I'm Sorry to Tell You this but You are Wrong and Disrespectful

I had an anonymous  comment on my post We Have No Idea What Percent of our Thinking is On-going Negative..."October 18. 2010:

HERE IS THE POST:

“I am sorry to tell you this but you are wrong. Studies show that football players who have a lot of concussions missing brain cells get depressed. Also the chemicals in your brain can be off or it can be genetic. Please try and be open minded because you cannot make up a disease that millions of people have. This is disrespectful.” Anonymous

HERE IS MY RESPONSE:

I pass along this information, not because I am not respecting people who suffer from depression, but because I absolutely respect their ability to take advantage of ideas and processes which are not well known to the general public, outside of the field of neurobiology.

It is certainly true that there can be tissue damage to the brain due to physical trauma, and the capacity for self-management of thinking and mood will therefore be limited. But for a normal brain that hasn’t been damaged by physical trauma, and chronically goes in and out of depression, obvious there isn’t tissue damage involved.

By knowing our brains work, how we actually get from one thought to another, and the importance of neurotransmitters and neurobiological processes like the process of pain perception  to getting out of depression, we can learn how to manage it. Psychiatrists, instead, point to chemical imbalance as a “probable cause.”

However there is a chemical consequence in the brain for every thought we think. If we think the thought lemon, there is a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes the physical symptom of salivation. The chemical imbalance rights itself when you stop thinking the thought lemon and you stop salivating.

A depression pamphlet from Kaiser Permanente states right on the front page “nobody knows the real cause of depression.” Once you know how your brain works, and that depression is only located in the subcortex, never in the neocortex, it is only common sense that if we are depressed  we should think thoughts that stimulate neural activity in the neocortex, our thinking brain, instead of our subcortex, our emotional brain (where depression is raging) .

It can be shown by neuro-imaging that some thoughts stimulate neural activity in the neocortex and other thoughts stimulate neural activity in the subcortex. This is not a matter of disrespect, this is a matter of science and anyone can check it out by hooking themselves up to a neuro-imaging machine.

As far as a genetic connection with depression. There is no medical evidence that points to depression as being inherited rather than a family, group, or or cultural “contagion” of adoptive thinking habits and behavioral strategies. See the book Depression is Contagious by Dr. Michael Yapko. There is medical evidence that depression is contagious.

There is ample medical evidence that the brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought and you can make any thought dominant by thinking it repetitively. This is how you can effect a mood change if you wish to make the effort. Again you can check this out with a neuro-imaging machine.

I was in a science museum in Connecticut last month that had a neuro-imaging set-up where  even children can hook up to the machine, lower their brainwaves by thinking non-stressive  thoughts and watch their brain activity on a screen go from agitated to calm.

Knowing about these things, things  like the process of pain perception is so important. All depression is produced in the subcortex  and the signals must go up the brain and be, not only received, but acknowledged in the neocortex before you can be depressed. With the use of interstitial choice you can block the message in the neo cortex that depression is being produced  in the subcortex and the depression, without your concentration on and acknowledgment of it, will soon fade in intensity.

People, including doctors and psychiatrists, who don’t know much about neurobiology will be necessarily limited in their ability to handle their depression. Unfortunately most doctors today are rushed and too dependent on pharmaceutical salesmen who are marketing their latest drug. While the cover story this year in Newsweek magazine (Jan 29) tells us that new research shows antidepressants are no better in the treatment of depression than placebos

Some people, just because they hear it constantly in ads from pharmaceutical companies, or read research funded by pharmaceutical companies get boxed into thinking they are the helpless victims of depression.  This is a hard psychological position from which to manage their depression.

It is sad that my work as a cognitive behavioral therapist to offer exercises and information to people who want to become self-responsible and learn how to direct their thinking and moods  to get out of depression  would be thought to be disrespectful to depressed people.

You don’t have to believe in the exercises. Do them and try them out for yourself. There are no negative side effects to educating yourself as to how your own brain works, or doing mind exercises to improve your management over your own thinking and moods. A. B. Curtiss