Hi, A.B.
I hope you don't mind but I wanted to reach out to you
for a little help again. I was feeling
so great and confident about using the BrainSwitching techniques and as I told you
in a previous e-mail, I was starting to wean off my anti-depressants (regarding
which you cautioned me about weaning problems).
I took it slow and was very careful but just recently realized that
depression was popping back up. I tried
to use the book techniques and they may be keeping me from slipping lower than
I could be at, but I do feel somewhat disillusioned because I thought I could
work with my mind without the drugs and yet, can't seem to.
Any thoughts or advice?
Right now, I'm bumping the anti-depressant dosage up
again because I just want to feel better and despite my efforts can't bump
myself out of this "on my own".
I have been listening to hypnosis CDs for Anxiety and am
about to do a hypnosis for depression, but feel that I keep trying and trying
and getting so discouraged with life.
Thanks for listening.
M
Dear M,
Sometimes I slip into that old habit again myself. I have
found that the techniques always work. However they will not make me happy. The
techniques keep me from succumbing to depression. They are used as a stop-gap, a kind of brake
on where I go in that direction. I acknowledge that the old stuff has been
somehow triggered. However, once I put the techniques into action, and stop the
slide, then I turn myself immediately to some task or project and carry the
heaviness along with me, accepted and basically ignored, into that opposite
direction. Into the direction of new and more productive action.
Remember, the brain ALWAYS follows the direction of its
most current dominant thought. You have to keep rethinking and concentrating on
what you are doing, turning away from the darker reflections and getting fully
immersed into some more positive action thus making those thoughts dominant
over the anxious thought. If you give too much credence to some negative
feelings like "Oh, no, here I go again, I can't bear it..." the brain
takes it more seriously.
No, you must accept the darker feelings (Oh, yes, I remember this crap and it always
goes away when I get busy and concentrate on other things..." ). I felt a little dark this morning. I've had
a stomach flu and haven't been able to do much. But here comes your question
and I feel well enough to reach out to you. And in that reaching out to you, I
am already out of my own murkish world and heading back into the land of the
living and okayness. I will invite you to go along with me this morning. Find
something worthwhile to do, no matter how humble.
You could look up the Desiderata on my depression website
and commit it to memory. I did that a while ago. It dawned on me then what it
meant by "go placidly amid the noise and haste." Sometimes it's
basically the noise and haste of our own upsetness and moving in the wrong
direction. We can always turn around.
Hypnosis is good as well. Get Emil Coue's book. And
remember that depression is a kind of self-hypnisis as well, although
accidental. We can always trade accidental, passive thinking for on-purpose,
directed thinking. If you haven’t had a
check-up with a homeopathic practitioner or nutritionist, that might be a good
idea. When the cells get what they need, we feel good. A. B. Curtiss
