of what we’ve been faithfully doing has offered any real and lasting healing from depression? How come we’re still sick? How come we’re still depressed? Shouldn’t these disappointments be enough to, at the very least, make us skeptical?

For how much longer should we suffer before we become willing to consider another path?

TOOLS THAT WORK

There are three reasons that we have been repeatedly given as the top causes of depression: genes, too much stress and chemical imbalance. Expensive interventions were formulated based on these assumptions. If these treatments were truly founded on sound science, how is it that we now see the steepest ever rise in suicide? And the same fast increase in various