I'm Trying So Many Things but Am Discouraged

Dear A.B.

Again, thank you for individually replying to me. I continue to incorporate much Pilates to my exercise program which I started ages ago. Yes, it has helped a lot with my back pain. I cut out dairy and gluten long ago also. I took a supplement, tremadone that is supposed to help but not sure it does. Also recent improvement with probiotics and citracel which I used before.

All not sure if helping, but I keep trying anyway. This morning my mantra was "you are blessed by god, you need not be afraid" for I am afraid of every move I make whether it is the right wrong. My history involves a lot of the same things but I have not been able to put my faith in Chinese medicine or supplements either.

 Food is a big thing but because of trying so much on that score I've become afraid of eating. I know you are trying to help me with all your suggestions but in truth it just adds to my confusion of right and wrong to do. What I take from all this is there are people trying to help people but we are all like the blind leading the blind. R

Dear R,

Yes, nobody knows "the answer." We all try to help each other based on what has worked for us. Sometimes some small thing will click, and make a difference.Seems like you are going in the right direction. Have faith in the way you have taken authority over your life. A. B Curtiss

There is Only One Pain Caused by Fear but Many Different things that Cause it to Trigger

Dear R,

I didn't hear from you after my last email so I thought maybe I hadn't focused my answer enough that I posted just previous to this post. Maybe I had broadened the answer too much. So I have tried to refocus my answer to your question by making a more direct comparison between the two kinds of pain, the pain of depression and the pain caused by regular fear of something in current reality.There is only one fear, one flight-or-or fight response that triggers. The difference in our approach to handling that one fear and the pain it causes is altered by the situation in which it occurs

YOUR QUESTION

"The way we dissociate ourselves from our painful feelings is by switching to thinking about something else rather than what is happening in our present reality. But dissociating from painful feelings isn’t escaping from painful feelings. These repressed feelings hang around and drag us down in many ways, including depression."

What is brain switching but dissociating from our painful feelings?  Depression causes physical pain in current time.

MY ANSWER

When you dissociate from the pain of depression you are dissociating from a chronic neural pattern that triggers automatically whether there is something in current reality to be legitimately afraid of or not; you are not dissociating from the pain of regular fear caused by something in the current day that has frightened you. And by dissociating from these reality-based fears (we are not considering here whether or not you should be afraid of speaking in public or social snubs) the fear is repressed and you suffer the fear anyway as you become less sure of yourself and avoid situations in the future similar to the one where you first experienced fear.

You then start projecting the original fear on other things. A child who is not coached through his perfectly normal fear of going to his first birthday party (there is always some fear associated with our doing anything new and different and should be accepted as part of life) may spend his whole life avoiding parties. Someone's fear might have stemmed at first from a social snub. Then, not dealing with this fear, accepting it and letting it finish, that person might become afraid of all social situations. (We call this social anxiety) This can escalate into such a boatload of repressed  and projected fears that some people are afraid to even walk out of their house. We call that agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is quite different from depression but they both stem from fear and the pain caused by fear.

One of your Paragraphs Wiped out my Hope

Dear A. B. Curtiss

"The way we dissociate ourselves from our painful feelings is by switching to thinking about something else rather than what is happening in our present reality. But dissociating from painful feelings isn’t escaping from painful feelings. These repressed feelings hang around and drag us down in many ways, including depression."

What is brain switching but dissociating from our painful feelings?  Depression causes physical pain in current time.

I read your books a while back and just revisited  many of your ideas in an Internet article. After reading through the whole thing and being convinced, I came to the end to have you state the exact opposite in the above paragraph.

Also about foods. All this fear of food is part of our current paranoia and fear-based culture.

You advocate replacing painful thoughts (which create physical pain) with a neutral or nonsense or positive thought pattern to escape depression so how is this different from "dissociating" from our physical and mental pain and thus causing ourselves more depression.

My depression as you state is that nothing will work and with one paragraph you wiped out any hope I had that your method would work either.

From experience I have come to fear psychotropic drugs. I can no longer take them. I keep trying your method, mindfulness meditation, tai chai, positive affirmations and a plethora of self-help stuff trying to find the common thread. Self-help, except 12-step, seems to leave out God or a higher power which in itself scares me. I am constantly suspicious that all this "new age" stuff is just the wicked one saying "you can fix yourself, you don't need God." I'm so tired of looking for answers.

Sent from my iPhone. R.

Dear R,

Thank you so much for your letter. I would never be one to say you can get rid of depression without God. I consider my own reliance on a higher power, call it what you will, to be an ever-present mainstay. There is always help for anyone, believe what they will, who falls on their knees in a state of true supplication and humility and asks for help. To be sure they can add "by the Grace of God and for the good of humanity" to guard against dark powers. People who took courses in Silva Mind Control always included this phrase when they went to "alpha level."

I think I understand your quandary about depression being current reality. Just because you are, at any particular present moment, experiencing the pain being produced in the subcortex as a result of the triggering of the fight-or-flight response which has, in turn, triggered the neural pattern response we call depression, that doesn't mean that depression is present reality (your upon-the-instant interaction with your surround.) Depression masquerades as present reality because it is so painful it immediately gets our full attention. But depression is, in fact, not true present reality. Depression and the pain caused by depression is a state of alarm from which you need to recover as soon as possible. Depression actually blocks out the true reality which is that, (as other people can plainly see) you are reallyperfectly all right and not in any real present danger.

I have found that the quickest way to recover is to use some (already chosen so as to have it at the ready) brainswitch exercise which prevents the present acknowledgment in the neocortex that depression is being produced in the subcortex. Remember that present reality includes our connected with our fellow human being. Depression alienates us from our fellow human beings and the regular workaday world and hurls us into a painful world which we continue to self-create all by our selves. Also remember that the processof pain perception means that all pain is produced in the subcortex but those signals have to go up the brain to be not only received but acknowledged in the neocortex before a human being can feel any pain.

This is important to remember. The fight-or-flight system does not trigger because we are in a dangerous situation. It triggers because we think we are in danger. It is our THOUGHTS that cause our emotions, NOT REALITY. In real estate you need to fully understand three words-- location, location and location. In depression you need to fully understand three words--  perception, perception and perception. We could be in a real life-and-death situation and not realize it, and our fight-or-flight system will not activate. Or, we could be perfectly safe and start feeling anxious, and off it will go!


So it is no surprise that depression can occur in the absence of any reality-based concrete problems. Depression is a psychological “This is the house that Jack built.” This is the anxious thought, that connected with the terrible thought, that sparked up the fearful thought, that branched into two terrible memories, that triggered the fight-or-flight response, that caused the chemical imbalance, that caused the depression.


If you are confident enough to "hang" with the pain of depression in a state of calm acceptance of it, that calm acceptance is neocortical activity and neocortical activity beefs up the neural activity in the neocortex and lesses neural activity in the subcortex. However it is more difficult to "get" how to be in a state of calm acceptance (instead ofthinking "Oh no, not again) than it is to use the help of a small mind exercise that
dissociates you from the acknowledgement that you are experiencing the pain of depression, until, no longer agitated and producing more stress chemicals because you are experiening the pain of stress chemicals already produced, the stress chemicals will dissipate and the depressive neural pattern will calm down and ceased to "jangle." Only then can you be in true present reality, the world and surround you share with other people.

This acceptance of anxiety is extremely difficult but necessary to learn in order to recover from PTSD cause by drug use which has over-sensitised your nerves. This is slightly different from depression. When I was prescribed too much oxycodene I had to learn this. The book, Hope and Help for Your Nerves by Dr. Claire Weekes is invaluable help for this.

Don't give up hope. If you still have a question, please don't hesitate to ask.

A. B. Curtiss

On Being the "Slave to our Emotions"

We’ve all heard the saying that we shouldn’t be “the slave to our emotions.”  And then psychology tells us we must acknowledge our legitimate emotions rather than repress them.That perhaps "letting it all hang out" is better than "stuffing it."

Perhaps the whole bell curve of us lie between the two poles—somewhere between repressing emotions and needing anger management classes.

Emotions are tricky. Do we have them? Or do they have us? In the very necessity to control our anger, can we say that even in that way, even in the way of controlling it, it controls us?

Here are two quotes to consider:

“If it depends on something other than myself whether I become angry or not, I am not the master of my life.” Rudolf Steiner

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."  The Talmud

There is some great truth hovering in the middle of these two quotes and if we can hang out with them a while, some of it will seep into our consciousness. We might want to argue with the first quote that things happen that should make us angry if we are normal people. But I don’t believe anybody could really argue with the second quote if they took the time to consider it fully.

However though you might not be able to argue that there is anything wrong with the quote, or incorrect about it. No quote can be the truth of anything. The only thing that can be the truth of anything is us. We can’t know truth as a object so the only thing we can do with truth is be it. I know I’ve said this often before. And these two quotes are such a good example of what I mean.

Just because we intellectually apprehend some idea doesn’t mean we actually fully experience the truth of it as it pertains to us unless we make an effort to do so. Not to just stop and think about it, though, of course, that is where we must begin. But we must take more time than that. And put more into it than our thinking faculties allow. And perhaps more time than our busy world now allows. We must do what Walt Whitman in his “Song of Myself” suggests: “I loaf and invite my soul.”

And if you loaf and invite your soul to hang out with these two quotes they may be of great service.  For myself, I’ve been reading Rudolf Steiner lately as, as always, I might spend several days on one page. When I decided to commit the above quote of his to memory it took me three days to memorize one sentence. Must be a reason for that.

One thing I have noticed is that since I have committed that little sentence to memory, it pops up when circumstances occur that tend to make me angry--for instance my dog barking in the morning a half hour before I wanted to wake up. When that emotion starts to flair, the sentence occurs to me as well and I look at that instant of my life in a slightly different way. I don't go "heedless into it." I consider myself. I take a wider look.

I Just Read Children of the Gods

Dear A. B.

I just finished your book Children Of The Gods and what a fantastic book it is! I had originally been putting books on eBay to supplement my income and I was about to list this one. I had no idea what it was about but I knew it was a first edition signed by the author. I browsed through it and got hooked. I read it from cover to cover right then and there and now I would never part with it. I intend to read it over and over. I can't believe how beautifully you weaved such eternal truth and knowledge into a very pleasurable narrative. This would be a perfect candidate for an audio version, but I can't find one. Any thoughts to making one?

Sincerely,

E. H.

Dear E. H.

Yes, I thought about doing an audio before but just never got around to it. I didn't sell very many of these books. My book The Little Chapel that stood is my best seller. Brainswitch out of Depression does well. But strangely enough Children of the Gods is now in the hands of an off-broadway producer (who came across the book and loved it) collaborating with a music professor in Capitol Univ in Columbus Ohio to make it into a musical. Who knows?

I got a call at 11pm from  my daughter's tennis coach years ago who said he had the book on his shelf for years (I had given him a copy) and just read it and had to call me to tell me what a profound effect it had on his life. You just never know when you write something where it is going to end up.

Thanks so much for writing. I'll put your letter on my blog.http://mobyjane.blogspot.com. My webmaster said I've received over 50,000 hits and that's good. Not much of a techie myself. Again I really appreciate that you took the time to write.

A. B. Curtiss

I Need the Reassurance that I will Be Happy Again

Ms. Curtiss:

I am ever so grateful to have been able to discover and purchase and read your book, Brainswitch Out of Depression.  It has already helped me redirect my thinking even though I only purchased it less than a week ago.

I was in the midst of a depression when I purchased the book and your techniques are helping me climb out more quickly than I would have on my own.  In fact, I'm sure, without the book I would be sliding further in.

I do remember reading the part about how some people told you your techniques were helping them manage their depression but that they still didn't consider themselves happy.

I have some happy times in the last few years that I hope I will have again but right now I feel like I need reassurance from you, for some reason, that I will attain and maintain the happiness I have felt in the past.

I have a supportive family, husband and group of co-workers; I am taking fish oils and B vitamins daily; I am exercising daily; I am eating well and trying to limit sugar; I am meditating daily (using the Jon Kabat-Zinn program)...so that + the Brainswitching seems like a good plan to stick with.  Being patient is hard and last Thursday night I felt the most hope and inspiration I have felt in a while...and then today not as much; so I find that hard.

Any thoughts, advice or reassurance?

Thank you SO MUCH for writing your book.  I have never understood depression before and now it makes total sense in the way you describe it.

Thanks for all your help thus far. M

Dear M

I haven't had a depression hit for quite a while. Last night, for no reason at all, I felt hopeless, helpless, useless, pointless and the world was not a beautiful place anymore. I thought immediately to myself. Crap, I'd forgotten how horrible this is.

And I got immediately busy doing whatever was my chore at the time. It is an ingrained habit of mine, for a long time now, that I automatically spend no time at all in the ompany of the depressive thought or feeling. I don't fight it by refusing  o think it in an aggressive way. I acknowledge it calmly, not really with a yawn, but with a sense of I've been here before and pardon me I'm not interested. And I recognize my depression when my depression is triggered in the earlies possible stage now. Since I am so used to being completely okay, I immediately notice the downward shift. This time I just said Yuk, and kind of turned away like you might do if you saw a bit of dog poo on your path that you didn't wish to step in.

A thought is basically what most depression is, a thought that you don't have to think. Anxiety, or PTSD caused by drug use (doctor prescribed or street), where you can't get out of the fight-or-flight mode is a little different. It's agonizing whether you think it or not. For this you need serious nutritional supplements to restore your endocrine system.I've had experience with that as well though I haven't written about except on my blog. However, once cured, that seems not to repeat itself. I guess as long as you keep up the nutrition, which I have.

What was always helpful to me, when I used to get depression hits more often, was recognizing that I was not the only one. That millions of people felt just as bad as I did at that very moment and I would pull myself up and get going to help all the others as well as myself. You must immediate reconnect with  "the other," if not physically then at least symbolically. You could say something to yourself like, okay me and you can do this together.

You can also pray to God, if you have that going for you. Even if you don't pray to God to enter your heart, you can even recognize your own heart, your own perfectly okay center by putting your hand on your heart and bringing you awareness out of your thinking to just being there with your own heart. It is very calming. Try it right now. Just
put your hand on your heart, close your eyes.

If you really concentrate on doing that and relax into it you will find that your whole body bends forward and relaxes and you sense new connection with life, with everything.. Even with another person over the Internet showing you how you are already, deep inside, okay..

About happiness. Striving for happiness is putting your psychological system under undue stress. Happiness isn't something you can strive for. Happiness is your okay self being freed from your anxiety to get happy.. Happiness is a feeling, it is getting something you want. It is not essential like your essential okayness that, now and then, in its calm acceptance of "what is" is the very center of love itself. You don't want happiness if you really examined it. What you want is to be able to connect to life in a loving way. To see life as beautiful again. You, yourself are made of the very love you
seek. But it is covered over by your anxiety that you don't have it.

I would suggest you also read my book Depression is a Choice. You can often get that
for a dollar or two on amazon. And meantime I will always answer any specific question you have. And I do not charge for that.

The difference between me and other people just starting to steer themselves out of depression is that I don't get upset or alarmed if it hits me. Anymore than I would get upset at some dog poo in my path. It's there, okay, walk around it don't rail at it and ask why it's there and think about it and wish it wasn't there. All of this attention just makes it stronger and stinky, you end up trying to stomp on it and you get it all over your shoe.

A. B. Curtiss

Unlikely Meditation on a TV Show

I watch a TV program called “Person of Interest.” I never thought it to be particularly profound until an episode recently woke me up to a quite remarkable spiritual insight. What a surprise! The theme of the series is that the government has a spy machine that “listens in” on everybody every moment of the day. It was invented to warn of possible terrorist acts.

But it also kicks out the names of those due to be involved in some kind of danger of imminent demise due to some impending act of violence, either as perpetrator or victim. The government considers these people irrelevant but the inventor of the machine and his ex-assassin cohort have decided to come to the aid of those whose “number comes up.”

 In this particular episode, the hero assassin tracks down the new number, a doctor, and attends the ceremony where the scientist is awarded a high honor. The doctor suddenly collapses, poisoned by the celebratory glass of wine he drank. The hero was able to revive the doctor with an antidote and together they track down the killer during the ensuing hour. However, it turns out the poison has been in his system too long and the hero suddenly realizes, at the close of the show, that the doctor had now only minutes more to live.

 The hero sat with the scientist to keep him company as he was dying, and apologized for not being in time to save his life. “That’s okay,” said the doctor, patting the hero’s arm affectionately. “Thanks for giving me ‘another shot.’” Puzzled, the hero looked quizzically at the scientist, thinking that maybe he didn’t fully realize he was actually dying. “Another shot?” Smiling, the doctor pointed to the sky, waved his hand to frame the beauty of the last sunset he would ever enjoy, as he repeated, “another shot.” I have thought about that moment of insight ever since.

It has become a sort of gratitude meditation throughout my day. Every once in a while I’ll notice some lovely cloud formation, some happy scene of neighborliness, some bright blue flower on my way to the mailbox—any small piece of life around me. With renewed awareness, I take the time to really see it. I take the time to experience it fully, to be there with all of me all the way to savor the pure joy of it. “Wow,” I’ll recognize this great gift of Creation of which I am privileged to be a small part, now firmly re-connected. “Thanks for giving me another shot.”

 Isn’t that all we have anyway? Perhaps we needn’t focus on decrying our dwindling years, our decline brought about by age or illness. We don’t have life by the year, or by the decade anyway, do we? All we ever really have is “another shot.” So if any of you out there happen to know the source of this singular line, please tell the writer for me how grateful I am to have heard it. Tell him I said “Thanks for giving me ‘another shot.’”