<![CDATA[Psychlinks Psychology Self-Help & Mental Health Support Forum - Depression]]> http://forum.psychlinks.ca/ Depression, dysthymia, and seasonal affective disorder - causes, symptoms, and treatment. en Thu, 09 Sep 2010 04:28:21 GMT vBulletin 60 http://forum.psychlinks.ca/images/misc/rss.png <![CDATA[Psychlinks Psychology Self-Help & Mental Health Support Forum - Depression]]> http://forum.psychlinks.ca/ Declaring Independence from Depression http://forum.psychlinks.ca/depression/24277-declaring-independence-from-depression-new-post.html Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:25:11 GMT *Declaring Independence from Depression (http://www.storiedmind.com/2010/09/07/declaring-independence-from-depression/)* by John, Storied Mind Blog... Declaring Independence from Depression
by John, Storied Mind Blog
September 7, 2010

Here’s one part of a post from a couple of years ago, written a few months before I knew I’d really gotten past depression. Stephany at Soulful Sepulcher had suggested that I try assuming this: I have recovered. That really got me thinking and actually proved to be a turning point. I started imagining what it would feel like to be recovered and wrote this as if it were spoken by an actor in a play. It was an experiment to have fun with that helped me get closer to the real thing. It’s a method I can highly recommend.

What do you think you might say or do if you suddenly felt fully recovered?
You’re history, you busted old fool, unholy one, always stealing me. You trespass, you offend, you have nothing good to say, and surely nothing new. You bore me over and over again with the same stripped life, torn to its emptiness. I don’t want your lightless streak in my soul any more.

I’m sick of your dismal dispatches, your chemistry of night, your endless calls to inaction, your fog of unthinking, your poisoning of love, your invitations to deadly impulse.

I see shining faces around me again. How could I have remained so stuck in this sickening web, waiting to be a spider’s meal? It’s over, I’m out of here. I’m taking the power of my mind and soul with me into broad daylight!

NO! Scratch that. You’re out of here!

I won’t replay this scene anymore: awake at 4 am, deep in obsessive shame, feeling the despair of it again, the incredible inability to act, the sluggishness, the incomplete projects, the excess of a grim self in everything – all of it so deadly – so implausible. So long as you were living with me, I could barely be there for anyone else. How did it happen that I could stay so long in that stupefying place with you, shattering everything in life I had so carefully assembled.

After these decades, It’s divorce time, thief. And breaking this unholy union is sanctified by every higher power there ever was or will be!

And as I shove you away at last, I know – and hate to know – that it hurts to break the hold you have in me, deep in some psychic core. In there, you were a habit, an addiction, and withdrawal hasn’t been easy. But that’s a pain I know, like ripping a barbed hook out of my arm so fast the pain is over before I can begin to feel it.

So strange – I kick you out, heavy being who covered my mind in darkness, turned me to lead, sat like a mountain squeezing all breath out of me. Yet when you’re gone, I see there’s nothing to you, no trace of mass, no shadow on the land, no shape of any living thing, or any dead thing either.

What were you, then, that felt so massive, so impenetrable, so opaque? Now you’re invisible. And how does that feel – as if you had any feeling in you.

My mind has light again, I can see through the dark. I can do this living biz – I can feel. Out of cramped hallways and small rooms at last, where nothing ever seemed to fit, I can open wide an unfillable space to everything that is. I hardly knew before how big was the world I could walk into, how much love there could be to take in and give back. I never thought there was enough of that to go around.

I still see your silent violence everywhere because there are millions who remain in your shadow. But if I look more closely, I can see in them angels falling and struggling to come back. ]]> Depression David Baxter http://forum.psychlinks.ca/depression/24277-declaring-independence-from-depression.html The Anti-Depression Checklist http://forum.psychlinks.ca/depression/24182-the-anti-depression-checklist-new-post.html Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:58:15 GMT The Anti-Depressant Checklist
by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
Aug 31st 2010

In the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) groups that I run, I ask participants to create an anti-depressant checklist toward the end of the program. The purpose of this is so that there is an actual paper to look at once the warning signs of depression are starting to surface.

Participants notice that early warning signs include things like; wanting to sleep more, avoid spending time with people, increase or decrease of appetite, more irritability, losing focus, heaviness in the body, increase in automatic negative thoughts, among other things.

The paper of the anti-depressant checklist begins with the statement:
“When you notice any of the signs of depression coming on, engage in one of these activities even if your mind tells you there’s no point.”
The reason for the second half of that statement is because when the mind is depressed, it will likely filter in a thought that has a bleak or negative outlook about the future. While the thought may appear believable and convincing, it is not a fact. We know this because if you were feeling better and events in life were the same, it would be a different thought.

The antidepressant checklist is filled with activities that represent two things:
  1. Pleasure – These are things in life that you recognize in the past have given you a sense of pleasure such as spending time with friends, taking a walk, taking a bath, going to a coffee shop, etc…
  2. Mastery – These are things in life that give you a sense of accomplishment. Mastery tasks do not need to be pleasurable, it’s more about getting things done. Paying bills or going to the post office may not be pleasurable, but it’s an accomplishment.
At times Pleasure and Mastery comingle as in connecting with a friend you’ve meant to get in touch with for a while or going on a hike you’ve been putting off. You’ve accomplished it and it was a pleasurable activity.

So, if you struggle with depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, you can make a list like this and have it close at hand. Because when the symptoms come on, you don’t want the automaticity of the mind to be making decisions for you, instead, pick up the checklist and allow your actions to do the talking for you. ]]> Depression David Baxter http://forum.psychlinks.ca/depression/24182-the-anti-depression-checklist.html