Wow! Brainswitching Worked for Me!

QUESTION:

I read your book Brainswitch and gave some of your suggestions a try. I was dubious since none of the other books I read ever made much difference. Higglety-pigglety actually works. Can this really be the end of my long-term depression? Heartfelt thanks to you and your excellent work.

ANSWER:     

If you have struggled with depression for a long time, those depressive neural patterns are pretty strong. There is no way to get them out of your brain, they remain part of your memory banks. But now that you have had some experience in being able to immediately rescue yourself from the worst of the pain you will start to see a change. 

The more you become more proactive the better you will get.

Much of the pain of depression is caused by the fear that we have of it. Without the fear we don’t tend to get so deep into it that we can’t get ourself back out. Knowing that we can save ourself from the worst of it right away alleviates the fear.

Now you have some tools. You have some coping mechanisms.You are no longer completely at the mercy of depression. You know that it is possible to leave the scene, so to speak, and offer the brain another fork to take out of depression. Then you can move on more easily with your day, and the concentration on other more productive activities will get you to a more peaceful, loving place. Knowing something about how the brain works can also help you boost your confidence.

Knowing, for instance, that the mind can’t use a no is extremely helpful not only for depression but for our larger life. The subcortex, in its strategy of fear (via the fight-or-flight response) which causes us to come to a stop because of our pain, is in effect a no. But other than that there is no neural framework in the brain that can do a “no.” If you know that giving the mind a command of no will simply force it to root around in its learned associations (remember that the brain works by learned association) for some kind of a yes it can continue with; like the yes of our compulsion to feel depressed or to eat a second helping, you can make a lot of changes in your life. You can’t not think depression, but you can think something else instead of it.