Free Topic

Depression

There are more pressures on young people today than ever before. In the ‘old days’ life was truly tough but it was relatively simple. Now there’s a myriad of ‘stuff’ we’re exposed to, practically from the day we’re born! No wonder our minds can have trouble coping with making sense of it all and we feel the overwhelm.

And on top of that there’s all that we’ve taken on board as our beliefs, what we’re seeing around us, our situation, our experiences, our troubles etc.

Unfortunately, to make matters worse, if you feel depressed and go to a doctor, you are likely to end up with pills, which actually can’t change anything about what you’ve learnt to believe or feel about yourself, or change anything about your life. And you get just get the message something is wrong with you and that you are powerless. I’ve had clients who were put on anti-depressants as young people and since been told they will now have to stay on them for life. This is so not true or necessary!

The good news is that it certainly does not have to be true for you. No matter how low you feel right now or how long you have felt this way, you absolutely can take back command of your mind and of yourself and your life – even if you are now, or have been, on anti-depressants. You can learn to utilise the Palace part of your brain and be your best self naturally, feeling good about who you are, full of confidence, self-worth and self-esteem.

Then you need never know depression – ever! And you not only benefit now but go on to have a positive, productive life.

Let’s do something about it

Right now, if you are feeling depressed, let’s do something to get you feeling a bit better and believing that there’s a more positive path ahead. First, let’s understand what’s happening in your brain to cause the feelings of depression.

Our brain is a piece of gloop that fits into a cereal bowl yet is the most complex thing in the known universe! It has billions of nerve cells which each connect to tens of thousands of others, constantly sending all the messages round our bodies that allow us to think, move, live and breathe. That’s actually beyond incredible, isn’t it?

In our brain we have a conscious part, which is what we know as ‘us’ – our awareness, interactions, perceptions, actions and reactions, etc. This makes up only 10% of our mind. 90% of our mind is subconscious! Part of our subconscious mind is our phenomenal evolved mind and part is our original primitive caveman mind. You can see the full details in Part One, chapter three, but here is a brief overview:

Our Palace mind

When we are functioning from our evolved mind we are very positive and can be rational and make a sensible assessment of things. This part is an intellect and can think for itself and has a vast resource of all our answers and solutions, so even in the hardest times we can find ways forward or positive ways to cope. We naturally perform well and achieve and also produce feel good chemicals to feel brave and happy.

It feels like living in a splendid Palace, feeling good about ourselves and our world, even if sometimes our world isn’t quite how we’d choose.

Our Rats’ Den mind

When we are functioning from our primitive mind we are very negative. This part is all about our survival, so is always on the alert for threat or danger, always coming up with the worst case scenarios. And then, lest we forget what it perceives as the threat – which right now, for you, will be all that is bothering you – our primitive mind keeps reminding us of that problem over and over; which is why it’s really hard to stop our unwanted thoughts or patterns because this part of our brain is wired up to remind us!

We produce feel bad chemicals and even worse, this part is not an intellect and can’t think for itself, so just stores data about how we’ve survived and encourages us to repeat it, even when in fact it is detrimental to us! So we end up thinking and doing and feeling all the things we don’t want, over and over! It can feel like living in a Big Dark Den full of Rats and Spiders with no way out.

When we live from this part of our mind it shows up as depression, anxiety, excessive crying, comfort eating, insomnia, hypersomnia, obsessiveness, compulsiveness, weight issues, addiction, poor concentration, poor memory, lack of confidence, feeling unable to mix socially, low self worth and self esteem – even to the point of anorexia, bulimia, self-harming and isolation. We feel helpless.

The truth about depression

There is so much hype about depression and so many myths and falsehoods out there – which are even prevalent in the health services!

A common perception is that depression is the result of not producing enough serotonin. Whilst that is true, it’s just because we are in our Rats’ Den mind which can only produce anxiety chemicals, or in the case of depression, none at all. So actually, depression is the result of being in our Rats’ Den mind and therefore not producing the serotonin, not the other way around!

The simple truth about depression is this: it’s the ‘label’ put on the feelings you have, that is your body’s way of telling you you’re living from the wrong part of your brain.

When you feel depressed what you’re really saying is that you feel and believe you can’t cope – with what’s going on around you, or what is happening that you don’t like, or isn’t happening that you would like, or that you’ve just become so numb with it all you can’t think or feel anything at all, except how disengaged and miserable you feel and that there’s no point in anything.

If you were functioning from your Palace mind, you would not be able to be this way. You would have access to your vast resource of answers and solutions to know how to cope and be able to find your ways forward. There would be plenty of ‘point in life’ being in this positive, solution oriented, feel good part of your brain. In your Palace mind you could not feel depressed!

And you absolutely have the power to choose to function from your Palace mind with all those benefits, rather than your Rats’ Den mind with all the misery, because:

Who is the one who thinks in your mind? You are.

You are in charge of your mind, even if it doesn’t feel that way. From the conscious part of your brain, which is what you are using all the time, you always have the choice whether you connect with your Palace mind where you can cope, can come up with ideas for sensible solutions, can change unhelpful beliefs and patterns that don’t serve you and can make positive choices that in turn change your feelings, or stay stuck in your Rats’ Den mind where it feels bleak and helpless.

Research has shown we have an incredible 60 – 90,000 thoughts every day! If the majority of your thoughts are positive you’ll be in your Palace Mind and feeling all the benefits of that. If the majority are negative you’ll be living in your Rats’ Den mind and feeling fearful, anxious and depressed. We tend to have lots of the same thoughts day after day, so if they’re negative we get deeper and deeper into our Rats’ Den mind.

The solution

You might imagine therefore that positive thinking would be the answer, right?

No. That doesn’t work on its own. It is hard work and unrealistic to keep up. We need another way.

The reason we are driven to that negativity in the first place is either some specific experience that has shaken our whole world and we didn’t know how to deal with it differently, or from the data that has gone into our subconscious from when we were very little that isn’t actually true, yet we’ve taken on board as true. Things like we’re ‘not good enough’, or that we ‘have to please other people in order to be likeable’, or that we ‘have to have fancy things’ to make us popular’ and so on. Yet, even though these things aren’t true, we live by them!

We learn to look for approval from others and we strive to get understood or noticed or accepted – and we feel the hit and the disappointment when it doesn’t happen – and end up deeper and deeper in our Rats’ Den mind, when all the time there’s the fabulous part of our mind next door in our own head that we’re not using!

Once we learn how to take back command of our Rats and move next door in our own head to our Palace mind and then – most important of all so we can stay there – learn to really Value Ourselves and Like and Love Ourselves, we can truly feel good about ourselves, with lots of selfworth, confidence and self-assuredness – and have a different way to cope with experiences that shake or have shaken our world. We cannot be depressed, or anxious – or suffer from depression or anxiety in this space. These things do not live in our Palace mind.

And the even better news is that I take you through that whole journey in Part One of this book!

Let’s start working on things today

For now, be willing to just accept that everything is as it is – however bad. This is so important because whilst you keep attached to ‘what’s wrong’ and ‘the awfulness of what you’re going through’ you are just feeding that negativity in your mind even more – feeding your Rats even more – and I suspect your Rats in your Rats’ Den mind are already exceptionally well fed with all those negative thoughts you’ve been having!

By accepting things as they are, just because that’s how they are in this moment, you immediately stop this happening and have ‘neutral space’ from which to be able to move forward.

I know it can sound crazy and tough to do, yet I promise it’s the quickest way to stop giving your power to your Rats. It’s not about saying things are okay, or ‘acceptable’, it’s just allowing yourself to have full acknowledgement of ‘how it is’.

• • ~ Accept you are being bullied, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept you have a tough home life, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept you have no friends, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept you don’t like yourself, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept your parent(s) want you to do things you don’t want to, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept you are really unhappy, if that’s the case.
  • ~ Accept that you can’t see the point in it all, if that’s the case.

Just surrender to everything you don’t like or want and say (out loud if you can) “I accept this is my situation”.

If you feel a whole load of negative emotion coming up, perhaps encouraging you to buy into the misery or to fight this with “I don’t want to accept it!” or similar, realise that’s just your Rats wanting you to keep doing what you’ve done before in order to ‘survive’ (because that’s the message they’ve got) even though it’s not helping you.

Be strong and stay with it until you can just shrug your shoulders in true, surrendered, accepting, non-emotional acknowledgment and say “Yeah – I accept this is how it is now. It sucks – I hate my life and I hate myself and I accept this is where I’ve got to in this moment” or whatever it is for you.

Then BREATHE . . . and feel the tension in your body draining away as you come into this space of acceptance with no other attachment.

Now you can genuinely connect with the steps to change things, which you can’t if you’re still chained to your Rats. Acceptance breaks that chain.

Now let’s work on turning things around

In this new moment of possibility – and with all your attention here in this moment – if we had a magic wand and you woke up to a happy life tomorrow, what would be different?

How would things be so you could feel better about yourself and your life? (And you do know because the human brain is wired up to have your answers!) Allow yourself to go there in your mind. What would be different?

If we waved that magic wand and everything changed in this way, how different would you feel?

The reason this is so important is because you cannot turn things around if you are still focusing on ‘what’s wrong’ (giving the power to your Rats). You need to be in your Palace mind to be able to make positive change, which requires the completely different focus of what you do want. (Part One, chapter eight – i).

Using the examples above, your answers might be:

“I want the bullying to stop”
“I want things to get easier at home”
“I want to have friends”
“I want to like myself”
“I want to be able to make my own choices”
“I want to feel happier”
“I want to see the point in it all, to give me a reason for living”

Notice how it feels a tiny bit better, doesn’t it, to be focusing on what you do want rather than wallowing in the misery?

So, move to the next stage – make it truly about what you do want:

“I want the bullying to stop” – so what is it you truly want?
Perhaps something like “I want to be accepted and feel I belong”?

“I want my mum/dad to stop drinking/shouting/take more notice of me” (or whatever it is for you), so what is it you truly want? Be specific about things being easier at home. What is it you want that is in your command?
Perhaps something like “I want to find help for my alcoholic parent”? “I want to find a solution to coming home to a drunk parent”? “I want to cope with my parent shouting” or “I want to find a way for my parent to spend more time with me”? etc.

“I want to have friends” may seem okay, yet this might bring you unsuitable ones, so what do you truly want?
Perhaps something like “I want to have some really great, loyal, fun-to-be-with friends”?

“I want to like myself”, so what do you truly want? What does that detail look like?
Perhaps something like “I want to have more confidence and feel I’m good enough”? “I want to feel more comfortable in my own skin”?

“I want to be able to make my own choices” is really saying what? What do you truly want?
Perhaps something like “I want to be able to tell my parents what I want to do (within possibilities) and be allowed to do so”? “I want my parents’ acceptance, approval and support”? I want to have the confidence to stand up for myself and speak up”?

“I want to feel happier“ has no meaning for the Universe unless you paint the pictures and feel the energy of them. What does being happier look like?
Perhaps something like “I want to wake up with more enthusiasm”? “I want to feel excited about life”? “I want to mix with people more and have fun”?

Notice how this feels even more attuned with what you do really want.

What is it you want? Be clear, write it down and then get very specific as in the examples above. Make this work for you

The gap

Now notice how big the gap seems to be from where you are now to having those statements above (or what’s relevant for you) be true.

Perhaps a very long way, right?

So that’s the next step – closing that gap!

There’s so much more about how to achieve this in Part One of this book but for now, here are two golden rules:

1. Always focus on what you do want and get into the habit of this with your thoughts, your feelings and the way you speak. See again the example lists above and notice the difference.

2. Keep focused on why you want this, rather than ‘when or how it will happen’. (When or how = doubt and fear = Rats’ Den again!) If you keep why in your mind it will help keep you fully focused in that positive direction and in your Palace Mind.

Closing the gap

Ask yourself:

“If I was going to take one tiny step toward my new picture what could it be?”

“What’s the first thing I could do to help me shift just a little bit from where I am towards what I want?”

(And again, you do know, even if it takes time to surface. If you ask the question sincerely, the answer does come). What’s the first tiny step you could take toward that picture?

It might even be:

“Being willing to take accountability for myself and my life”
“Realising I need to stop feeding my Rats”
“Gaining some more confidence”
“Standing up for myself”
“Actually reaching out for appropriate help”

Whatever thoughts come up that tell you ‘you can’t’ or ‘it’s too difficult’ or ‘it’s not going to happen’ or that blocks you in some way – just notice them, but don’t give them any power. That just keeps you stuck! Splat that Rat (Part One, chapter five, Letting Go Images) and keep focused on that first step you could take toward that magic wand picture of yourself and your life .

If you were going to take that tiny step:

~ when could you be taking it?
~ how could you be taking it?
~ what difference could it make?
~ how would you feel afterwards?

Once you start thinking this way, with intent and commitment to finding an answer, a wonderful part of your brain called your anterior cingulate gyrus comes on board to actually help you! That’s when you wake up in the morning with a fresh idea or new enthusiasm!

You have the choice to stay depressed and miserable or to gently paint the pictures in your mind of what you do want – to have and be and do and feel – and then just focus on the first tiny step towards it – and then take the next and the next.

You can do it – because your Palace Mind is sitting there in your own head right now! It’s just allowing yourself to use it! It’s much nicer living in a Palace rather than a Big Dark Den full of Rats and Spiders!

Most important of all is to cultivate your sense of self-worth. You could go to that topic in Part Two anytime for easy reference whilst you allow yourself to work with The Recipe in Part One to shift things completely. Know that implementing Part One means you will never have to experience depression ever again.

It’s sometimes easier to remember a story to help remind us to keep our forward focus, so here is one for this purpose:

A story to help

There was a village in a very isolated part of the world. It was so isolated they very rarely saw visitors from the outside world and the people of the village had a secret.

They had a magical painting which had been given to them by a stranger back in the past, in a time before anyone could remember. The stranger had said as long as this picture stays in the village everything will go right for the people of the village, and the people felt safe having this picture.

One day another stranger came to the village and the people, being very hospitable, made the stranger welcome and they let him stay in the room where the painting was kept. But when they got up in the morning the stranger had left and the painting had been taken away. The villagers were desolated, they felt their happiness had gone, life could never again be the way they had pictured it. They looked out of the window and the blue sky had turned dark, the trees had stopped blooming, the birds no longer sang and they felt very sad.

Then one of the young women of the village walked over to where the painting had been on the wall and she started to paint her own picture. She started to paint a beautiful painting of trees and birds and colourful flowers and then some others joined her and soon all the people were cooperating making this painting.

They all got so absorbed in this painting it wasn’t until the young woman looked out of the window and said “Look – everything is changing” that they realised the sky had become blue again and the birds were singing again and the trees were back in bloom.

You too can pick up your own metaphorical brush and paint your new picture – and when you do – and hold the faith – things start to turn around so much more quickly than you might imagine!