It's Okay to Cry

By Bronte Spicer

If you're experiencing depression and feel exhausted from living a never-ending cycle of talk therapy, medication and shuffling from one psychologist to the next, this book is for you. When you feel like you've "tried everything",

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bronte Spicer
• Release date: Oct 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645267822

Book preview

It’s Okay to Cry: The Gentle Way to Dissolving Depression

© Bronte Spicer, 2021

www.brontespicer.com

Let me be clear. I’m not a doctor, psychologist, counsellor, or psychiatrist. I’m a woman who dissolved a twenty-year bout of depression. I am a mother of three gorgeous children, and wife to a beautiful man. I am a teacher, author, mindfulness mentor, sacred space holder, intuitive guide and retreat alchemist. As a Certified Kiloby Inquiries Facilitator, I teach others how to befriend their thoughts and feel their feelings using a set of advanced mindfulness techniques called the Kiloby Inquiries.

The information in this book is for educational purposes only and is not intended in any way to be a replacement for, or substitute to qualified medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, or as a replacement for, or substitute to psychological advice, diagnosis or treatment, or therapy from a fully-qualified person.

Should you have medical concerns, please seek independent advice. As you read my story and learn the techniques I used to dissolve my depression, should it raise any concerns for you, please seek advice from a mental health professional or call Lifeline on 131114.

If you think you are suffering from a medical or psychological condition, consult your doctor or other appropriately qualified professional or service immediately.

I am a Kiloby Inquiries Facilitator and not a physician, mental health or addictions counselor. I do not give advice about how to live one’s life. I do not employ psychological techniques to improve one’s thinking, personal story or belief systems. What I aim to do is assist people in seeing through their identity, not constructing or changing it, as mental health counselors or therapists do.

This book is a memoir and guidebook. It reflects my recollections of experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been recreated. As the author and publisher, I hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information contained in this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. All permission requests are to be directed to the publisher using the address below.

978-0-6452678-2-2

Book cover design: Ellie Schroeder

Light code art: Debbie Hall

Printed on demand and distributed by IngramSpark

Published by Bronte Spicer

[e-mail]

Acknowledgement

Of Country

I want to acknowledge, thank, and hold my love for the Dja Dja Wurrung speaking people of the Kulin Nation for tending to, loving, and caring for this sacred land on which I write. I acknowledge and thank all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders for being the most devoted, connected and dedicated caretakers of this land we call Australia. I offer my deepest condolences to the traditional custodians of this land for the raping of Aboriginal women, separation of families, stolen children, murders, massacres of whole communities, obliteration of sacred sites and atrocious disruptions to the delicate nature of the land since the European settlement in 1788. I trust that as we come together and listen, we can find a new way and live in harmony. With an open heart, I express my deep love for our Earth mother herself. For offering the most abundant medicine, magic and beauty. Thank you for gifting us with your raw elements for us to be nourished, thriving, clear and connected and for holding the space for us to know ourselves as free, peaceful and incredible human beings.

Captivating and relatable. It left me wanting more.

K. Reavley

Vulnerable and powerful.

D. Gale

This is the book the world needs right now.

S. Hardy

" I wonder how my life may have been different if I had read

this book as a young woman."

A. Goodfellow

For Jackson, Ivy, and Maggie, may all of your dreams come true.

For Mum, who did everything for me when I thought I couldn’t do anything.

For Elizabeth, in loving memory of your daughter Holly.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One Deep Rest

Chapter Two Deficiency

Chapter Three Triggers and Trauma

Chapter Four What We Resist Persists

Chapter Five Befriending The Mind

Chapter Six Body Intelligence

Chapter Seven Clearing The Roots

Chapter Eight Holding Space

Chapter Nine Dreaming a New Dream

Chapter Ten Integration

Foreword

When we were growing up, neither our parents nor anyone else in the world explained or demonstrated to us how to truly feel our feelings. We can’t really blame our parents for this any more than we can blame their parents or their parents. We’ve all been doing it, all humans, apparently since at least the dawn of language... and probably before.

We do learn how to think about, analyse or label our emotions. Most of us were involved in an education system that was very focused on teaching us a label or a name for everything in the world, including for every emotion that we might experience. At first glance, this learning of language for emotions may seem like the answer to our emotions. We presume, if we can think about, talk about and even understand what we’re feeling, surely we can bring about a better feeling or let go of negative feelings. What we come to learn in life as we grow up is something else entirely. Most of us learn that thinking about, analyzing and labeling our feelings really isn’t the answer. That may help us at certain moments, just to take the edge off of things, but most of the time when we’re analyzing or thinking about our feelings, we are actually making them worse.

When we’re thinking about analyzing or labeling our emotions, our focus is in the mind in our thoughts. When our focus is in our mind almost exclusively, we don’t have any attention in our inner body. And yet, our inner body is exactly where we feel all emotions. As Bronte mentions in her book, even if we get to therapy, therapy is quite often focused on encouraging us to talk about our feelings. Anywhere and everywhere we look in the world, we find the same message; feelings are meant to be thought about, not felt. And yet we all know that at a very common sense level, that doesn’t make any sense.

We know this but because we are conditioned so strongly to be in our heads about our feelings, this wisdom within us gets buried. When we are not directly feeling our feelings and instead thinking about, labeling or analyzing them, a whole host of issues can occur as a result. One of those issues is depression.

Bronte Spicer does an exceptional job of speaking about depression in a way that anyone could relate to. In this book, Bronte gives you her experience. She’s not just telling you about her pain. She’s giving very direct instructions on how to dissolve depression, the gentle way, as she says.

When I first started putting this work out into the world fifteen years ago, I had no idea how many thousands of lives would be touched by it. And not just touched by it, healed by it. The Kiloby Inquiries are bringing astonishing results to our clients at The Kiloby Center for Recovery and all around the world. The Kiloby Center is the first substance abuse treatment center in the U.S. to focus primarily on mindfulness. Independent research showed of the 76% of clients who reported trauma when they arrived, only 12% reported those symptoms when they left, 70% of clients arrived at the centre with anxiety symptoms and 3% reported those symptoms when they left and 73% of clients reported depression when they arrived while 9% reported those symptoms when they left.

The work that I do in the world is the same work that Bronte Spicer does in the world. She is an amazing certified facilitator of the Kiloby Inquiries which were co-developed by Dan McLintock and I. I sit in this wonderful position of training people in this work and then watching them blossom, watching them literally transform the world one person at a time or even one child at a time.

You may have read other books about depression. I can guarantee you’ve never read a book like this - that is so honest, so straightforward and so simple. In fact, the answer to depression has been right under our nose the whole time. Or more specifically right down in our stomach and chest. But we’ve been so busy up in our heads that we’ve lost touch with this simple, basic fact and therefore we’ve lost touch with true healing.

In fact, tons of books, millions and millions of pages of intellectual and clinical language have been written about the subject of depression. I work in the clinical field. I see it every day. Even the topic of depression has gone to our heads. In other words, we train clinicians to know a lot of information about depression, to understand all the signs and symptoms, and to even be able to diagnose depression in many cases and or prescribe treatment or medication. But in the rush, to use all those fancy words to describe the depression, something vital is missed.

In fact, something is missing in the entire mental health model throughout the whole world, as far as I can tell. This missing piece is so simple that, of course, it would be easy to miss and we have missed it every time throughout history by going back into our minds to think about our feelings, our mental health issues, and to just stay in the analysis of it, stay in the story of it. The one missing piece is to come down and to feel that from awareness directly.

I remember first hearing Bronte’s name in my facilitator program. Someone told me a story of a woman from Australia who had been depressed for many years and who had tried so many different things. And she found that the simple act of coming down and feeling her feelings directly through these inquiries changed her life. I was eager just to learn more about this woman. Once she was certified, I noticed her all over social media, so much energy, so much enthusiasm and inspiration around the topic of depression. I’ve been doing this long enough, training people in mindfulness-based work to know when someone truly experiences transformation.

Frankly, those who have been transformed the most by my work aren’t the kind of people that would just come back to me and try to convince me that they’re transformed. No, they have bigger fish to fry. Their transformation is so life changing that they feel called to take this work to the world, and that’s exactly what Bronte has done. Not only has she brought this to her native country and to the world, but she’s brought this material to you in a simple, digestible form.

This book could help millions of people. It’s that direct and instructive. When I read Bronte’s book, I felt like I was learning new information. That’s how incredibly concise and clear this book is on dissolving depression. Of course, I know all of these concepts; these are not new concepts to me. But they are delivered by Bronte in such a fresh manner that I’m intrigued. It’s as if I’m learning about it for the first time. I can just imagine how much you, the reader, will get from this book, if I got this much from it as a co-developer.

I invite you to take this book very seriously in your life. If you’ve been struggling for years or even decades with depression or similar issues like trauma or anxiety, this book could be the key that you’ve been missing. Bronte delivers the concepts in our work in such a straightforward way, they’re easy to understand in the way that she has laid them out for you in this book. I also invite you to read this book slowly. In other words, read a paragraph or two and sit back, rest in your chair or lie in bed and truly soak in the words and what they’re pointing to.

This is a book of transformation. With a new book, with a book of true transformation in your hands, you want to take your time with that, marinate in it, glean from the words how to relate to your own experience in a way that is truly transformative, that moves you out of your stuck points, helps you let go of the stories in your mind that have been haunting or even torturing you emotionally for years.

I’ve reviewed quite a few books through the years, many of which were written by facilitators that I certified in my own mindfulness programs. This is certainly one of the best. I’m always inspired by enthusiasm that I feel coming from the pages of a book, coming literally from the being of the author. That is always inspiring to feel that enthusiasm. But enthusiasm isn’t enough for me and it shouldn’t be for you. What we need now here on Earth is true transformation. It’s not enough to give motivational talks anymore about mental health or any other issue, we have to go deeper than that. We even have to go deeper than talk therapy or talking about our feelings.

Now it’s time to feel our feelings. And Bronte is giving you the key to that in this book. Let me clue you in on a little known secret; many people already believe that they are feeling their feelings, but they aren’t. They’re thinking about them. As I said earlier, the transformation in this book comes from understanding and experiencing what it’s like to actually feel an emotion directly. That is what makes this book so transformative.

It’s not as simple, though, as just come down and feel sometimes. Inquiry is needed in order to allow the mind to come to rest enough so that you can bring attention to the body. Bronte describes that process of inquiry very clearly so that you can literally learn it from just reading the book. You could also work with Bronte in a one-on-one session, and I would highly suggest that. But this book in and of itself could change your life.

Bronte says in the book that it took her multiple years to even learn how to safely feel her feelings. It is not a coincidence that she experienced depression throughout some or all of those years. That’s exactly what I see in my clinical work and in my sessions with people all over the world. Not knowing how to feel our feelings directly can result in a whole host of mental health issues, and according to modern science, some physical health issues. But as Bronte says in this book, you don’t have to wait as long as she did. In fact, you don’t have to wait any longer at all, you now have this book. There’s a particular passage in Bronte’s book which reads as follows;

When we lose the need for the sensation to leave, we welcome, love and accept ourselves just as we are, including the sensations. The sensations are a part of us. When we allow the sensations to be in the body, we can feel safe in our skin. There is nothing from which to escape. They are just sensations. They are feelings; things you can feel in the body. When we welcome them, there is no problem.

This is just one of the many examples of simple, concise, straightforward wisdom in this book. The great thing is, these bits of wisdom are not just written about. Bronte gives you specific instructions on how to love and accept yourself just as you are, including the sensations that are uncomfortable.

I was