The 2 Tools That Actually Helped Me Heal Depression
14 years ago, I lost my brother to severe depression. It made my mental health rapidly decline. I didn’t know what to do or how to deal with it until my body forced me to stop:
In addition to depression, I developed heart problems that doctors couldn’t explain.
It may seem grim, but it was actually the beginning of my healing journey, as it made me realize that if my mind made my body break, it was also the only thing that could fix it.
However, what made me heal was hardly standard advice.
Due to keeping an open mind, I discovered two specific resources:
- A profound mental (dare I say “energy”) healing technique
- Hypnotherapy.
These two methods completely rewired my mind, allowing both my body and mind to finally heal.
In this blog post, I explain what they are and how they helped me heal.
Almost fifteen years ago, I was living a completely different life. I had it made and had the secrets to a happy, successful life figured out.
Or so I thought.
I had a secure corporate banking job, a great salary, and a life full of traveling and partying. It was everything I had ever dreamed of.
But under the surface, I was falling apart. I was 30 pounds overweight, anxious, chronically exhausted, and numbing myself with wine every night.
Worst of all, I wasn’t happy. I thought I had everything I needed to live a happy life, but happiness kept eluding me.
Then, one dark autumn night, the world stopped. I lost my brother to his battle with severe depression.
I had no idea how to deal with any of it. I had never learned to deal with any of my emotions. Instead, I had ignored, repressed, or just tried to numb every emotion I had ever felt, including the positive ones.
So, unable to deal with the grief, I did what I knew best: I repressed it. I worked harder and refused to take a single day off. But while I told everyone I was “fine,” my mind and body were telling a different story.
Many nights I couldn’t sleep, because my heart was racing and skipping beats. I developed an uncomfortable and terrifying heart arrhythmia. My resting pulse skyrocketed to 120 bpm, and I was covered in cold sweats, convinced I would have a heart attack at any moment.
So I checked myself into a hospital. But after a thorough examination, the doctor checked in with the results. Much to my surprise, the doctor said he couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me. He even said my EKG was perfect—like it was taken straight from the pages of an anatomy textbook.
It was a relief, of course, but also deeply puzzling. How could my heart be “perfect” when I was clearly suffering from physical symptoms?
That was the moment I realized my symptoms were psychosomatic:
It was my mind that was messing with my body.
But, I wondered… if my mind could break my body, then my mind was the only thing that could fix it.
A Crucial Note on Healing
Before we discuss the tools, we need to understand a fundamental rule of recovery: Wounds must be healed on the level where they occurred. Human health exists across three distinct, interconnected levels: the Body, the Mind, and the Spirit.
- The Physical Level (The Body): This includes physical tissue, injuries, and genetics. If a wound occurs here, such as a broken bone, a cut, or a structural disease, the fix must happen first at the physical level. You cannot think away a fractured femur; you need a doctor, a cast, and physical medicine.
- The Mental Level (The Mind): This is the domain of beliefs, trauma, and repressed emotions. When a wound occurs here, it often outgrows the mind (like in my case) and manifests as a psychosomatic symptom in the physical body. But because the root cause is in the mind, physical pills will only mask the symptom. The true fix must happen at the mental level.
- The Spiritual Level (The Spirit): This addresses existential meaning, purpose, and connection. When we feel deeply disconnected from our purpose, it can drain our mental resilience and physical energy, requiring a realignment of our core values and beliefs.
My heart arrhythmia was physical, but the hospital confirmed my heart was working just fine. The wound was in my mind, born from unprocessed grief and non-beneficial beliefs. That is why physical medicine wasn’t the answer, and why psychological rewiring was the only thing that worked for me.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. If you are experiencing any symptoms, physical or psychological, always seek professional medical evaluation.
Tool #1: The Healing Codes by Dr. Alexander Loyd
The first turning point didn’t happen in a sterile doctor’s office or a therapist’s couch as one might expect. It actually happened in a crowded nightclub (that was practically my living room back then).
Instead of my usual routine of drinking to numb out with friends, I found myself sitting at a table talking to a woman who possessed an aura of deep empathy. She saw that I was not okay and shared her own story of overcoming severe hardships and finding peace.
When I finally opened up about my brother’s passing and my symptoms, she listened patiently and wrote down the name of a book that had transformed her life.
The next morning, I dug up that note and ordered the book. When it arrived a few days later, I sat down and read it almost in one sitting.
The book turned out to be just what I needed. In it, Dr. Alex explains how negative thoughts, trauma, and repressed emotions often manifest as psychosomatic illness.
The book outlined a very simple, 15-minute, energetic, and psychological exercise designed to clear these “cellular” memories and emotional blockages.
Skeptical (but desperate), I did the exercise that first day.
The next day, I practiced it three times as recommended. I kept going into the third day.
But on the morning of the third day, just two and a half days after starting, I woke up and immediately noticed something strange.
My heart arrhythmia was gone.
My pulse was steady and calm, exactly how it should be. The arrhythmia that medical professionals implied I might have to live with and medicate for the rest of my life had completely vanished.
To this day, over a decade later, those heart problems have never returned.
Note: The book leans towards “spiritual” and probably fits the brackets of “energy healing”, but as you just read, it’s highly effective. I was skeptical, but curious and open-minded enough to give it a try, and I have zero regrets. I encourage you to be open-minded, too, as help can present itself in unexpected ways.
Tool #2: RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy) by Marisa Peer
While my physical symptoms were gone, my psychological issues were far from healed.
At work, I had the skills for a raise, but “bureaucracy” (or something else) always blocked me. I was anxious and irritated most of the time because of this.
In my personal life, I dreamed of a relationship, but I subconsciously sabotaged every romantic connection because I held a deep belief that love brought misery—a belief I’d picked up during my parents’ divorce.
But as luck would have it, I stumbled upon an online course by world-renowned hypnotherapist Marisa Peer.
I took another leap of faith and bought the course (on Mindvalley, by the way, a personal development platform that I can also highly recommend. I’ve bought many courses from Mindvalley over the years and even been a member for a year or so).
In the course, Marisa explained the mind’s ability to adapt based on the thoughts and images we feed it.
So instead of trying to force change using willpower, hypnotherapy allowed me to access my subconscious mind and literally rewrite my core beliefs.
The changes I experienced were nothing short of miraculous:
- Within three months of starting the course, new opportunities emerged. I was headhunted by a different company and offered the exact high salary I had been chasing for years.
- After another three months, I had stopped sabotaging my relationships. I met an amazing woman, let go of my fear of commitment, and moved with her into a beautiful apartment in my favorite part of the city.
If you are struggling with anxiety, depression, or chronic stress, know this: you are not stuck with your current thought patterns. Your mind is capable of changing.
By consciously choosing to work on your unconscious thoughts and beliefs, whether through a tool like The Healing Codes or hypnotherapy, you can actively shape your mental well-being.
You can find all of Marisa Peer’s resources on her website
Why These Tools Worked So Well
Looking back at my recovery, I realized that there was a pattern behind my transformation. The reason The Healing Codes and Marisa Peer’s hypnotherapy worked so well is that they both perfectly target what I call the AAA Framework: Awareness, Acceptance, and Alignment.
These are the three pillars required to heal any mental or emotional wound:
- Awareness: Realizing there is a problem, identifying its root cause, and understanding how your subconscious beliefs are driving your current reality.
- Acceptance: Forgiving yourself, processing the repressed emotions (like grief or fear), and letting go of the old narrative without judgment.
- Alignment: Rewiring your mind, habits, and environment to match the healthy, successful, and happy version of yourself you want to become.
"The All-in-one Healing Package"
Here is how the two tools worked within this framework:
The Healing Codes focused heavily on acceptance. It allowed me to finally confront and accept the heavy grief of losing my brother, rather than running away from it through overwork.
Accepting and forgiving (myself) the loss cleared the blockages in my mind and body, allowing a fresh awareness to arise and natural alignment to take place once the trauma was cleared.
Hypnotherapy is a powerhouse because it works on all three pillars simultaneously. First, it bypasses your conscious “guardrails” to dig into your subconscious mind, bringing hidden causes of your discomfort to your conscious awareness.
Second, it uses deep suggestion and forgiveness to heal those old wounds and delete the “lies” you’ve been telling yourself (acceptance).
Finally, it installs new, empowering beliefs that instantly connect your thoughts and actions with the future you desire (alignment).
That’s what’s needed for healing.
- Awareness of the root of the problem.
- Acceptance of what is so, and forgiveness that you (and others involved), usually involuntarily, mind you, caused the problems to occur.
- Alignment with your desired results.
The Evolution of Healing
When I first started this healing journey 15 years ago, I was just trying to survive. I was desperately grasping for anything that could stop my heart from racing and pull me out of the dark hole of depression. The Healing Codes and Marisa Peer’s hypnotherapy were the heavy hitters that saved me when I needed them most.
But healing isn’t a miraculous single event.
It is a journey of self-discovery.
Over the last decade and a half, I have experimented with countless tools, modalities, and practices.
I have done the heavy lifting of figuring out what works, what falls short, and why.
Through that 15-year “masterclass” (my life seems to be about learning things the hard way) in getting to know my own mind and body, I learned how human transformation actually happens.
That deep understanding is what allowed me to synthesize the best practices into my own frameworks and methods.
I developed the AAA Framework (Awareness, Acceptance, Alignment) find and clear the blockages that prevent us from healing and being happy.
I also created my own method for healing the specific conditions I suffered with for so long: IAM: The Inner Alignment Method.
IAM is designed specifically to target the root causes of anxiety and depression, allowing you to bypass years of trial and error and get straight to the subconscious rewiring that changes your reality.
The Beginning of Your Healing Journey
I created IAM and the AAA framework so you wouldn’t have to spend 15 years wandering in the dark as I did.
I encourage you to try the tools, use the “shortcuts” I’ve built, and to let my story guide your first steps.
But more than that, I want to encourage you to bravely take on your own journey of self-discovery.
You can use the tools in this article and/or my methods as your foundation, but the most important thing is to remain curious.
Find out what works best with your unique mind, body, and spirit totality. Healing is not a one-size-fits-all formula, but a deeply personal journey.
But remember: Even though your healing journey is individual and unique, you don’t have to undertake the journey without tools or help.
Keep an open mind. The tools are ready when you are.
Disclaimer
The entire contents of this blog are based upon the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this blog is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional before trying any of the products or methods based on this content. I cannot guarantee that you will be free of stress, anxiety or depression, or that you will be happy. I simply want to share with you what I have discovered during my twenty years of seeking happiness and what has worked for me may not work for you.
