A Breakthrough in Understanding Depression

Dear A. B.

But but, I am using my will to get up and go to work and prevail this morning despite how hard it is.  I know that this hell has to pass eventually with my earnest efforts. I keep telling myself there is no other option.  Please I ask for encouragements to get through today. Thank you so much. Y_______

Dear Y_____

I think the real trick is to continually refuse to think about feeling bad. Do a brainswitching exercise to break the neural pattern of concentrating on how you are feeling, and then immediately, as you are refusing to consider how your feel, start to put all your brain energy into some task and THINK ABOUT THE TASK. You can do it. And, little by little, try and build up a life which has some involvement with other people--get interested in what they are thinking and doing and feeling. A. B.

Dear A. B.

Yes, I realized that once I got out of bed and starting rushing to work ( since I was late ), I was already not thinking about my feelings.  I'll be focusing on tasks with all my effort.  Thank you very much for your correspondence.  Y________

Dear Y________

This was a wonderful thing to have happen. You were late, and since you were preoccupied with rushing around to be on time, you were concentrating on rushing around and not on how your were feeling. You see how the brain works? Your brain can only really concentrate on one thing at a time—rushing or depression. 

Try to remember this because when you are working and still feeling bad you can see that you are not really concentrating on your work. You are concentrating on how you feel, and doing your work without really thinking about it. There are a lot of routine tasks that we can do on automatic pilot, without giving it too much thought, which gives us the opportunity to concentrate on our feelings.

But when you were late, this was different. This was not routine. You couldn’t do it on automatic pilot. You had to concentrate on your rushing so you wouldn’t be late.  And when you were concentrating on your rushing, you could not, at the same time, tihnk about your feelings. And if you do not think about how your are feeling, you cannot be depressed. 

This shows you the difference between outer-directed thinking and self-focused thinking. All the rushing around had you using outer-directed thinking. If you can keep your thinking outer-directed you will not be living the depressed life.
A. B. Curtiss