This blog is my way of sharing the knowledge and understanding I have gathered during my long but successful struggle with a deep, long lasting depression.
Resulting in my belief that if you can think your way into depression, then you can equally think your way back out, providing you have the correct information.
I just hope this will help you to.
Thanx Gray
Whilst mulling over my own depressed state one day, It suddenly struck me that if someone were depressed due to being trapped, exploited, abused, demoralised and totally without hope, would they really be mentally ill?. Or would they simply be suffering from a natural understandable response brought on by their obvious worrying, hopeless existence?
Milton Erickson, a very respected, well known psychiatrist came to the conclusion, long ago that the majority of mental illness is directly due to a conflict between the conscious and subconscious mind. What I have subsequently realised myself is that the vast majority of everyday people such as you and I are extremely unconscious of our own unconscious. Therefore, how do we really know what our poor unconscious minds are trying to deal with each and every day? Therefore, if you are as I was, totally unaware of the nature and very real limitations of our subconscious minds, then you would not be aware of the very real affect the events in your life have had on you subconsciously. Your subconscious could literally be seeing your own life as something akin to the hopeless, nightmare scenario those in the Natzy death camps faced each and every day, where behaviour that would nowadays be put under the category of major depression abounded greatly. Therefore your depression could very well be simply a natural, reasonable response to your own, deep, unconscious,nightmare of a life.
When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself "How do I feel about the day ahead"?
Involuntary means not being in control
Although this is not the whole story, I have come to appreciate that depression derives its truly overwhelming power from a natural hard wired preprogrammed, *involuntary* response hidden deep within our ancient, primitive but extremely powerful subconscious minds. As I say, this is not the hole story but a very important part of it.
Of the many life enhancing responses we humans have at our disposal, the 'fight or flight response' is the most well known of all. Therefore, just as a precise set of conditions are required to trigger (for example) the flight part of the fight or flight response, such as:
1 Being aware of serious danger
2 Having no confidence in your ability to fight back and win
3 But luckily being aware of an escape rout
so I also believe depression is also a triggered response to a particular, precise set of conditions (emotions, feelings, fears, realities, beliefs etc..)
Now ask yourself, If
1 Being aware of serious danger
2 Having no confidence in your ability to fight and win
3 but this time being aware that you are completely trapped in this hopeless situation for as long as you could ever imagine?
What do you think would be the psychological and physical result???
So just as the correct combination of numbers will open up the door to a safe, and the correct combination of letters, numbers, upper case, lower case will let you into your E-mail account, so too will the correct combination of circumstances and emotional states, unfortunately open up that dark, gloomy, hopeless door that leads to depression.
The Triune Brain
The first and most basic part of our brain is known as the reptilian brain, The R complex or the fore-brain and is found right at the top of the spinal cord, deep at the heart of our brains, the foundation of our mind and bodies survival and is responsible for all essential body functions, reproductive functions, eating, sleeping and instinctual survival behaviours involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays.
In other words, this part of our brain is responsible fore basic survival and therefore the source of the fight n flight response. No wonder it is known as the reptilian brain.
The next part is the Paleomammalian Complex better known as the Limbic System or Mammalian Brain and this provides us with even more sophistication, mainly emotional motivation such as those involved in reproductive behaviour, and those subtle, sensitive feelings associated with parenthood.
Finally we have the Neomammalian complex/Neo cortex, the most sophisticated piece of equipment in the known universe, conferring the ability for language, abstraction, planning, and perception, even the God spot.
So what I am trying to highlight hear is the fact that our most basic functions relating to responding to danger are all part of the most primitive, unreasoning, machinelike part of our brains (the reptilian brain). Therefore IF my theory is correct and depression is in fact simply the result of us unwittingly triggering one of those essential hard wired survival responses that help us deal with danger, then if we can truly understand this and take the proper steps to avoid unwittingly triggering this natural response to danger, then depression could soon be a thing of the past, Just as it has become history to me.
Until next post, Thanx and hope things go well.
