How do you Take that First Positive Step out of Depression

QUESTION: How did you start to get a handle on your depression? 

ANSWER: First, I decided that I would take charge of myself and  DO SOMETHING! To help myself.

Second, I began to educate myself with that goal in mind. I went back to graduate school. That is not so necessary today because there are many excellent books available with alternative therapies.

Third, once I had the intellectual understanding of what needed to be done, I started in small ways to change. It usually is better to do something small in the beginning. Even full-blown bipolar began with small, unwilled, rote reactions to difficult situations (like not getting out of bed when we “didn’t feel like it”) that built destructive habit patterns over time. Small intentional reactions to difficult incidents (like insisting we will get out of bed to the count of three) can extinguish negative habits over time by replacing them with new and more productive ones.

Maybe we don’t have enough energy to clean our whole house, but perhaps we could make our bed or clear off the table.  The reason is that we probably won't feel like doing anything at all, so if we choose something small to do, we won't have such a big feeling about it that we will have to overcome. It takes a great deal of positive energy to reverse a negative direction in which we have been headed for some time. We can more easily step out over a small feeling than a big one. Any time we want, we can call ourselves a beginner and begin.

Learn to Choose Something other than Depression to Think About

I’m afraid that one of the problem with the burgeoning diagnoses of depression we have been witnessing is that doctors are not observing depression itself but depression exposed to their stereotypical questions. Instead of the nature of depression determining the measurements they are taking, the measurements they are taking are determining, for the researchers, the nature of depression.

In a way this is not so different from physics. The difference is that the physicist takes this into consideration and call their ideas theories. Psychiatrists cannot call their ideas theories because they cannot prescribe a medicine to treat a theory. They can only prescribe a medicine to treat an illness. What this means is that as far as depression is concerned, the doctors are treating a structure without knowing what it is the structure of. This is the reason the pills ultimately don't work.

Thousands of people take their depression into hospitals such as Kaiser Permanente to be “cured. In Kaiser, for instance, they are given a brochure that states flatly: “No one knows exactly what happens in the brain to cause depression, but brain chemicals called neurotransmitters are probably involved.” And then the patients are given chemicals to alter the balance of these neurotransmitters. 

Truth escapes us when we look to find only what our own study is already set up to see. The study of depression is based on a causal relationship between brain chemistry and depression. There is other research that shows a causal relationship between behavior and brain chemistry. Why is this being swept aside as incidental? Because generally speaking, you can’t prescribe medicine for a person’s behavior. Behavior is a matter of choice and to deprive a person from being able to make a choice about his own behavior makes someone very low functioning.

            I did not choose depression. Depression happened to me because of my lack of choosing behavior and thinking that was more cheerful and productive. When you are depressed, it is not easy to choose thoughts other than the thought “I am depressed.” But ultimately it is the only thing that really works to get you out of it.

How to do I Get to "the Here and Now?"

Dear AB Curtiss

How do you generate the “here and now” when you don’t even know the next step to take?

A.

Dear A.

We are never in the “here and now” when we are depressed or consumed with anxious worry. The way to “here and now” (present reality) is to be found when we turn our thoughts away from our subjective focus on how bad we feel and look for something more objective.

One of the greatest gifts to us fragile mortals, for which we seldom think to be grateful, is the fact that there is always some “next task” to do. We don’t have to look far to find it: some picture to be straightened on the wall, some clutter to be picked up in the corner of the room, a bed to be made. 

Therefore there is always some “next step” take.  And once you earnestly attend to the first task, the second task will become even more readily apparent.

It is this new objective direction of thinking that will cause the brain to pause in its unrelenting subjective focus on our pain and for a moment take another neural fork off to the side of the painful neural pattern of thought. That is because the brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought and in doing the next task we are starting to concentrate on more objective thinking. And repetitive thinking of a thought makes it dominant. 

We just have to insist on the new objective thought direction we are taking and not get sucked back into subjective thoughts about our pain. Every time we get sucked back into the pain, we have to renew our concentration on the next task at hand which will always present itself. Insist, insist, insist and the newer objective thinking can prevail. A. B. Curtiss

We are Studying your Book in our Abnormal Psych class

Dear A. B. Curtiss

We are studying your book, DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE, in my abnormal psych class. The professor told us that we could email you questions. I have two questions

QUESTION 1:

You say all depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain. What is the chemical imbalance you refer to?

ANSWER:

If you are depressed, ipso facto, you have a chemical imbalance in your brain. Depression is the by-product of our human psychological defense system. Our defense system is activated by fearful or anxious thoughts, of which you may or may not be aware, that trigger the fight-or-flight response.

The chemical imbalance of depression is caused by the inadvertent triggering of the fight-or-flight response which dumps stress chemicals into our brain; chemicals like adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine, etc. to biochemically prepare us for immediate action. If we take immediate physical
action, the stress chemical imbalance is righted and we return from the stress mode (sympathic mode) to the at rest mode (para-sympathetic mode).

But if physical action is not taken, these chemicals are extremely hard on the metabolic processes of the body. They cause the feelings of weakness and powerless that we know as depression. Of course once these neural patterns of weakness and powerless are part of our memory system, they can take on a life of their own and be triggered by a color, a sound, or some thought fragment through the natural process of learned association. If we entertain and focus on these neural patterns (in effect memories which we incorrectly believe to be present reality), we trigger the fight-or-flight response once more and the stress chemical factory is back in business again. Instant re-run.


QUESTION 2: What is the correct amount of chemicals you are striving for?

ANSWER:

I am striving for the correct balance of chemicals which return us from the stress mode (the sympathetic mode) to the para-sympathetic mode, our natural mode of okayness. The way to effect this return as an act of will is to brainswitch--to cease focusing on the agitated feelings of the subcortex , and instead think neutral or nonsense thoughts that stimulate neural activity in the neocortex. Thus powering up neuronal activity in the neocortex and powering down neuronal activity in the subcortex. If a person concentrates on thinking neutral or nonsense thoughts for five or ten minutes, they cannot at the same time continue to think those stressful thoughts that have been causing the fight-or-flight response to trigger which produce the stress chemicals that have pitched them into the sympathetic mode. As they continue with cognitive, objective, and neutral thoughts, they cease to produce stress chemicals, and the body will naturally return to the para-sympathetic mode.

It is a matter of constantly taking the correct fork in the thinking road instant by instant as soon as depression hits. Avoid the subjective, choose the objective. (Not: Oh I'm feeling bad, but isn't that an interesting pattern of light on the wall. Avoid the emotional, choose the neutral or nonsense (Not: Oh I'm feeling bad but “Row, row, row your boat” or some othedumb nursery rhyme or song.) Avoid the downer thought and choose the upper. (Not: Oh what a dreary morning, but hey, at least the house isn't on fire, how great is that!) Avoid self-focus, choose outer-focus (Not: I'm feeling bad but send some healing prayer to another person.) Avoid disengagement, choose re-engagement (don't crawl under the covers, get out and take a walk, talk to the paperboy.)

I get dizzy, shake and full of anxiety

Hi AB Curtiss

The reason that I'm writing you today is because some of my symptoms are very strong like I get dizzy, shake and feel highly anxious. I did some lab test and everything turned out negative. So now I'm thinking should follow up with a doctor psychiatrist, neurologist or somebody because the problem is not that I don’t have any desire to do things. I want to do things but I can't. I wake up in the morning exercise for 30min and get going, but once I get the symptoms, I can't continue. So what do you recommend? E

Dear E,

The natural response of the body to stress chemicals which are caused by triggering the flight or fight response with anxious thinking is: dizziness, head shaking, body shaking, hands sweaty and shaking and more extreme anxiety, all of which shortly to be followed by depression. Just to be sure check out with your general physician or a homeopathic practitioner, not a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are too quick to prescribe pills which seldom work in the long run.

You also might try some anti-stress or brainswitching mind techniques. These will distract you from the anxiety, the symptoms will subside and the brain will move in the direction or more positive and productive thinking. A. B. Curtiss

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I'm Trying to Decide which Depression Book to Read First

Hello A.B. Curtiss

I have suffered with anxiety for many years and with depression for several months.  I have attempted to take many different pharmaceuticals and have had intolerable side effects.  Therefore, I have not been able to increase to a therapeutic dose

. 

 I came across your website by Divine intervention while searching for exercises that would help with anxiety.  I have learned so much from your website.  It is truly amazing!  I would like to read both
your books and learn how to manage my anxiety and depression.  I am feeling extremely overwhelmed at this time and don't know which one to start with. I would like to ask you which book I should start with.  How are the books similar and how do they differ?  I would like to begin with the one that offers the tools I need to begin working on my issues.  Once I am in a better place, I can move onto the other book. I greatly appreciate the valuable information you share on your website and look forward to your response. W

Dear W

The book DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE is my psychological autobiography—how I got out of my bipolar situation of several decades without drugs. It is the philosophy of how you get out of depression. How you must re-situate yourself in the world as a person in charge of your life rather than the victim of it. It is the journey I took, how I educated myself as a manic depressive (that’s what they called it when I was first diagnosed) and as I educated myself how my thinking and behavior changed and I was able to get out of depression any time it came upon me.

The book BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESION is the neuroscience of how you get out of
depression. It is more of a user-friendly self-help book with the exercises and the theory I devised to help myself make my own journey back to sanity, and, in a way, is a kind of synthesis
of the first book. I would read the Brainswitch book first and then the other book. I will be glad to answer any questions you have as you go on your journey. A. B. Curtiss

Our Brain is Our Obedient Servant

Hello!

I am writing to let you know how inspiring and how lucky I feel to have come across your book, DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE..I am almost at the end of the book, and already everything you write makes perfect sense to me. I am eager to move on to the next one, on brainswitching, and put in practice some of the exercises.

Also, I am not at present dealing with depression really, but more with anxiety and panic, generalized. It is all quite recent, since several months ago after an operation..

At first I didn't know what it was, I thought something physically wrong was going on: palpitations, difficulty breathing, feeling numb and just very scared. After many exams nothing seems to be wrong health-wise. As a woman in my late 30s I should be healthy.

I am currently starting cognitive therapy and I also started reading your book, which is a blessing for me. I know that anxiety and panic can easily lead to depression, but fortunately, I think I started to address the problem early so I hope I can manage the problem before I can find myself depressed. I was wondering if you have specific exercises or advices for managing panic and anxiety. What really bothers me is that I can't stop thinking about my health, I worry all the time even though my exams are perfectly ok. Have I developed some! kind of hypochondriac psychosis?
Also I have never worried about my health before and so this is the more overwhelming. .

Thank you in advance for you answer and thank you for your books and insight
R

Dear R

Our brain is our obedient servant. The reason you can’t stop thinking about your health is that you keep choosing that same thought over and over again. It is human nature for nameless worry, old repressed fears and daily stress to build up, trigger the stress chemicals to start coursing through our body, and in order to feel better we choose something to blame it all on. If it weren’t for THAT, we could get on with our lives.

If we would just stick with the little stuff, maybe we could fix something. But most of us roll it all up into one BIG PROBLEM which is unfixable and it kind of gets us off the hook of actually doing something about moving ahead with our day-to-day lives. I think what might help you right now is meditation. Even if you only have 5 minutes a day to spend. Find a quiet spot where you won’t be interrupted, close your eyes, let your body relax, especially make sure your shoulders drop down and your tongue relaxes and just be a witness to all that’s going on in your body and mind. As an objective observer. As if you are just an onlooker with no urgent interest. Just notice the thought, don’t choose it over and over and rethink it. Or if that is going on, just be a witness to your choosing. If there is anxiety somewhere in your body, just notice it as if it doesn’t really matter that it is there. Just notice that it is there within a framework of total acceptance as if you were a stranger that was just curious, accepting, but not terribly involved.

If you go to my website www.abcurtiss.com you will find some exercises, and you might find some helpful things in my blog. Hope this helps. A. B. Curtiss

Dear AB

,

Thank you so much for your answer! I will try with mindful meditation and read your BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION book for more exercises! I know our minds are very powerful both ways, good or bad, and I say to myself if I can make myself feel this anxious I can also make myself feel very good also, as you say, it is a matter of choice. 

I will let you know abouy my progress,

thanks again!

R

Dear R,

Sounds like you are coming from a solid place. Keep up the good work and keep in touch. A. B Curtiss