Depression rant.

[Alternate Carpark]

What really bugs me is when you search yourself and find roots for your current state of depression but you still don't know what to do about it!!! Then the ugly thing is in your face glaring at you and you don't know what to do with it....how do you fight that? How do you get that thing out?

Very thoughtful Mask.

If you look at what you have said, your answer is already in there.
You state, "You still don't know what to do about it"
So how do you fix that problem or lack of ability?

Knowledge. You seek knowledge on the particular issue you are exploring, gain as much understanding of it.
You have already mentioned you have uncovered the root cause of a problem.

That's the first step, finding the source.
Then you gain understanding of how that works and affects you.

You understand it's mechanisms, how it functions, once you understand that then you find tools that can be used to fix it.
God, psychology, forgiveness, confrontation etc are all tools to aid you.

Another great question you asked.
"How do you get that thing out?"
Looking back at my problems all I could see was layer upon layer of dysfunction heavily interwoven within, how can I ever possibly get that out as it seems to be fused at a molecular level to who I should be, unblemished by past pain and abuse etc.

If you understand and can see in clear detail how the problem is threaded in you, you can unravel it, slowly but with great skill till finally it is comepletely removed.

There is a process called restoration.
Restoration means taking something that has been damaged and restoring it to it's original "perfect" form when it was first created.

Take a car or an antique clock as an example.
To do a full restoration work on these things they must be taken apart completely, every piece must be examined and repaired back to it's original unblemished state.
Then you are able to join all the pieces back together again.

This is the same thing when dealing with a person's dysfunctional and damaged ( through suffering etc) soul.
You have to be taken completely apart, each part fixed then rebuild.

What happens to a car or clock when it's in peices?
It doesn't work, it looks a mess, the task looks overwhelming to the untrained or unskilled.
Same with the soul.

Modern society though seems to convince us that problems can be fixed quickly and easily.
If your mobile fone breaks, throw it away and buy another in the blink of an eye.

But soul restoration takes years, it's painful, you can become more dysfunctional during the process and the amount of time can be draining.

But, knowledge and understanding of each and every piece of who you are , your problems, their sources and your ability to be honest with yourself, to be adaptable to change thought habits, the list goes on the deeper you delve, seeking understanding and knowledge makes you skilled at it.

A quick way to restore something is to wipe the dust off, fill in a few holes, give it a fresh coat of paint and woohoo a fully restored item...or so it seems on the surface.

Underneath there is still much damage, so no quick fixes for soul restorationeven though that's what most people opt for but they have to keep spending valuable time, energy and money on keeping up the fake appearance till one day the whole thing just collapses in a heap.

I'm coming up to 15 years of inner exploration and although I may fall down in an exhausted heap at least once a year, I can see great progress being made and the more I venture down the restoritive path, the more skilled and freer I become.

It just takes time, perseverance and lots of seeking of knowledge.

 

[Alternate Carpark]

Here's the rant from last week.

Fragmentation and Triggers.

About 2 months ago something happened that threw me, once again, on the path of suicide.

The owner of the house I've been renting for the last 5 years informed me, by mail, that she was renovating and we had 60 days to vacate.
I tried in vain to treat this news as just a normal everyday event and not take it personally.

I could not and it hit me very hard. I was devastated and quickly reasoned that suicide was the only course of action I could take to alleviate the immense pain.

Even after a couple of weeks, once the shock wore off and I could regain some stability in my thinking, I had enough cash to move and there were plenty of other houses to rent but emotionally I could not motivate myself to move and the thought of filling in applications for other house filled me with dispair.

No matter which way I looked at it, suicide was my only option.

Life sometimes takes on the appearance of painting oneself into a corner.
Suicide being the only observable exit. But over the many years of being suicidal and, obviously, not doing it, I have found that there is always more than one exit from said corner that I find myself in.

The key, being aware and understanding the process or paths that lead me into that corner in the first place.
And "Lead" is not the correct word, it's more like being forced back down a path.

I don't want to go back to that corner but I feel that circumstances and life itself is forcing me to go back there.

I want to just stop and look rationally at my current predicament and work out a plan to overcome but I cannot stand against the continuous onslaught of waves of emotion and irrational thinking pounding me.

Sometimes I can withstand and slowly fight back and regain some control and other times I become suicidal in the blink of an eye.

These are some of the things I have discovered as I have retraced my backward steps into those hellish corners.

I had all the resources to move house so what was it that caused the "vacate letter" to be so devastating ?
A trigger was set off.
My primary trigger is rejection and my secondry trigger is mistrust of people.

Haha, there's 2 Pink Cockatoos hanging upside down on the powerlines near my car...so funny.

Triggers, small and barely noticable, are formed deep within by the accummulation of past experiences of the same nature. IE past experiences of rejection.

What happens when a trigger is activated?
Way beyond the speed of light, what I call quantum speed( It's mind numbingly fast folks). Basically it's the speed at which the mind operates.

Anyways, at quantum speed, after reading the "vacate letter", ALL past rejection experiences are added to the current one, thus adding all the negative emotions of ALL past rejection experiences to be added to the current one.
These are added without me even being aware of it.
It's a basic "making a mountain out of a mole hill" phenomenon but far more extreme.

People may look at my behaviour at that time ,scratch their heads and say, "Dude, it's no big deal, get over it, move house."
But for me it's not just moving house, it's years of past rejection pounding on me over and over.
Made worse by the fact that I am not aware of the past added experiences and emotion.
I think I must be crazy or weak to freak out so easily at such small problems like moving house.

I call this fragmentation.
Living in the present but also living in the past and also the future.
In a sense it's more than just memories of the past or thinking of future events.
My soul is actually living, trapped, in realms that do not exist.

I am fragmented, will power, enthusiasm, drive etc are spead out in peices over many years.
All of me is there but dispersed, fragmented, broken, unwhole.

I theorise the loss of energy to move forward during a current event is because the energy is dispersed over a wide area and I am spending all my effort to gather the scattered energy into a whole again.

It all becomes too much and the thought of relieving the pain and confusion can only be found in death.
That's the quick fix. The slower fix is to resolve all past experiences.
Holding onto unresolved past experiences also creates chains that stop me from moving forward.

Triggers also become an entity unto themselves. I can resolve past experiences ( which I have been doing with great success), remove chains, move forward yet a trigger can recall ( or appears to recall) everything I have resolved.

Maybe triggers have their own memory banks hidden, who knows.


I have found myself saying many many times over the years,"Why do these bad things always happen to ME ?" or "Life is not fair, it's picking on me, singling me out "

This of course is just silly as everyone has bad experiences.
Triggers are connected with our reactive nature.
Reactive nature is the accumulation of reactions of past experiences.
Reactions are learned, triggers are learned.

Over the years I have come to understand that I can choose to react or respond.
To react relies on past experiences and actions, responding relies on, stopping and looking at what's happening, checking yourself and all available data and making a rational choice.

It is said, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."
You can't change the way you are, how you think, respond and react.
To me this is a statement of ignorance.
Ignorance of you you are.
The bible, and most other spiritual and philosophical texts, say this, "Know Thyself."

To know yourself is to be fully aware of the process of how you paint yourself into a corner, for one thing.

To understand the process, empowers you to see what needs changing, fixing, and to realise that it is you that has created the dysfunctional negative habits, thought patterns within yourself and that you are also well equipped to change it all.

To me, the best trick to be able to perform is to live a life where you permanently live in a state of peace that passes all understanding, as it is written in the bible.

To be in a state where regardless of outside circumstances you remain at absolute peace and are full of joy is a most remarkable state to be in.
The exact opposite of depression maybe?

To change your outside, reactions, responses, change your inside, and to do that you need to go in, deep inside and know yourself.

It is said that space is the final frontier.
I say your inner space is the only frontier worth exploring.
Peace, joy and love is not found outside, it is found within.

Does not Jesus say, "The kingdom of god is within us"

WOW, 4 spotted ducks have just wandered up to my car in the mild drissling rain, they are so gorgeous.

Just don't expect the inner journey to like a fun filled amusement ride because it isn't.
But the rewards for your hard labour, the many lonely walks through the valleys of shadow and death, are peace, joy and love that cannot be moved by any external circumstances.

 

[Mask]

Yah I can totally relate to all that! I was just thinking about that sort of thing the other day. Why I have extreme responses to situations that don't warrant extreme responses??

 

[Alternate Carpark]

So Mask, what have you done since thinking of these things ?


I don't know about others but for me, when I'm depressed it's because the problem hasn't been revealed.
I know there's something bugging me but I can't see it clearly.

Then when it's finally revealed I get excited and a weight has dropped off me.

Then when I endeavour to understand I get another surge when I finally understand how it all works, the source.
If I understand how it works then I should understand how to counter it, block it or remove it.
Why shouldn't these revelations evoke enthusiasm and a sense of hope and empowerment?

I guess the hard part for me is the length of the journey and the trip ups I will encounter on said journey.

When something is revealed, which is usually a dysfunction, something negative, I am not ashamed of this weakness or dysfunction and especially when it is finally revealed I can see the enemy that has been hidden for so long, "Oh there you are you nasty piece of work" haha

So once it's revealed it's vunerable, it's methods are exposed and what was once an overwhelmingly unescapable prison is now revealed to be have walls made of rice paper.

Sometimes, only a couple of times this has happened, when the problem has been revealed, it instantly loses it's grip on me. It loses it's power over me.

Othertimes it takes a lot of work to retrain the mind to think out of those negative tracks that we build in our heads over the years.

 

[Mask]

Well now I try to look at why I am responding in extremes. I know a real fear for me is not being in control or being out of control. Sometimes even small changes in how I expected things to go, throws me into a panic! I know now that this is an extreme reaction and I ask myself why are you getting yourself so worked up over this small monkey wrech? I try to calm myself down and view it logically and tell myself that everything is going to be o.k., this is not life threatening or anything ! I will get through this! Other than that, I'm not sure what else to do? Growing up in foster care surely gave me a sense of being out of control as far as my life goes. You were never sure, from one day to the next what could happen. You could do something wrong or displeasing and be shipped off! Very scary for a child! In the last 3-4 years, I am learning more about myself and what makes me tick, react, think in certain ways but it sure is hard to know what to do about it now, how to change those think patterns. They are automatic reactions...they seem to happen before I can even think about what my reaction should/will be. Things are changing but I'm not always a very patient person...I want change now !

 

[Alternate Carpark]

Haha, how's that saying go.."I want patience and I want it now !"

Yeah I can understand the uncertainty of the foster environment.
environment and circumstances play a huge role in how we develop inside, whether it be positive coping skills or negative dysfunctions.

But you might find that everyone lives with uncertainty in their lives, some more than others of course.

Interesting you mentioned 'automatic reactions'. I was thinking about my perceptions of reacting and responding this morning and I used to think that reacting was acting without thinking and responding was acting after thinking it through.

Now I see reacting as lightning fast thinking, so fast it appears there is no thought before the act.
Like it's instinctive that if you stand on a thorn you lift your foot without first thinking, "Hmm, my foot is really hurting, maybe I should lift it up as I must be standing on something sharp"
No, we lift our foot instantly but the mind still has to process the data to make a decision. The mind must still be thinking, it just happens super fast or because it's a learned response it happens quicker.

So these automatic reactions we do either are rational thinking done real fast or the mind searches the memory banks to find a similar experience to determine the appropriate response.

Either way they are our thoughts and thought habits and if we created them we should be able to uncreate them and create new ones that are positive and productive.

Do you sense or think when you have these extreme reactions that it's confusing it doesn't make logical sense or haha, like I used to think about myself that I was crazy ?
If so, the reason why it's confusing and or doesn't make sense is because some of the process is hidden.
You have C, which is the reaction. B which is the incident but you don't have A which is attaching itself to B somehow.

Once you find A and see how it attaches to B then you can see the full process and if you can see how it functions then you can create a new process, a new path of thoughts to go down instead of the current negative one.

I used to get real angry in traffic, especially in round a bouts.
People cutting me off all the time, pushing in when they should have waited and making me brake to avoid an accident.
I found out, just by thinking it through and how I was reacting, that I was convinced they were cutting me off on purpose, that it was a personal attack.

And what changed my view on this wrong perception was what Jesus said while he was nailed to the cross.
Many of the people were mocking him, abusing him etc and he said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

Jesus never took the abusive behaviour personally, all he saw were hurting people behaving hurtfully out of their own hurt.

If they weren't abusing him they would be abusing someone else, whoever happens to be in their line of fire.

So it's also not just a matter of figuring out one thing about yourself, you've got to look at other parts of who you are and step by step the pieces to the puzzle will fall into place and you begin to see the big picture.
The confusion slowly turns into understanding.

Congrats on looking within and desiring to understand yourself and how you function.
Doing this you not only uncover your dysfunctions but also your positive abilities, your strengths.
Why? Such a small word yet powerful if applied.

Once you are aware of the complete process of why and how you react, when it happens again, if you are watching yourself you can see the process firing up and over time with practice to can stop the process from taking over you.

Because I now am aware that my primary trigger is rejection I keep an inner eye out for the first signs of feeling rejected whenever I am interacting.

For example, I have noticed that when I send sms' to people, negative feelings and thoughts begin to rise if they don't respond when I think they should.

The old trigger tries to convince me that the people I have sms'd don't really care about me, they do not value me as a friend and on and on it could go if I let it.

I stop those thoughts before they take over and realise that
1: I'm thinking that they should respond when I think they should.
2: Their fone may be turned off.
3: They really are busy at work haha compared to my work which is really laid back.
4: They could be having a bad day and do not want to communicate.
There's a whole stack of valid reasons to counteract the negative ones that wish to continue to live in me.

 

[Mask]

Hi,

I will have to read your post a couple of times to really get everything you've said . A lot of it really makes sense to me so I want to really think about it . I know that my main trigger is rejection too. It seems to have controlled my life for so many years! I see it now (for a few years now), it is not hidden from me now, so I am trying to learn to catch myself before I react negatively. I know exactly what you mean about calling or e-mailing someone, and they don't respond right away (or at all ). I too start the poor me's, the what if's! All the negative assumptions start. They don't care, I must have said something wrong, they must be mad or offended with me now, they think what I said was stupid, they can't be bother with me.....blah...blah...blah!!!!!!!!!!! I have to tell my head to just SHUT UP!!!!! It's just crazy! Why always think the negative? I talk to my husband about all this stuff...he is my voice of reason, my stability, my sane opinion . He totally cannot relate to how my brain/feelings work. He would never think those negative things first, he would just assume they are busy or they have issues with getting things done. He would never assume he did something wrong, or that they are mad at him. He would think it was their issue. Oh how I wish I could be more like him. So confident, so self accepting, so happy go lucky. I often tell him he is living in the "land of denial" , but really is seems like a nice place to live! It's better than the "land of what if's "!

Yah, the reaction things, they don't make sense. I do think, "this is crazy, why are you reacting in this way?"! Like you said B and C, just don't add up....what part of the equation is missing? Something is surely missing! The situations and the responses do not add up! Like you said, I'm sure that my over the top reactions all stem down to feeling rejected. If I've worked at cooking supper and the kids complain, I take it personal. It's not that they just don't like that type of food...they should be allowed to not like something...it is like they are rejection me...rejecting all the effort I put in to taking care of them...I have failed...I am not a good mother...I STINK...they don't care about me...I am not valued...I am just a maid...they aren't showing me love! They should show appreciation for what I do, that is just common curtisy, but they cannot give me the value I am looking for. Make sense??? I don't know what I'm saying anymore!!!!??????

 

[PrYou]

Wow all I can say is you have really given me some insight...I sat here reading all of your posts...which took a while...but fasinated by the reasoning and understanding behind it all. I look forward to hearing more from you. Hopefully I can have a more positive thought process and try to go deep within myself to find the root causes of what brings me into my bouts of depression and what keeps me there for so long. But what you have said has inspired me and has given the usual 'hopeless person' hope. So thank you for sharing!

 

[Alternate Carpark]

Hello Mask, Hehe, when you tell your head to SHUTUP, that's you being in control. You are in control of your thoughts not the other way round although when the negative thoughts flood it appears you have lost control but it is still you producing that flood of thoughts.

Notice how you say "All the negative assumptions start".
What's the key here? Assumption.
You create assumed data but treat it as fact and then the flood comes. And how quickly you go from assumption to fact, I know, I have been like that for years and am just starting to realise I have been believing lies for many years without taking the time to ask people why they do or say things that in my own world in my head I assume I know the truth about a situation.

Rejection has allies to help it, there's mistrust and paranoia.
Fear of asking questions that we think others will think we are weird if we ask them.
These are all part of how the process works and each person will have a unique process that has developed thru their life.
That's why I think it's important for each person to go in because there's no clear text book description of the process from A to Z.

Each person has had unique experiences and developed unique coping methods and dysfunctions and the only way to truely know how your's works is to look, look deep and hard.

One of the strangest things we humans do is we want to stay in our self created prisons.

Tried to find the story on the net but couldn't so I have to type it out.

There's a bear in a zoo, been there for many years and every day it walks 10 metres along the front of it's enclosure, turns and walks 10 metres back the other way. It repeats this all day long, year after year.

One day they decide to let it back into the wild.
When they arrived at the edge of a forest, huge mountains in the background and the sound of a river near by, the bear slowly peers out of the cage and proceeds to slowly walk toward the forest.

Then it turns around and walks back 10 metres, turns and walks back 10 metres and on and on it turned never going into the forest.

We become so accustomed to negative thought habits that even when presented with freedom we still continue as if we were still caged.
But the cage or prison we are in are simply our thoughts nothing more.
Another way of looking at it is our prison is a dark cell and when someone or even us opens the door the light of freedom is very strong and it hurts our eyes and we recoil back into the darkness.

Plus we are so used to living a certain way, even though it is painful, it has become our constant companion and we do not want to lose it.
You can even go so far to say they we can believe that we identify ourselves with it and if we remove the dysfunction or pain, we lose our identity.

How many times has it been written about convicted people struggling to adapt to their new freedom after so many years in prison.

So it is with our thoughts. Sometimes we convince ourselves that freedom from our dysfunction might be worse than the dysfunction itself.

And there's many more analogies like these in many books on the subject.

I would also like to specify that even though I have been diagnosed with "chemical Imbalance" depression I do not believe it for one second.

I do not believe my illness is incurable and I do not believe it is an illness.
They are my thoughts and I am in control of these thoughts. Depression is just a title, a term given to an over abundance of seemingly uncontrolable negative thoughts.

When you see the first negative thought arise Mask, that's when you pull yourself up and analyse the situation, before the feelings attach themself to the thoughts as well.
Confront yourself, demand an explanation and proof of these thoughts to check their validity.
It's hard to make new thoguth patterns but the more you practice it the easier it is to fall into the new patterns than the old negative ones.

The more you use the new patterns the old ones slowly fall apart, they disband.
A quick study on how neural paths are formed in the brain will explain the whole process of developing new thinking patterns.

That's all a habit it, a neural pathway ( a thinking pattern) that has been used over and over that you don't even have to decide to use it, it just naturally goes to it.
When you stop using it, it becomes weaker and eventually disbands.

 

[Alternate Carpark]

Wow all I can say is you have really given me some insight...I sat here reading all of your posts...which took a while...but fasinated by the reasoning and understanding behind it all. I look forward to hearing more from you. Hopefully I can have a more positive thought process and try to go deep within myself to find the root causes of what brings me into my bouts of depression and what keeps me there for so long. But what you have said has inspired me and has given the usual 'hopeless person' hope. So thank you for sharing!

Glad to have been of some service angel71769.
A rant is good if it helps someone.
I usually get online once a week so say hi to my friends and add to my threads if I have something.