Mind Exercises and Interacting with Others is the Key

Dear Ms Curtiss

I can beat depression when it hits. I hold my mouth with counting 1234 in a hard way to restore the chemistry balance. 

I do not know if I am doing the right way because I have to use power to restore it. 

Because I feel physically  the brain chemistry when depression hits. Something push hard and I have to resist it in order to weaken it.  In this case I try to use my strength in counting 

or using short sentences and repeating them really hard for half an hour or more. I do not know if that's the way I should do. 

I do not know if people who experience depression feel the physical changes of the brain.  R_________

Dear R_____

Depression is physically painful. What you are doing is succeeding in getting rid of your depression by using brainswitch exercises so that you can re-engage with your regular life. Good for you. Doing them HARD in the beginning is how I started too. Almost screaming them in my mind. Later, it didn’t take so much force, only dedicated concentration and sticking to it NO MATTER WHAT.

Dear Ms Curtiss 

My wife said she becomes worried and down in the evenings. IS there a way to stop depression before it initiates for the rest of the life.? Or there is no way to fade it and she must go through the exercises everyday like me? 

I think these are the symptom of the start of depression

Thanks, R___________

Dear R________ 

The exercises will help to weaken the habit of downer thinking and drifting into depression unaware. 

The exercises are just a device to get the neural activity started in the neocortex and to distract your attention from the pain being produced in the subcortex. What works in addition to exercises is to engage in conversation and involvement with members of your family and do small chores that need to be done, thinking objectively about what you are doing, humming some dumb tune, and engaging with children that need to be entertained. All these activities get you out of self-focus which is the big problem--thinking about yourself, filling your whole life up with YOU and what you are FEELING is the problem. Exercises help with this as well as any other distraction or interaction that can move you from self-focus to re-engagement with the objective world.

Sometimes, for me, having some small event to look forward to is a mood changer. Some movie on TV, going out for pizza, a scrabble game with my husband, a book that I like. On one side there is thinking about how you are feeling bad. On the other side is ALL OF LIFE. Turn from your feelings to things that represent life--loved ones, friends, movies, books, taking a walk, looking at the stars.

Anything that can fill in and take the place of self focus if only for a second. Just keep at it. Sometimes I sing a bit, work a bit, look around and find some small thing to appreciate, even just some interesting shadow, or how the floor shines. It all works.

A.B. Curtiss

Hey, R_______. It just occurred to me that I'm feeling down a little this morning myself. I think I'll just mentally send you a hug. WOW. Taking my own medicine here. Interaction works.  I feel better already. Really. The dark cloud in my heart suddenly turned into more of a sunrise. Kind of like love.  Sounds weird? Depression is the weirdest thing in the world. 

 

A. B.