The FRS Factor of Depression

I have just returned from Florida bearing the ashes of my 96 year-old mother who passed from this physical world last week. It was not an unexpected death and my mother had expressed her willingness to proceed on her infinite journey. However I was glad that I had the tools for handling downer thoughts and sudden hits of depression which are expected at this time.

I was honored to be present at my mother's passing and I will write more about that a little later after I have had a chance to collect my wits and get over the nasty cold that I picked up in the last few days.

Meanwhile I pass on to you via the following essay, written previously, those bits of knowledge and strategies that helped me during the past week, strategies that have kept me balanced and sane for the last twenty-five years, the first part of my life having spent much too much of my time unbalanced and manic-depressive.

The FRS Factor of Depression

There is hardly anyone who hasn't suffered some form of depression, anxiety, and panic at some time or another. Depression can happen to anyone. These onsets can be sudden and unexpected; or they can be a constant companion for weeks, even months or years. The pain can be enormous. Sometimes depression happens suddenly when things are going well and there's no clear reason for any unhappiness. Other times depression and problems become inter-mixed.

It happens quite often that we think we are suffering from our problems when, in fact, we are suffering from our depression. If you have been suffering for a long time, it is probably the case that you are not really suffering from childhood trauma, loss of job, or problems with loved ones. You are probably suffering from a chemical imbalance. You then associate your pain with your problems because you are searching for a context for the pain that you don't otherwise understand.

The symptoms are not going away by themselves anytime soon. Even though depression is certainly cyclical, you can't count on its cyclical nature to enable depression to cure itself. But there is a cognitive behavior technique called "Brainswitching" that uses the principles underlying its cyclic nature to rescue you quickly from the agony of depression.

You cannot will yourself out of a deep depression because the pain is caused by a chemical imbalance. Sometimes you get so discouraged and feel so helpless that you can't do anything to get yourself out of it. This is because this imbalance is not only physically very painful, the stress chemicals are very hard on your metabolic system.

They sap your metabolic energy to the core making it almost impossible to bestir yourself in your own behalf. You need something very simple in the beginning just to get you started on helping yourself. You need something to do that is both simple and effortless. Forget about making any big positive moves in the middle of a bad depression, we are talking about baby steps in a positive direction. This is the safe and sure way out of depression.

What is Brainswitching? To get an idea of how it works you need a short explanation of the physiological components of our feelings--how do we feel what we feel? All emotion or pain is produced in the subcortex. Whenever we feel bad, signals from the emotional part of the brain (the subcortex) must travel upwards and be acknowledged in the thinking part of the brain (the neocortex) before a human being is able to feel any pain or emotion.

It is inconceivable to me that anyone would be successful in understanding, much less treating depression, without some knowledge of the small area in the neocortex called the "feelings receptor station." I call it the FRS factor of depression. But when I speak to mainly professional audiences no one has ever heard of this neuronal process of pain perception before.

In order to feel any emotion, or the pain of some bodily injury (which are all produced in the subcortex) we must make a cognitive judgment in the neocortex about the thing we are feeling! Signals from the nerve endings in our arm if we cut our skin, or signals from the subcortex that emotion is going on must move upward to the neocortex, and be received and acknowledged there before we can feel them!

This is the reason that athletes can actually break a bone during the heat of a game and don't experience any pain until after the competition is over. Their neocortical thought concentration on the game blocked the pain signals being sent to the neocortex that should have alerted them to the pain of their injury. This FRS factor is the basic principle upon which brainswitching was created.

The acknowledgment in the neocortex of pain produced in the subcortex is such a tiny event, brain-wise, that it happens beneath our level of awareness. But this small instantaneous process underlies the reason depression is cyclical. The fact that depression is cyclical is extremely important. All depression ends at some point, sooner or later, anyway. Why not move it faster along its natural continuum and get it to end sooner, rather than later? This is the whole point of Brainswitching.

Once aware of the pain perception process in the neocortex, we can take advantage of it to move ourselves out of depression rapidly. Much faster than would be the normal course of any depressive event. You can get so good at Brainswitching that depression will cease to be a major issue in your life. You can opt out of it quickly whenever it strikes.

Brainswitching uses simple, idiot-proof exercises you can do by rote because you have practiced them ahead of time, before you get depressed. These techniques can short-circuit the agony by disconnecting the message that you are depressed from one part of the brain to the other, bringing immediate relief from physical pain. If Brainswitching exercises are continued for at least 20 minutes, the chemical balance is almost completely restored. Brainswitching deals instantly with the physical pain of depression.

Intellectual understanding alone is not enough when depression hits. You need a plan ahead of time. You need to know exactly, specifically, what mind exercise, what particular poem or nonsense phrase you are going to use. Once depression hits, it's too hard to think any other thought other than the thought that you are depressed. You need to have a substitute thought for the depressed thought "at the ready" that you have decided to use no matter how you feel.

Prepare two or three different exercises such as a nursery rhyme, some phrase like "green frog," or some dumb song that is easy to sing repetitively. Start with one, and if it doesn't feel like it is working right at that moment, quickly choose another. Then hunker down with your chosen phrase or song, and hang on to it. Keep choosing it again when you lose concentration. For as many seconds as you can think your own thought, it will block the brain's acknowledgment in the neocortex that depression is being produced in the subcortex.

Remember that thoughts are very quick, so you don't have to worry that any depressive thought is going to overwhelm you. A depressive thought is over as quick as any other. It's just that you have feared depression for so long. Fear is very painful until you accept it and move ahead. How do you accept pain? You say okay and relax into it as you think about it. You will get much better at this in a very short time. As soon as the edge is off the major pain, get going on morning exercises or chores, and ease into your regular schedule. Don't forget to concentrate on what you are doing, not what you are feeling.