I get one or two letters every day from people who suffer from depression and have either been helped by my work or are looking to be helped by it. I asked one or two of the letter writers what they thought about posting the letters on my new blog and they encouraged me to do it. I am hoping that others might find them helpful. Here’s the first one:
Dear A.B.
(May I call you that?) I just began reading your book DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE last night. I found it while doing a search on overcoming depression without the use of drugs, and there, your book came into sight. Which I ordered immediately (Amazon) and received yesterday, thus began reading last night.
I am only halfway through the second chapter, “The Myth of Easy,” and am completely challenged by your writing--challenged, in that it makes so much sense, but like Peter stepping out of the boat to walk on the water toward Jesus, it just doesn't seem like it could possibly be real in MY life. I am in my 50s, have been on antidepressants without fail since before I was 30, and wouldn't dream of discontinuing them without some bonafide plan to see me through. I am a Believer and Practicer of the Christian Faith and the teachings of Jesus. And whether you meant to or not, whether you are a fellow-believer or not, much of what you have written (that I've read so far) is in complete agreement with the teachings of renewing the mind.
My diagnosis is "bi-polar disorder II" (hypomania) with the secondary diagnosis of major depressive disorder. I have been diagnosed with "chronic depression) since 1986 or thereabout. Been on many different antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, and even some anti-psychotic meds, though I have never been psychotic. It wasn't until 2 years ago that I was given the diagnosis bipolar II. At which time I was given Lamictal to stabilize my mood.
What do I do now? I am in full agreement with what you teach and what you obviously live out, yourself, every day, and I relate so much to things you say. But how in the world am I going to DO them? This may come further in the book, but I am READY to get going on this! I am married (for 30 years), have adult children who are all married and I have grandchildren. I can't afford to do anything that would jeopardize my mental health. I AM a depressive. It is as if every relationship I involve myself in has to bow down to the mood swings and though I have some awesome coping mechanisms, sometimes to continue to operate without a hitch is EXHAUSTING and ultimately unrewarding to me.
I know you're not a doctor, so I won't ask you about discontinuing my medication; however, I would ask you that should I somewhere down the line decide, on my own, to discontinue taking my meds, do I risk (as my doctor will say to me) another major depressive episode? Wow! I wish you offered an iron-clad money back guarantee! Just kidding. So, just for now, please tell me where do I start? Once I get past the “Myth of Easy!” Thank you, S. P.
Dear S. P.
First of all, about your medication. I do not know anything about drugs, so you should rely on your doctor to monitor any lessening of your medication. There may be withdrawal symptoms of which I am not aware.
As for an iron-clad money back guarantee, I will give you one. I will return the money you paid for your book if you find that learning how to control your own brain and learning how to control your thinking and your behavior does not improve your life and keep depression from being the most important thing in your life.
As to how to get started. First of all NEVER again talk in a weak, sad voice and burden your nearest and dearest with your heavy sighs and complaints about how bad you feel. This is simply habitual behavior over which you have complete control. You don't have immediate control over your feelings but you do have immediate control over your behavior. Resolve to be cheerful and optiminstic no matter how you feel. Feelings always follow behavior. If you want to change the former, change the latter.
If the feelings are so overwhelming, and you are in such pain that you are crawling on the floor and hitting your head up against the wall (as I once did) then do a dumb little mind exercise to break the depressive thinking pattern that is causing all the emotional agony. Just say over and over, a nursery rhyme like row, row, row your boat or hickory, dickory, doc. One 86 year old man completely overcame his chronic depression by saying over and over again higglety-pigglety each time depression came down on him, instead of thinking how bad he felt, and says his life is completely transformed. You can email with any question you have as you read my book.
Have you read the letters on my website? www.depressionisachoice.com --you might find them inspiring as well.
Here is a letter I got the other day which might give you some immediate inspiration.
A. B. Curtiss
THE LETTER
Dear A. B. Curtiss
Thank you for mailing the book, DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE so quickly (my mother ordered it for me) -I received it about ten days ago. Your book is life changing. I found it at our small local library six months into a horrible depression. Despite over twenty years of managing/fighting severe manic depression, I was in an especially dangerous low (financial and marriage pressure followed by a manic episode followed by my wife asking for a divorce). Despite all the different medications I've been on, it has always been up to me to control myself, and it was always a question of pulling myself up by the bootstraps to emerge from my depressions.
But this was my biggest "real life" loss -I love my wife and stepson, and the house I built for us is on the market, and that life I loved so much is gone. Enter your book. With it I was able to put aside the why, as in "why go on?" and just go on. You laid out all the tools for taking control of my thinking and behavior and did it in such an inspiring way. I've read your book three times and have taken lots of notes because I still slip back, or lose perspective, or forget the concepts, or just need to be inspired. I'm so glad to finally have my own copy. You have truly written an amazing book and I was so pleased that you autographed it for me. Yours Truly, M. H..
Dear A. B.
I am thrilled with the website! Thanks so much for your response to my letter! S. P.
Dear S. P.
I'm thinking of putting the letters people send to me (without names of course, for privacy) on my new blog which I have just started so that people can comment and ask questions on line and be of more help to one another than always having to go thru me. What do you think?
Dear A. B.
I am challenged by your idea. I love challenges (they AREN'T E-Z, quite the opposite) and would appreciate the connection. Actually, I have to KNOW that I'm not the only one who would love to have a chance to actually communicate with those in the same trenches battling (and winning) this devastating, exhausting and mis-handled war on depression/bi-polar disorder. Thanks! You've got my vote of confidence. SP
Dear S. P. Thanks.
Dear A. B.
Forgive me for asking such a question, but there is a statement early on in your book that I would love to understand in a clearer manner. Page 2 paragraph #3: "Conditional happiness cannot pass for essential happiness any more than being serially grateful for disparate things can pass for a state of infinite and abiding gratitude."
Serially grateful: meaning being grateful AFTER the fact (right or wrong?)
disparate things: does this mean unfair or random?
I get it in the context--conditional happiness isn't the state of happiness that you imply is actually fundamental to our nature as human beings, any more than just being momentarily grateful for a (disparate)--random or unfair-- occurrence means we are basically and consistently in a grateful frame of mind.
I know this is asking you to be so overly-simplistic, but I really want to know this, grasp it and absorb it. Please forgive me if I sound kind of dense. I'm really not, I just don't want to gloss over a fundamental teaching that may be a step in my healing. S.P.
Dear S. P.
You are right that being "serially grateful" means after the fact. You get something and after you get it, you think it makes you happy. "Disparate" things means "different" things, one thing here, one thing there.
Perhaps I can explain it in another way. I had a chat with a relative who confided to me that another relative was offended with some small act on the part of the first relative that the second relative felt was rude, and not respecting of her feelings. I felt the complaint was uncalled for, and as I further elaborated my opinion to the first relative, I maintained the following:
People mistakenly believe that other people can actually make them happy. They can't. Despite all the Oprah shows to the contrary, people can't even make themselves happy. People can only make themselves miserable. Happiness, perfect essential okayness, is already our basic, core nature. We already have it. But when we are afraid, depressed, discouraged, we are not in touch with our essential happiness. We are only in touch with our upset.
If the upset gets too desperate, we trigger the fight or flight response, dump a bunch of stress chemicals in our brain, and we end up in despair or depression. The correct answer to lack of happiness is to address the repressed fear that covers over our happiness. Most of the repressed fear comes from childhood experiences that are never resolved.
Most people don't make the effort to get in touch with their fear because it is so painful. Most people, instead of addressing their own fear, try to get other people to do those things that they think will make them feel good about themselves, put them good mood, make them happy. Instead of addressing their own fear that covers over their happiness they become very controlling. They try to get things “just so” or get people to behave “just so” in order to make themselves happy on top of all their fear. It never works. Instead of addressing their repressed fear, people attack their nearest and dearest for making them unhappy, for small perceived acts of ungraciousness, for failing to give them what they think they are due in the way of emotional support. You’ll read how to get in touch with your fear in Chapter 10. A. B. Curtiss
Dear A. B.
Thanks for the clarification about conditional happiness as opposed to essential happiness. I got it better than I thought. This principle that you are elaborating on is something I have no idea how people can "get". We deal with people all the time, a whole congregation of them. It would be such an awesome breakthrough to be able to get it across to them.
Another point you make that I feel is especially pertinent to those of us who desire to obtain "self-contained wholeness" as I refer to it, is this: wanting what you have. This somehow seems to conflict with the motivational stuff we try to grasp onto, such as wanting more, wanting to climb higher, be thinner, more passionate, and the list goes on. What is the difference in wanting what you have and "settling" for the status quo? Thanks! S. P.
Dear S. P.
What you are asking is a difficult thing to explain. You are wanting the truth of something. But it is impossible for a human being to know the truth as an object. Truth is infinite, we are finite. We do our best to head toward the truth and at some point, truth will simply reveal itself to us as “knowing.” What some have referred to as an “ah ha” moment. In effect, we can’t know truth per se, we can know something that we didn’t know before. In a way we “become” truth. We are there in a place we weren’t before.
The difference between wanting what you have conflicting with being motivated to do better is difficult to explain. It’s a difference that is very specific to each case. The difference is your own attitude. Attitude is how you connect to present reality. Settling for something can either be positive or negative. If you have lost your leg, accepted the loss, and moved on to what you can do, now, with one leg, or an artificial leg that is different from accepting your loss by agonizing over wanting it “not to have happened” that you lost your leg. In a sense you can “chose” the loss. You can cease to focus on or hate the person or fate that caused the loss. Or you can “not chose” the loss and continue to focus on or hate the person or fate that caused the loss. In a real sense it seems that with everything in life you can be “at choice” or “at war” with reality. It depends upon your attitude. Reality itself, doesn’t change.
Again, attitude is the difference in whether or not you are desiring “what is not” as in “I want to be thin” when you very overweight and are hating thin people, and agonizing that you just ate too much, or angry that you are just unlucky to be the type of body that gains weight. This is different from deciding that you want to improve yourself by eating less, by exercising, by listening to other people who have lost weight and how they did it. In this case you are “at choice” again. You are okay with where you are, fat, and also where you are going, thin. You are now fat and you are going to be thin and how great is that! In a way it reminds me of the Bible story about Job and his afflictions. I'm not sure it was Job who said it but the quote is that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And the idea is that Job became "at choice" with whatever happened to him. That did not mean he cut himself off from heading toward a good place just because he was "at choice" with a bad place. Does this help? A. B. Curtiss
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment