Can medication heal depression?

I have never used medication to treat my depression. At the beginning of my psychotherapy, my therapist referred me to a psychiatrist who was willing to prescribe antidepressants to me, but for some reason I chose not to. But I think I had some kind of intuition telling me that if I wanted to get at the true source of my depression, medication was not the way to go.

I am not against medication per se, because low serotonin levels in our brains have been associated with depression, and antidepressants have been shown to raise the serotonin level. I also want to stress that I am not advising anyone to stay away from medication, because in severe cases I believe that it can save lives. However, in the long run I think that it prevents you from being able to be cured. I think so because for me it was essential to feel some of my most painful childhood and adolescence events and memories, and medication prevents you from doing exactly that. It contributes to the cover-up, and it helps you further repress childhood trauma.

Like I alluded to in my previous posting, I can say from my experience that this journey into my past was absolutely necessary in the healing process. This was however not just an intellectual understanding of what had happened to me. I had to learn how to communicate and empathize with the child in me that was deeply hurt. This child was "trained" by his abusive parents to always put their needs ahead of his own. This child was never taken seriously or listened to by his parents because they were always caught up with their fights. This child was told by his parents that he is the reason that they can't divorce, and he took all the blame on him. This child constantly comforted his mother because he saw how much she suffered in her marriage, and this child was afraid to loose his mother for his survival dependent on her. This adolescent's father threatened him with suicide if he was going to tell his mother that he had caught his father in one of his many extra-marital affairs. This adolescent comforted his parents during his brother's fight with cancer and after his brother's death, while he was not comforted by anyone. And when this young man finally had the courage to confront his parents with these and many other stories, his parents showed him the cold shoulder, and again only saw their own suffering, and not their son's, who had become a young man. This child, this adolescent, this young man, had never received any empathy from his parents, and he never will. I had to learn to treat him with understanding, empathy, respect. I had to learn to nurture him for he was never nurtured by his biological parents.

My therapist was instrumental in helping me achieve this. At the very beginning of our therapy sessions he suggested that I keep a picture of my child self close to me and that I communicate with this young little boy. I found this suggestion very strange at the beginning, and I only realized much later how important this was for me in my healing process.