The Belief That Makes Support Feel Wrong

We were at the St. Regis in Punta Mida. Family vacation. The kind of place where every corner looks like a postcard.

I was walking on the beach and kept thinking: I know, objectively, this is a joyful, relaxing, amazing, privileged experience.

But I couldn't actually access the feeling of joy.

There was a ceiling. Like standing outside a warm room, able to see through the window, completely unable to get in.

I'd been doing more personal and spiritual growth work for the last decade than most people do in many lifetimes. Fifteen years of inner work. Medicine journeys. Retreats. Coaching hundreds of founders through their own emotional terrain.

And yet, I was standing on one of the most beautiful beaches I'd ever seen, totally unable to feel it.

What I didn't realize yet was that it wasn't the depression keeping me stuck. It was a subtle belief I was carrying, one that was making it impossible to actually receive the support I needed

The Theory I Was Testing

I've struggled with depression for most of my life. Through years of inner work and medicine journeys, it's gotten much lighter. More like periodic mood dips than full-on depression. But every few weeks, I'd still go gray.

I resisted medication my whole adult life.

Part of it was fear. I'm a coach. I help founders with their well-being and inner lives. What would people think if they found out I was taking antidepressants? Doesn't that mean the inner work isn't working? If I need meds, how good can I actually be as a coach?

My wife cut through it simply: "If your liver wasn't functioning properly, you would clearly take medicine. Why wouldn't you take medicine for your brain?"

I eventually listened. Went on a very light dose of Effexor. It worked. The dips stopped.

Then I did Joe Hudson's Groundbreakers, a retreat centered entirely on welcoming your feelings, and came out feeling genuinely great. So I developed a theory: if I just do a better job of welcoming the sadness, maybe I don't need the drugs anymore. Just commit more fully to the inner work.

So I went off. For six months.

And then came Punta Mida. The beautiful beach. The ceiling.

The theory had failed.

Two Paths, Not One

A few months later, I was talking with a coach I deeply respect. I told him the amount of personal and spiritual growth I've done and how I still had these mood dips.

He said something I've been sitting with since.

"From my experience, once it becomes a biochemical loop, the only way to actually shift the pattern is through a biochemical intervention."

That landed. And it reminded me of something Ram Dass once said:

"Even after many years of psychoanalysis, after teaching psychology, working as a therapist, after taking drugs for many years, being in India, being a yogi, having a guru, meditating for eighteen or nineteen years now — as far as I can see I haven't gotten rid of one neurosis. Not one. The only thing that has changed is that while before these neuroses were huge monsters that possessed me, now they're like little Shmoos that I invite over for tea."

In other words, the patterns were still there. What changed was how he held them.

That doesn't mean the spiritual path or inner work can't shift patterns. It absolutely can. But what it does most reliably, and most immediately, is change your relationship to them. And sometimes that relationship shift is what has to move first before anything else can.

But that's not what I'd been asking of it. I wanted the spiritual path to make the depression disappear entirely. I was asking one path to do the work of two.

Why Not Use All the Tools

I still had one more fear underneath all of it.

What if the feelings were here to guide me? What if taking something to shift my brain chemistry meant I was just masking them, anesthetizing myself the way people do with alcohol or distraction?

But sitting with that honestly, something became clear: there's nothing wrong with wanting to shift the patterns themselves if you'd like to have a different experience. And if I was truly committed to my own well-being and to supporting others', the real question was: why not use all the tools?

In that same conversation, the coach had mentioned TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), a non-invasive, drug-free treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate specific regions of the brain. The fact that it was drug-free mattered to me given everything I'd been wrestling with.

Living in Sun Valley, Idaho with no clinics anywhere nearby, daily sessions for six weeks was completely impractical. Stanford had developed a compressed version called the SAINT Protocol: five days instead of six weeks, which was far more manageable. But then I met Don Vaughn of Ampa Health, who had condensed that protocol down to a single day. And one day I could do.

So December 15th, I flew to Provo, Utah and did twenty sessions over nine hours.

TMS takes four to six weeks to kick in. Starting around mid-January, something had shifted. The floor was way higher. I could feel joy and gratitude in a way I hadn't been able to access before, and it's been consistent since.

Not long after, a friend mentioned that Adyashanti takes SSRIs. For those who don't know, Adyashanti is one of the most widely respected spiritual teachers alive. He started taking them to address PTSD. And to those who worried that medication might stand in the way of uncovering their True Nature, he was clear: it's no hindrance. Your True Nature remains completely unobstructed.

If someone that genuinely awake made that choice, the equation I'd been running for years, that needing support means the inner work isn't working, simply doesn't hold.

I felt relieved. Less ashamed. Like I'd been carrying a rule that was never actually true.

The Bigger Question

What kept me from accepting support for so long was making it mean something about me. Taking meds felt like cheating. It felt like proof that the inner work wasn't working. And if people found out, what would that say about me as a coach?

Strip that meaning away, and the support becomes available.

I've shared this with some clients recently, and I think it's given them permission, because a lot of people feel like there's a stigma, or that accepting this kind of support somehow stunts their spiritual path, or that it's cheating. That's why I'm sharing it here.

Because this isn't limited to only mental health. The bigger question is: where in your life would no longer making something mean something about you finally give you permission to let support in?

With love,

Dave Kashen