My Worse Fear About Depression

This question was asked me in a comment to the post  day before yesterday.

My question is. How do we remind ourselves when we are in that fearful state of mind ruminating over how the hell we are going to get out of this "mess" we think we are in. Do we put up flags?

Here is my response:

One thing that can ease your mind is that the very fact that you are aware you are depressed and that it is you, yourself, that produced the condition. That alone is  already lessening your depression. Then when you attempt any distraction exercises, dumb songs, physical exercise, getting to work, anything you do, even if it doesn't "work" is already lessening your depression. 

Then when you find that you have some moments free from pain even though they are short-lived they are already lessening your depression. Anything you do to awaken yourself, to take action, to consider taking action, to take action and fail and start again. That is already lessening your depression. The only thing you  need to remember is NEVER GIVE UP taking charge of your thinking. Thought--our only power.

Anything you do to connect with others, anything you do to remain cheerful, lessens your depression. All of this is building a new neural pattern.

We forget and when we do all the things that I mentioned, we, in effect,  EFFECT what we forget we can do. It is always a possibility to effect this, but as we practice taking charge we keep approximating and enlarging upon the possibility. It is a matter of what we pay attention to, our light or our darkness. Learn to direct your attention where you want your thinking to go. I'm tired and going to bed. so this is a bit disjointed.A. B. Curtiss

Dear A. B.

Oh thank you  Thank you! Disjointed or not I really needed this. The never give up part. I can remember that. It’s a lot easier than the other stuff I feel like I have to remember in order to get out of the pain. And If I understand the last part correctly, what you are saying is that we expect the tools to work beautifully every time and when they don't we forget the fact that we've already affected the pain just by doing what we've been doing.

My worst fear at the moment is usually one of losing the ability to keep perspective in this ocean of thought that seems to have vortexs into other worlds that aren't real. Staying out of the vortex is easy until you get sucked in and believe that you are the vortex (bad thinking). Learning that we aren't our minds is great! Unmeshing ourselves with the painful mind, That's a bit more complex. You teach that its as simple as a thought. I believe that, I just have a hard time focusing enough to do that sometimes. Thanks again. :)