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I found that my depression and stress sickness was greatly helped when I started to work on repairing the wreckage of the past that was constantly being fueled by my various addictions. From years of practicing various addictions I had dug a deep hole for myself and my family. The bigger mess I made, the more stress I created for myself and the more depression and hopelessness arose from my wrong lifestyle. Once I started to restructure my life in the direction of recovery, the benefits started showing up at my door. One thing was certain, I could not keep my old sick life and get better as well. Something had to go.
Living an unbalanced life really contributed to my depression. Stress and depression go hand in hand, then we get sick from the stress and the depression and stress just gets worse and it becomes a death spiral. Meditation and mindfulness helped me as well as my joining the simple living movement. Without time for contemplative practices and relaxation I am sunk. This is an almost top necessity for me. I tell those that say they have no time to relax to get into voluntary simplicity. If you can't keep up, scale back until you can keep up. I need to eat right and sleep right and exercise right as well. Many foods help trigger crazy thinking and can lead to depression, especially the salty and chemical rich, artificial factory foods. This is much easier to see once we clean up our diet.
Besides nutrition and getting the proper vitamins I have to work in spiritual areas as well. I need a balance to live right - not 100% spiritual and not 100% physical, but need to blend the two seamlessly for balanced recovery. 12 step work as well as personal religious and spiritual studies helped me in this area. I find that sometime spiritual practitioners neglect the natural laws that govern our bodies and suffer in this area from lack of living a balanced life. Some of us forget we are spiritual beings residing in physical bodies living in physical world and governed my both spiritual and physical or natural laws in addition to man made laws. We need some effort with spiritual work and some effort in physical work for a good balance or as the Buddha recommended - taking the middle path. Joining the simple living movent in 1996 also helped with reducing stress and giving me a new life.
I am lucky to be able to recover in these areas using natural methods. Other persons suffering from depression might have a chemical imbalance in the brain and need medical advice and special medications. If this is the case, it is a matter of doing the footwork in all these medical areas to find out what can be done. Depression can stem from many areas but once thing is for sure, If we dedicate ourselves to work on getting better and making a better life for us we can almost always improve our life in a positive direction and make progress.
Adrenal steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under stress reach the brain and over time can affect the structure of the brain. When stress hormones, intended for a life or death fight or flight situation, remain switched for an extended period, they can slow the growth of nerve fibers in the areas of the brain responsible for emotions and other brain functions. We also produce cortisol from any other stressors the body perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a sickness, injury, surgery, or temperature extremes as well as psychological stress that we and the world put on us.
Each of us has produces a different amount of these chemicals and has a different sensitivity to them and this might be the missing link as to a part of the question as to why some of us are more addictive than others with how we each produce and react to these stress chemicals differently. Besides fat, anger and depression can be helped with exercise. Exercise helps remove these stress chemicals from our bodies as well as produce other chemicals that give us a sense of well being - endorphins. Yes, we have our own drug pusher within each of us. We can learn to reduce the urge to pacify ourselves with food, drugs, alcohol, compulsive spending from stress, but really need to work on restructuring our lives so they are less stressful if we ever want to find peace and serenity. You see, 12 steps or not, we all have to answer to natural law. Within the boundaries of natural law is where stress chemicals come from within us and as addicts I believe we are super sensitized to these chemicals and we seek relief though our various addictions. So, as addicts we should be in tune with using any tools available to us for recovery purposes whether it is the spiritual tools of meditation and 12 step work or the mechanical tools of eating right and exercise.
V (Male)
For access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com.
ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HERE IS THAT OF MY OWN AND IS BASED ON MY INTERPRETATION OF MY CHRISTIAN - BUDDHIST BELIEFS AND IS NOT THE OPINION, RECOMMENDATION OR BELIEF OF ANY GROUP OR ORGANIZATION.
COMMENTS REQUIRING A RESPONSE SHOULD BE SENT DIRECT.
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I found that my depression and stress sickness was greatly helped when I started to work on repairing the wreckage of the past that was constantly being fueled by my various addictions. From years of practicing various addictions I had dug a deep hole for myself and my family. The bigger mess I made, the more stress I created for myself and the more depression and hopelessness arose from my wrong lifestyle. Once I started to restructure my life in the direction of recovery, the benefits started showing up at my door. One thing was certain, I could not keep my old sick life and get better as well. Something had to go.
Living an unbalanced life really contributed to my depression. Stress and depression go hand in hand, then we get sick from the stress and the depression and stress just gets worse and it becomes a death spiral. Meditation and mindfulness helped me as well as my joining the simple living movement. Without time for contemplative practices and relaxation I am sunk. This is an almost top necessity for me. I tell those that say they have no time to relax to get into voluntary simplicity. If you can't keep up, scale back until you can keep up. I need to eat right and sleep right and exercise right as well. Many foods help trigger crazy thinking and can lead to depression, especially the salty and chemical rich, artificial factory foods. This is much easier to see once we clean up our diet.
Besides nutrition and getting the proper vitamins I have to work in spiritual areas as well. I need a balance to live right - not 100% spiritual and not 100% physical, but need to blend the two seamlessly for balanced recovery. 12 step work as well as personal religious and spiritual studies helped me in this area. I find that sometime spiritual practitioners neglect the natural laws that govern our bodies and suffer in this area from lack of living a balanced life. Some of us forget we are spiritual beings residing in physical bodies living in physical world and governed my both spiritual and physical or natural laws in addition to man made laws. We need some effort with spiritual work and some effort in physical work for a good balance or as the Buddha recommended - taking the middle path. Joining the simple living movent in 1996 also helped with reducing stress and giving me a new life.
I am lucky to be able to recover in these areas using natural methods. Other persons suffering from depression might have a chemical imbalance in the brain and need medical advice and special medications. If this is the case, it is a matter of doing the footwork in all these medical areas to find out what can be done. Depression can stem from many areas but once thing is for sure, If we dedicate ourselves to work on getting better and making a better life for us we can almost always improve our life in a positive direction and make progress.
Adrenal steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under stress reach the brain and over time can affect the structure of the brain. When stress hormones, intended for a life or death fight or flight situation, remain switched for an extended period, they can slow the growth of nerve fibers in the areas of the brain responsible for emotions and other brain functions. We also produce cortisol from any other stressors the body perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a sickness, injury, surgery, or temperature extremes as well as psychological stress that we and the world put on us.
Each of us has produces a different amount of these chemicals and has a different sensitivity to them and this might be the missing link as to a part of the question as to why some of us are more addictive than others with how we each produce and react to these stress chemicals differently. Besides fat, anger and depression can be helped with exercise. Exercise helps remove these stress chemicals from our bodies as well as produce other chemicals that give us a sense of well being - endorphins. Yes, we have our own drug pusher within each of us. We can learn to reduce the urge to pacify ourselves with food, drugs, alcohol, compulsive spending from stress, but really need to work on restructuring our lives so they are less stressful if we ever want to find peace and serenity. You see, 12 steps or not, we all have to answer to natural law. Within the boundaries of natural law is where stress chemicals come from within us and as addicts I believe we are super sensitized to these chemicals and we seek relief though our various addictions. So, as addicts we should be in tune with using any tools available to us for recovery purposes whether it is the spiritual tools of meditation and 12 step work or the mechanical tools of eating right and exercise.
V (Male)
For access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com.
ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HERE IS THAT OF MY OWN AND IS BASED ON MY INTERPRETATION OF MY CHRISTIAN - BUDDHIST BELIEFS AND IS NOT THE OPINION, RECOMMENDATION OR BELIEF OF ANY GROUP OR ORGANIZATION.
COMMENTS REQUIRING A RESPONSE SHOULD BE SENT DIRECT.
