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Friday, April 30, 2010

The FRS Factor of Depression

I have just returned from Florida bearing the ashes of my 96 year-old mother who passed from this physical world last week. It was not an unexpected death and my mother had expressed her willingness to proceed on her infinite journey. However I was glad that I had the tools for handling downer thoughts and sudden hits of depression which are expected at this time.

I was honored to be present at my mother's passing and I will write more about that a little later after I have had a chance to collect my wits and get over the nasty cold that I picked up in the last few days.

Meanwhile I pass on to you via the following essay, written previously, those bits of knowledge and strategies that helped me during the past week, strategies that have kept me balanced and sane for the last twenty-five years, the first part of my life having spent much too much of my time unbalanced and manic-depressive.

The FRS Factor of Depression

There is hardly anyone who hasn't suffered some form of depression, anxiety, and panic at some time or another. Depression can happen to anyone. These onsets can be sudden and unexpected; or they can be a constant companion for weeks, even months or years. The pain can be enormous. Sometimes depression happens suddenly when things are going well and there's no clear reason for any unhappiness. Other times depression and problems become inter-mixed.

It happens quite often that we think we are suffering from our problems when, in fact, we are suffering from our depression. If you have been suffering for a long time, it is probably the case that you are not really suffering from childhood trauma, loss of job, or problems with loved ones. You are probably suffering from a chemical imbalance. You then associate your pain with your problems because you are searching for a context for the pain that you don't otherwise understand.

The symptoms are not going away by themselves anytime soon. Even though depression is certainly cyclical, you can't count on its cyclical nature to enable depression to cure itself. But there is a cognitive behavior technique called "Brainswitching" that uses the principles underlying its cyclic nature to rescue you quickly from the agony of depression.

You cannot will yourself out of a deep depression because the pain is caused by a chemical imbalance. Sometimes you get so discouraged and feel so helpless that you can't do anything to get yourself out of it. This is because this imbalance is not only physically very painful, the stress chemicals are very hard on your metabolic system.

They sap your metabolic energy to the core making it almost impossible to bestir yourself in your own behalf. You need something very simple in the beginning just to get you started on helping yourself. You need something to do that is both simple and effortless. Forget about making any big positive moves in the middle of a bad depression, we are talking about baby steps in a positive direction. This is the safe and sure way out of depression.

What is Brainswitching? To get an idea of how it works you need a short explanation of the physiological components of our feelings--how do we feel what we feel? All emotion or pain is produced in the subcortex. Whenever we feel bad, signals from the emotional part of the brain (the subcortex) must travel upwards and be acknowledged in the thinking part of the brain (the neocortex) before a human being is able to feel any pain or emotion.

It is inconceivable to me that anyone would be successful in understanding, much less treating depression, without some knowledge of the small area in the neocortex called the "feelings receptor station." I call it the FRS factor of depression. But when I speak to mainly professional audiences no one has ever heard of this neuronal process of pain perception before.

In order to feel any emotion, or the pain of some bodily injury (which are all produced in the subcortex) we must make a cognitive judgment in the neocortex about the thing we are feeling! Signals from the nerve endings in our arm if we cut our skin, or signals from the subcortex that emotion is going on must move upward to the neocortex, and be received and acknowledged there before we can feel them!

This is the reason that athletes can actually break a bone during the heat of a game and don't experience any pain until after the competition is over. Their neocortical thought concentration on the game blocked the pain signals being sent to the neocortex that should have alerted them to the pain of their injury. This FRS factor is the basic principle upon which brainswitching was created.

The acknowledgment in the neocortex of pain produced in the subcortex is such a tiny event, brain-wise, that it happens beneath our level of awareness. But this small instantaneous process underlies the reason depression is cyclical. The fact that depression is cyclical is extremely important. All depression ends at some point, sooner or later, anyway. Why not move it faster along its natural continuum and get it to end sooner, rather than later? This is the whole point of Brainswitching.

Once aware of the pain perception process in the neocortex, we can take advantage of it to move ourselves out of depression rapidly. Much faster than would be the normal course of any depressive event. You can get so good at Brainswitching that depression will cease to be a major issue in your life. You can opt out of it quickly whenever it strikes.

Brainswitching uses simple, idiot-proof exercises you can do by rote because you have practiced them ahead of time, before you get depressed. These techniques can short-circuit the agony by disconnecting the message that you are depressed from one part of the brain to the other, bringing immediate relief from physical pain. If Brainswitching exercises are continued for at least 20 minutes, the chemical balance is almost completely restored. Brainswitching deals instantly with the physical pain of depression.

Intellectual understanding alone is not enough when depression hits. You need a plan ahead of time. You need to know exactly, specifically, what mind exercise, what particular poem or nonsense phrase you are going to use. Once depression hits, it's too hard to think any other thought other than the thought that you are depressed. You need to have a substitute thought for the depressed thought "at the ready" that you have decided to use no matter how you feel.

Prepare two or three different exercises such as a nursery rhyme, some phrase like "green frog," or some dumb song that is easy to sing repetitively. Start with one, and if it doesn't feel like it is working right at that moment, quickly choose another. Then hunker down with your chosen phrase or song, and hang on to it. Keep choosing it again when you lose concentration. For as many seconds as you can think your own thought, it will block the brain's acknowledgment in the neocortex that depression is being produced in the subcortex.

Remember that thoughts are very quick, so you don't have to worry that any depressive thought is going to overwhelm you. A depressive thought is over as quick as any other. It's just that you have feared depression for so long. Fear is very painful until you accept it and move ahead. How do you accept pain? You say okay and relax into it as you think about it. You will get much better at this in a very short time. As soon as the edge is off the major pain, get going on morning exercises or chores, and ease into your regular schedule. Don't forget to concentrate on what you are doing, not what you are feeling.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Your Greatest Asset. What is it?

Have you ever wondered what is your greatest asset? Wonder no more. Your greatest asset is your thought of the moment. Of course, conversely, your greatest liability is also your thought of the moment.

Think about it. Because the difference in your thought of the moment being either an asset or a liability is entirely your free choice. Nobody can force you to think a negative or fearful thought. If a negative or fearful thought happens to pop up, as it does with everyone, you can decide immediately not to think it, and think instead, some other non-negative, objective or more cheerful thought.

And that means that our thought of the moment is not only our greatest asset or our greatest liability, it is also our greatest responsibility. Like all great responsibilities, our thought of the moment depends upon our acceptance of responsibility for that thought--our decision and willingness to be courageous and proactive, and our refusal to be dependent, passive and reactive

Why is our thought of the moment so important? As the old saying goes, "As a man thinketh so shall he be." That's because the brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought--current, as in thought of the moment. And we make any thought dominant by our on-purpose decision to concentrate upon it, to repetitively think it over and over. Some people wonder why they are depressed and fearful, and the only thought that is playing in their brain, over and over, repetitively, is how depressed and fearful they are. Why don't they reject these thoughts and think more productive ones? They can.

Why is the old saying true?That we are what we think? Because there is a chemical consequence in the brain for every single thought we think. If we think a pleasant, non-emotional, or objective thought, we activate the neural activity in our neo-cortex, the thinking part of the brain.

If we think an emotional, negative or fearful thought, we activate the neural activity in the subcortex, the emotional part of our brain. Emotional thoughts that are pleasant are no problem. However, emotional thoughts that are unpleasant or fearful can, sooner or later, cause a triggering of our fight or flight response, our psychological defense mechanism. That will dump stress chemicals in our brain and cause a chemical imbalance that can lead to stress, anxiety and depression.

It is our great freedom that we can, at any moment, choose whatever thought we want to think. We can proactively choose to think those thoughts which will lift us upon the wings of cheerfulness, goodwill and hopeful joy. Or, if we are not careful, we can passively slide into thinking thoughts that will, sooner or later, chain us into the bondage of stress, fear and depression. The poet Richard Lovelace wrote of this when he penned these lines from his prison cell in 1642.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;,
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

I wrote my own version of this which, though perhaps more user friendly, is probably not as profound as the the lines of great poet. But here it is anyway.

If you're thrown into prison,
Or a slave, sold and bought.
No force can prevent you
From a positive thought.

It is easy to dismiss our thought of the moment as being forced upon us by circumstances beyond our control. Some dismiss their own thinking as basically inconsequential. Others treat their brain and its thinking process as some mystery no one can solve. Almost like it's none of their business what they think. That they have no control over their thinking so why even mess with it. Too many people believe that thinking is just something that happens to them rather than something they should do on purpose, as an act of will, as a good habit.

But people who are wise do not forget the importance of the fact that we can think whatever thought we want, at any moment, on purpose, and that the thought we think is the only thing that decides our mood, our zest for life, our ability to fully engage with present reality, and our greatest possibility of connecting in a meaningful and loving way with our fellow man

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Will Depression Keep Coming Back Forever? Can't I Get Rid of It for Good?

A woman asked my advice recently about going back on anti-depressants. Since starting to do mind exercises 3 years ago , she had not been on any medication. She said she was getting pressure from her friends to start medication again. Here was our conversation:

“I did so well for years without medication. But I have been worrying that depression still keeps coming back. And suppose it gets worse, and comes back even more and more often. And this woman at work keeps telling me I need to get back on medication. That I'm not being responsible. My friends are also telling me I need to get back on medication.”

“Are your friends on medication?”

”Yes. ”

”But you haven’t been on medication for 3 and a half years? ”

”No I haven’t. And I was doing good with the exercises. But I get tired of always having to do them. I want to be rid of depression entirely, and doing the exercises, I still get depressed. It keeps coming back. I get rid of it and it comes back. ”

”How was it like for you on Prozac? ”

”I hated it. I don’t like the rollercoaster emotions. But on Prazac I felt like a Zombie. I didn’t feel anything.”

“Can you get out of depression if you do the exercises?”

“Yes but it always comes back.”

”Your options are limited. ”

”What do you mean?

“First of all. If you’ve spent a lot of time being depressed, those neural patterns are strong in your brain. They are never going to go away. The depressive neural patterns are forever in the memory banks of your brain. And they can be triggered off by any number of things. That’s the bad news. The good news, though, is that you know how to get out of depression whenever it’s triggered off.

“And remember, ” I reminded her, ”medication won’t ever get rid of depression for good either. You have two options. You can be on medication like your friends, and not like the side effects, and become more and more afraid of depression and get weaker and weaker in your control over depression because you’re developing no coping skills.

“Or you can get rid of depression whenever it shows up by using mind exercises. It’s your choice. There’s no way to get rid of depression for good. But when you’re actively engaged in controlling it, and getting rid of it when it comes, you get better at it. You also become less afraid that depression has the power to take you over. I’m at that point. I no longer have any fear of Depression.

“Oh, it’s still plenty painful when it hits me. I sometimes even say to myself, OMG, this is terrible no wonder people kill themselves. But then that other neural pattern reminds me to get busy with an exercise. And I do. And then depression is gone until the next time.

“For me, I chose no medication and over the years I have learned to get out of depression so easily that the fact that it shows up a couple of time a week isn’t significant in my life. My depression gets triggered off. And at the same time the neural pattern that I have built over the years gets triggered off, the one reminding me to do an exercise. I do. The depression goes away in a few minutes.

My questioner then asked, “But how come some people don’t have depression? It’s not fair.”

“Now you are talking about someone like my husband,” I said. “He had always told me he never got depressed. But that’s not true. Everybody gets depressed. It’s just that some people have learned from childhood to distract their minds from downer, negative, fearful and depressive thoughts. It’s so second-nature and automatic to them to do it that they don’t notice the depression because it never advances beyond the very beginning stages.

“My husband used to say that he was never depressed and that I just saw myself as a tragic person. But after he attended one of my seminars, he changed his mind. After that lecture he said to me that although he had always thought of himself as someone who was never depressed, when he heard me talking about the brainswitching exercises, he remembered something.

From the time he was a very little boy, he explained, whenever he had felt sad, had that painful misery that he guessed people meant when they said depression, he would imagine some football or basketball play in which he carried the ball. He would concentrate on that until the painful feelings went away. He’s like other people I’ve met who say they are never depressed. But they all will admit to all kinds of interesting distractions, if they really give it some thought, that they learned from childhood to rid themselves of misery and painful anxiety.

“For me,” I said to the woman, “ I have decided that I have only one option. I refuse to think about depression when it pops up. I ignore it completely and do some dumb little mind exercise. It always goes away in a short space of time. Never lasts as much as half an hour.

“For you.” I suggested to the woman, “there are two options. You can take the medication, or you can do the harder work of building new neural patterns in your brain that make you a stronger, less fearful, more competent human being that is independent and strong.

“What do you mean independent.?”

“People who must rely on medication to control their thinking are emotionally dependent. They have not developed the skill to access their rational faculties when their emotions are raging. It’s a choice. Medication or exercise for depression. Emotional dependence or independence. You must make the choice.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Stigma Against Mental Illness? No Way!

I have read numerous articles over the years complaining that people who have been diagnosed with mental illness not only have to struggle with their illness but the universal stigma against the mentally ill.

I have wondered for a long time why people who have been diagnosed with mental illness don't stop complaining about the stigma, and why they don't put more energy into complaining about the diagnosis.

For instance. When I was diagnosed with manic-depression (they call it bipolar now) as a young woman in my 30s, I asked for some explanation of what, specifically, was my problem. I got such a hodge-podge of confusing-information that I rejected the manic depression diagnosis of me as medically unsound. The medical doctor could give me no medical explanation, or point to any physical evidence that proved I had a mental disorder.

The answer I got was "You feel helpless, you are in a lot of pain, you can't sleep, you feel depressed, you can't concentrate, and you have no zest for living."

"Yes," I said. But what is causing all of these problems?"

"Depression is causing your problems."

"You're telling me that depression causes depression.? That's like saying measles causes measles."

"Well," the psychiatrist continued, "Nobody really knows exactly what causes depression. It's some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain, associated with low serotonin levels and anti-depressants are the recommended cure for it."

"What do the anti-depressants do?" I asked.

"They make you feel better."


"Nobody really knows."

"Do the anti-depressants cure the chemical imbalance?

"That's not clear."

"Well," I said. "My father and brother have also been diagnosed with manic depression, and they are both on anti-depressants, and they are either depressed still, or they are manic. And not only that, they are each on different medications. And neither one is able to work anymore. They are both writers. I am a writer. How do I know how the anti-depressants will work on me?

"We'll try one. If that doesn't work, we'll try another. We just have to start you on some and see how they work for you."

"I don't think I want to take any."

The psychiatrist got very upset when I said that I didn't want to take his anti-depressants. He even raised his voice, looked sternly at me and said, "You can't come into my office and sit there like you are a student in some class taking notes on everything I say. That's not how it works, and this session is over."

My husband tells me that I am much too confronting and argumentative with doctors, and he's embarrassed by my attitude, and no wonder doctors don't like me. Maybe so. But here was somebody going to stick me with a mental illness diagnosis, and I didn't think he had a good reason to do so. I didn't think I got a good enough answer to what I thought was a reasonable question. What is physically wrong with me that needs to be fixed by drugs?

So I never took anti-depressants for my supposed bipolar mental disorder. And I accept no stigma. The whole thing is ridiculous. And that is the reason I went back to graduate school and became a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist. I'm one of those people who went into the field to help myself.

And I must say that I found very little in the psychology or psychiatry I studied in graduate school to help me out of my bipolar condition. I certainly did suffer a lot of pain from depression and manic episodes for many years. And not until I studied neuroscience did I finally understand what was wrong with me.

What was wrong with me was that I had no idea how my brain worked. I had no idea what a neurotransmitter was. I didn't know how I got from one thought to another. I didn't know what powered the brain. I didn't know that if you understood the neurological process of pain perception, you could get yourself out of any depressive episode with a few mind exercises.

I didn't know that the brain always followed the direction of its most current dominant thought, and you could make any thought dominant by thinking it over and over, repetitively. I didn't know that depression only happened in the subcortex, and there was never any depression in the neocortex. I didn't know you could quickly separate the message that you were depressed from one part of the brain to the other.

So for all you fellow sufferers of depression. Accept no stigma. And learn something about how your brain works. Probably your psychiatrist can't help you there, but there are books available so that you can educate yourself. It's no harder to learn how your brain works than it is to study to get a license to drive your car. Would you let your car take you anywhere it wanted? No. You learn how it works, you memorize the rules of the road, and you make your car take you safely where YOU want to go.

As long as you don't know how your brain works, it takes you where IT wants to go, and you are never safe. Now there's real stigma for you.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Job Hunting When Depressed

Dear A. B. Curtiss

I have two months to graduate from the University and I think I am still not ready to make interviews because they might notice my behavior and the way I talk. Applying for a job is my problem because I have a son and wife and I need to make living.

I need you to help me in this problem and is there special organisations might understand and can employ people like me.


Dear F.

You will have to explain to me how your behavior is different from other people and how the way you talk is different. Are you a foreigner in a land which doesn't speak your original language? What is the problem.

Dear A. B. Curtiss

Thanks a lot for the chance talking to you MRS Curtiss

Yes, I am from the middle east and live now in U. S. But it’s not the issue. The issue is I am recovering from depression very fast but sometimes I am brave to make interview because my mood is very good no depression anymore. Other times the symptoms of depression comes to me and stop me from becoming socialize with people. My mood is changing , not stable. I think sometimes worry comes to me and makes me depressed about finding a job. In fact I am smart and very socialized person, but the depression some times stops me to peruse my life and makes me lack confident.

I am really moody and the negative mood sometimes paralyzed me from talking fluency with other people specially the second language.

When my mood is good I feel I am willing to work and having full of confident. But once I feel down I give up and stops me from doing any activity.

I want to tell you things happens to my brain these days, I feel something like liquid in the brain moving around sometimes. This started when I decided to not stress my self from any negative thoughts and decided to melt and calm any negative one. I started to observe my thoughts closely than any time ever. I noticed this liquids flowing from time to another in different parts of my head and it brings good mood.

I do not know if you experience like this or have heard about it. I think this liquid is the brain chemistry trying to balance in the brain.

I used to be repressed but now I started to be aware of any repressed thoughts. This helped me a lot in fixing depression.

Applying for a job is my main concern in these days. This will require me to satisfy the employer by letting him have a good impression about my behavior because my major is Business.

IS there a way to find a job with the depression symptoms.


Dear F.

The liquid business is probably your imagination. But that's all right. It is probably a good mental image to use when you are calming yourself. Mental visualization is a good strategy many people use to help with all kinds of healing and change. It is a good way of putting your mind to work for you.

It seems you are very fearful as well. You might take a public speaking course to help with that.

You must be very firm with yourself and consider that any thoughts about depression is simply NO OPTION. This will help break the habit. Depression is nothing but a bad habit. Go on my blog and read You CAN stop worrying. It should help.

Your English needs improvement, so I would suggest you get that Rosetta Stone series and always play it in your car. And I would suggest you take a Toastmasters International speaking course to improve your self-assurance. It is in most cities and is very inexpensive. And get Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Lots of good stuff about getting along with people in that book. A. B. Curtiss

Friday, April 16, 2010

I Have Trouble Making Good Friends and Meeting Men

Dear Ms. Curtiss:

When I was 22 I had a nervous breakdown. The major trigger in helping me through it was your book. I have recommended the book to many people since then and I thank you for your help.

Whenever I get depressed, I pick up that old copy and it helps me to snap out of it. I am generally happy but I have one problem that is always a trigger for feeling awful. I was wondering if you could help me. I moved to a new city about 3 years ago and I find I've had a
problem making good friends and meeting men.

I am 30 and anxious to settle down so I feel the need to go out every weekend not only to meet men but because I don't want to feel lonely. I have tried very hard to make good friendships but I don't have people I can rely on I feel like every weekend it is a battle to make plans and it shouldn't be that way. I will call everyone I know, totally put myself out there, which is hard for me since I am shy, and ask acquaintances if they want to hang out.

I don't know if it is me or the culture but people just don't want to go out or they are leaving the city, have other plans, whatever. I even ask people who I don't even like that much! That is how much I don't want to be alone on a sat night. Its ridiculous but it causes me so much stress and pain. I feel like I'm begging for friends. It is truly a battle and I see no end in sight until I meet someone! Or maybe get over the obsession!

Do you think I should try to ignore it and learn to be happy on my couch with a book on a Saturday night or continue this struggle to have a good social life. Even my mother is worried about my social life, asking me what I am doing every Friday and Sat night. She just wants me to meet someone and so do I but it is doubly painful to be single and without reliable fun friends to go out with.

I am just wondering if you could help me think about this in a more positive way so that I don't freak out about an upcoming free sat night on a Monday. I know it is crazy but I truly do! I don't know whether I should stress it...my mom says I have to work at meeting a man...I have to put myself out there. I wish I could relax and not care. I just can't seem to find a healthy solution.
I hope you can offer some advice.

Thank you.
p.s. please don't include my name (first or last) if you post this!

Yes, you should continue to pursue friendship. If you are shy, it will be more difficult and you should be working on your shyness because it is either just lack of social practice or a bunch of repressed fear that you need to address. Probably a bit of both.

It is necessary to have like-minded friends. And yes, it could be worse, you could be in a bad relationship. At least you are free to move ahead right now, you don’t have to wait. And you should move ahead with addressing your shyness. Read chapter ten in Depression is a Choice for getting in touch with repressed fear and take a Toastmaster’s, International course in public speaking. This will help immensely. There are groups in every city and they are very inexpensive. You will not only be addressing your own social skills you will be seeing you are not the only shy one as you see others working on their own skills.

I would also suggest you read Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is an old book but a wise one.

Today many people use the Internet to connect with people, although you have to be careful and meet in public places. It may be hard to connect in such a busy world in a new city. I’m sure you are not the only lonely person out there. I would suggest you look up some current books on dating ideas on amazon I would suggest that you check the local papers for free events of the kind you are interested in so that you may meet like-minded people at them.

Join book clubs, single clubs, photography clubs, any kind of net-working or community group is a good idea, church groups or college groups if you have an affiliation with those. And I would also suggest volunteer work rather than just sitting at home. You may meet people who are also volunteering and at least you will be with people. A. B. Curtiss

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Jollying the Unhappy Brain

I thought to myself this morning that I wasn’t feeling all that exuberant for the day ahead. I don’t like the feeling of feeling down so I kind of grappled around in my mind for a better head on the day.

Hey, I thought to myself, remember that great exercise that one of your book editors told you? Why don’t you just do that, for Heaven’s sake, instead of just hanging out in this icky gray world . So that’s exactly what I did. This exercise always works. The only hard thing is to remember to actually do it. It’s Exercise #12 in my book Brainswitch out of Depression called “Practicing Scales.”Here it is in the words of my editor:

“Yesterday the pool-cleaning man told me he did not think life was worth living. He said he hated himself, and he was getting more tired of it all each year. I told him I had used a exercise to get me out of depression for years, and I proceeded to tell him about it. I gave him my “scale” from 0-10. 0 being suicidal and 10 being joyful/ecstatic, 5 being ‘no feelings at all.’ I told him I had learned to gauge throughout the day where I was on the scale, and once I knew whether it was 3, or 4, or whatever, I could find a way to bump myself up ONE POINT.

This could be done instantly by appreciating something—the comfort of one’s shoes, for instance, or the color of a plastic paper clip. And then you could bump yourself up another point by finding something else to appreciate even more. And before you knew it, you could find yourself in the positive range of the scale, above 5, and this was how your life would begin to transform. Garbage in, garbage out. Appreciation in, appreciation out. It has worked for me.

The pool-man was astounded. He told me he could see the scale right there in his mind, and he knew he could use it all the time. He told me it made complete sense, and that he had always known how depressed he was, but he had never been able to come up with the ‘initiative’ to change. Now he saw how he could make a difference in his own life.

The funny thing is that I almost went to my usual pool yesterday, but at the last minute decided to drive to my ‘old’ pool, which I almost never go to anymore. Why?? I think I was meant to cross this pool-man’s path and offer him this small thing. A small scale, literally, but with big implications.”

I guess I thought of the exercise because I was swimming in my own pool and although I didn’t remember the entire exercise (I didn't remember the ten point scale, but I remembered she had said something about thinking about the comfort of your feet in your shoes, and even noticing the color of a paper clip) but I remembered that something as simple as thinking about small things like that could move you, mentally, into a better place.

I didn’t even remember that I was supposed to APPRECIATE or FEEL GRATEFUL about the good feeling of my feet in my shoes or the color of the paperclip. But I did want to get into a better place, so I started looking around and noticing something to feel good about.

I thought about the good feeling of my arms moving through the water in a back stroke. I hadn’t noticed that good feeling before. I guess I was too busy thinking I felt icky. Then I noticed the loveliness of the small cloud overhead. And since the brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought, I started noticing all the pleasant things around me—the trees, the movement of the palms.

So simple. The gray icky feeling was no longer being processed by my brain. It had moved on to noticing the beauty around me and I had moved on to a better place. Not only did I no longer feel icky, I had learned something. I realized that just the simple process of bothering to NOTICE the good about anything around you is the same thing as gratitude. Noticing is the same as appreciating. Noticing is the same as gratitude. I didn’t know that before.

As I climbed out of the pool I realized that I had moved away from my gray, icky place. I just wasn't there anymore. I was in a good place.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Get Rid of Repressed Fear

I was booksigning over the weekend when a man asked my advice. He had suffered from an unreasonable fear of throwing up since he was four years old, and wanted my suggestion as to how to rid himself of this old fear. He had been to psychiatrists and had tried hypnotherapy, but the extreme fear persisted.

"You're not really afraid of throwing up" I said to him. "It's just a good focal point for all your repressed fear that you have never dealt with. As long as you can distract yourself with this one unusual, irrational fear, this phobia that can't be cured, you fool yourself into not doing the hard, nitty gritty work of getting rid of your old ordinary repressed fears."

All phobias, all social anxiety comes from repressed fear. All PTSD comes from old repressed fear. The difference between people who recover and people who don't recover from PTSD after a traumatic adult event, such as combat duty, is not the difference in severity of the trauma. People who have always dealt with their fears along the way will recover from traumatic events fairly quickly. People who have a lot of repressed fear will not.

People whose parents were abusive, or clueless about helping their children deal with ordinary childhood fears such as the first day of school, the first show and tell, first party invitation, the first bullying incident, don't develop the tools for confronting everyday fears. So they repress them right into adulthood.

Not to worry, however. Repressed fears can be confronted at any point in your life. It is a simple thing to do but extremely painful. Most people have no idea how to do it. Most people have no idea how important fear is to their lives.

Fear makes us uniquely human because it is the basis for compassion and cooperation. Our compassion for others comes from our capacity to imagine our own fear were we to find ourselves later suffering the same situations in which we see others struggling.

Fear is the basis for all personality. Without fear we are mechanical, cold, aloof and do not need anybody or anything. We have all experienced people who are extremely retarded, and seem to have no fear or angst. Without the fear that gives us our human vulnerability to the risk of choice, we become bland and stony-faced shells of non-personhood.

It is a hard thing. If we haven't come to grips with our fear, our life is hell because fear can be painful and terrifying, especially when it escalates into phobias, social anxiety, depression and panic attacks. But if we are brain-damaged and have lost the capacity for fear, or if we are somehow psychologically or emotionally cut off from the pain of our fear, we are never depressed-- but we have no life at all

It is fear that sparks the psychological internal combustion engine that powers our life. Anthropology tells us that for an organism to survive, even one as advanced as Homo sapiens, nature must provide it with an instinct to seek that which will insure its survival. The self-love that is the extension of our primal needs for food, shelter and sex is empowered by the fear of not having those basic survival needs met. We are rooted in primal fear. But we are not supposed to stay stuck down in the mud of our roots. We are supposed to flower from our roots.

When we decide to get in touch with our fear, we will probably not have to search very long. We have little fears every day of our lives that we have learned to avoid. Now we can learn to pay attention to them.

One of the first little fears I discovered was that I was afraid to make phone calls if I had to tell someone something they didn't want to hear, or if I was expecting some disappointment or rejection of some kind. I began to be aware that I kept putting off phone calls of this type by waiting until "later," or forgetting to call at all, or losing the number.

It was less painful for me to blame my non-calling on the fact that I was lazy or forgetful or disorganized than to admit I was afraid. That was because I knew how to handle laziness, or forgetfulness or disorganization. I had no idea what to do about my fear.

Once I got more user-friendly with my fear, because I was going out of my way to confront it rather than avoid it, it was interesting to see how little power it really had. My fear turned out to be just like a big dog with a huge bark and menacing fangs that, when faced down, whimpers and licks your hand, wagging its tail to win your approval. These days when I think about these kinds of calls, I can still feel the fear buzz around the inside of my chest, almost like a little electric shock. I just carry the pain of my fear buzz straight to the phone and get the calls over with.

The other thing to understand about fear is that the way we avoid the pain of our own fear is blaming. If we are not wise about our fear, we avoid it by distracting ourselves from it by blaming other people. Thus, we are not afraid, the other person is an asshole, or verbally abusive.

A good way to get in touch with repressed fear is any time we find ourselves blaming anyone or anything. At that very moment, we can change the focus from the object of our blame back to ourselves and any feelings we might be having at the moment. One clue is that fear is painful. IT HURTS! Even a little fear gives a certain buzz around the heart, or stomach area, or in the throat. Breathing is usually more shallow.

Today I still have fear, but I have a different relationship to it. For one thing, it is now invited rather than uninvited. I have welcomed my fear back into my life. Fear is no more to me than the roller coaster I rode when I a kid: "Whew, I was scared to death, that was a good one!"

Another good way to get in touch with repressed fear is studying things we "hate" to do. Hate is simply fear projected onto some object. For instance, although I don't mind at all filling the dishwasher, I "hate" to empty it. Sometimes when I remember that hate is just projected fear, I focus my awareness on any fear that might be going on by taking my focus off how much I hate emptying the dishwasher. Sure enough, I can always catch that little electric buzz, or at the least, the tight throat, the shallow breathing. This awareness has elevated emptying the dishwasher to a whole new experience. Once we get in touch with little fears, we can go on to bigger ones.

I used to hate it when my husband started yelling at me about something. When I took the focus away from hating my "verbally abusive" husband to checking out my gut level of fear, I got in touch with a whole mother lode of repressed fear. This was also true about those sudden, unexpected loud whoops and calls, not directed at me at all, that he lets loose while watching a football game on TV. They can still set bolts of fear swhooshing through my entire body.

Ultimately I began to understand that it was not so much that the yelling FILLED me with fear. It was more like the yelling was a flashlight that illuminated a lot of unfinished, repressed fear that had been raging around inside of me since childhood, and brought it to my attention so I could let it finish by just feeling it.

My husband's yelling, which I used to hate, turned out to be a great gift. We don't have to arm ourselves against fear, but rather with fear and by fear. When we willingly undergo our fear, we understand that fear is a power source that comes from the inside-it is not caused by an assault from the outside. Once we are no longer children and have "separated" from our parents, no one can put fear in us; there is no law of psychology, biology or physics that would allow for that.

So my advice to the person who was deathly afraid of throwing up was to start accepting and embracing the little everyday fears he had learned to ignore. He should accept the fear, no matter how painful, whenever it arose. He should let it rise up and finish itself until, little by little, the phobia would simply fade away as it became no longer psychologically useful as a way to distract himself from his repressed fear.

Monday, April 12, 2010

You CAN Stop Worrying

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to post some of my mind exercises on my blog .

Here is the first one. I call this exercise “THIS IS NOT AN OPTION” It’s an exercise I use over and over. It works every time. And, of course, due to the brain’s neuroplasticity, the more I use the exercise, the stronger the neural pattern is, and the more available the exercise is when I need it. The exercise is now linked physically in my brain to most of my habitual negative thoughts so that when the thoughts start nagging at me, the “THIS IS NOT AN OPTION” exercise sparks up in my brain. Let me explain.

One time I stopped myself in the middle of a really negative, painful mind rant. I can’t remember what the anxious worry was all about. This is typical about mind rants. Things that seem so important at the moment are usually nothing but habitual fears making another pass through our brain to see if we will take the bait. Then, of course, after a couple of hours of anxious worrying, we can get a good depressive episode going.

Why do we worry? It's our bodyguard brain's way of keeping us safe. We need the capacity to worry so we can see real dangers ahead. But we can't let our thug bodyguard of a brain do its thuggery without some intelligent oversight. We need a captain of the bodyguards--us. It isn’t as if we could do anything about these fears at the moment. If we could do something, we’d do it and be thinking about what we were doing , and not be worrying about what we were thinking

Anyway, I stopped myself in mid-worry with this thought: THIS IS POINTLESS! Funny that I didn’t think of such a perfectly obvious thing before--that thinking a negative, painful thought is the world’s most pointless activity

I pursued this new thought, which I later realized is a great path out of my anxious worry. I thought to myself: There is absolutely no good thing that can come from thinking this thought. There is absolutely no good reason to think these terrible things. Even if these things are all true, it does me no good, and it does nobody else any good, for to me to think them. Thinking these things means I am doing self-focused thinking. Self-focused thinking is the path to depression and the road to Hell.

Why should I keep thinking that I feel bad? There is no earthly reason to think such a thought. Therefore I will not think such a thought. Instead of thinking ‘I feel terrible’, I will think ‘I am feeling better and better, better and better.’ Instead of thinking my child is hurting I will think ‘my child is getting better and better.’ Instead of thinking ‘I am going bankrupt,’ I will think, ‘the money is coming. The money is coming.’ Instead of thinking ‘The house is a mess’ I will think, ‘The house is getting cleaner and cleaner.’”

This is not a housekeeping exercise or a new-age way to financial success. This is a mindkeeping exercise. This exercise is to sweep away the pain and precursors to depression that are caused by anxious worry and stressful thinking. The mind can only think one thought at a time. Our bodyguard mind can’t think its habitual anxious thought if we insist on thinking some other non-anxious thought. We just need to get going and think it.

We can outsmart the mind and easily get it to think our thought. The only hard thing is to actually do it. Well, there is one other hard thing. The other hard thing is to REMEMBER that we don’t have to think the bodyguard mind’s habitual thought. That’s the bad news. The good news is that once you do intrude your own thought in on the mind’s worryng, you form a neural pattern that remains in your memory system. Each time you use this rational line of thinking, the neural pattern gets stronger and stronger.

Anybody is smarter than their own bad thoughts. Oh, sure, if we are going to cower in fright, and be a helpless victim to our own minds, our thoughts will pin us to the wall and depression will gun us down without mercy. Why show ourselves to depression at all?

We need to remember that depression is only in the subcortex, the feeling part of the brain, and depression is never in the neocortex, the thinking part of the brain.We can brainswitch from the subcortex to the neocortex any time we want to by thinking any neutral, non-emotional thought.

So why not keep out of depression’s way (the subcortex) by escaping to the neocortex, where depression can’t go. All we have to do is follow a line of thinking that is rational, cognitive, or even nonsensical. Any kind of non-emotional thinking sparks up neural activity in the neocortex and lessens neural activity in the subcortex.

If we brainswitch for a few minutes, by thinking non-emotional thoughts, we’ll be up in the neocortex while depression, stress, and anxious worry will be down there in the subcortex all by themselves, without us. When anxious worry starts eating at us, we can say to ourselves, “THIS IS NOT AN OPTION.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Imprisoned by Depression All My Life

Dear A. B Curtiss

Thank you

Just found your sight! Just started reading. Thanks a million. I've been imprisoned by depression and fear all my life. Shyest person ever born. I face anxiety every day, ever-present gloom. I am a CPA and have to deal with people. I do persevere.

I think I have stumbled on something good here with your website.

Yes, I'm on Lexapro. I've been on Prozac and Zoloft. Can't tell any difference while on the medication, just hoping one day it will work.

I do however feel better when I drink water regularly.

I don't know why I won't keep that up, because I know it works. That is the question I was looking for the answer to today, any advice?

I self diagnosed myself as borderline where your same sex parent rejects you when you are fairing well and loves you only when you need them. I'm embarrassed to tell you what I think.

Didn't mean to write so much.

Dear J.

It's good to drink a lot of water. It feeds all your vital organs including your brain. The human body is more than 50% water. But it takes effort to drink a lot of water. I don't know why that is. I drink 40 ounces of water every morning as a regular practice before I eat anything. I have found it is easier to drink hot water than cold. Then I found out, quite by chance, that drinking hot water is better for you than drinking cold water. But hot or cold. It is an effort to drink water--making it a morning ritual gets it done the best.

The best cure for depression is to learn how your brain works so you can stop being the slave to your own thinking.

The best cure for shyness is to take a course in public speaking. There are Toastmaster's International groups in every city in the country. They are very inexpensive. Also read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's an old book but a wise one.

Don't worry about being rejected by your parents. At least they gave you life and now it's up to you to live it. So stop blaming them for anything. As a matter of fact if you stop blaming entirely you will get in touch with all your repressed fear. When you have done this you will no longer be a shy person. Shyness is just another word for fear.

As you will learn from my book Depression is a Choice, blame is the mechanism we use to avoid our own fear. I'll be glad to answer any questions you have. What are you presently doing to help yourself in a pro-active way when you get depressed?

A. B. Curtiss

Dear A. B.

Thanks for writing back!!

I read the intro to your book Thursday and printed off a few pages to read and re-read. This weekend I used the technique of stopping the out of control thinking with "You can't figure it out", and "thinking doesn't CHANGE anything" and just generally re-directing from ME to more outer-directed thoughts.

I also reminded myself that thinking bad things were happening and were going to happen FEELS like they really have happened. The part about depression not being reality based has helped a lot too. I must get your book as the part I have read so far is the best advice I’ve every had and I need tools.

I was raised in a very rural area and had several sisters, raised Catholic (the guilt thing) and everything was important. Being shy is being fearful. I have gotten better with practice

It would be something to master this thing! I must teach my children (as needed) when I learn. When my oldest was little and was afraid, I told him to "change the channel." I am enthusiastic to learn to do this myself. My children need a non- depressed mother.

I was doing nothing proactive about my depression before, except to get medicine from the doctor. I didn't know I could help myself. I thought feelings were something you had, and you were supposed to have. I didn't know I could pick them!

As a child of fear, feelings were a big part of my life. My mother told me within a year or two that she knew something was wrong with me. I was so scared in school that all I would move during class was my eyes and hands. I would hide in the bathroom between classes to keep from being seen. It was really bad! I chewed the wood off my pencil in the first grade to keep from asking the teacher to sharpen my pencil. On Sunday afternoon I was washed in the dread of going to school. etc. it's a lot....Just needed to let you know a little more history. I did go to counseling a few months, but she just wanted to me to talk. What you offer are tools!!

Again, thank you! J.

Dear J.
I’ll be glad to answer any questions as you read my books.

A. B.Curtiss

Monday, April 5, 2010

You CAN Get out of Depression as an Act of Will!

Psycologists tell us that we can’t help ourselves, that we are helpless when depression hits because depression deprives us of our will. This is not true. Depression does not deprive us of will or option. It merely deprives us of motivation due to the heavy toll the stress chemicals wreak upon our metabolic system. If depression deprived us of will, we would not be able to do so much as to lift up our own arm. Will is not quantitative. It is qualitative. Motivation is quantitative. It is the feeling of wanting to do something, in degrees of more or less.

Depression per se does not really limit our behavior. There’s nothing you can do usually that can’t do while being depressed. You still have the will to do whatever you want, even if you don’t feel like it. You do other things as a matter of will that you don’t feel like--writing a report, getting dinner, doing the laundry. You just haven’t applied this same principle to depression. Mainly because some people in the psychological community have you convinced that you can’t.

You can opt out of depression but belief is a very powerful force. Once we believe something, it is human nature to discount contradictory information as incorrect or irrelevant. Therefore it’s hard to get ourselves out of depression when people we respect, like best-selling authors of books such as Noonday Demon,like doctors and psychiatrists, tell us that we can’t do it as an act of will. We certainly can get out of depression as an act of will.

Getting out of depression is harder than getting dinner or doing laundry, admittedly, but the fact remains that it is just as doable. Especially if you are alerted to the difference between will and motivation. Even in the depths of depression, a person still has the capability to change their behavior at any moment. It is a simple enough thing to stop crying and do some little exercise or mind trick. It is a simple thing to take your attention off bad feelings and concentrate your attention, instead, on the weave of the material on your sofa. It isn’t easy, because you lack motivation. But you can do it when you remember that you still have will, free will.

It’s tough to take action when depression first hits because you have almost zero motivation. But if you remember you still have will, still have capability, you will not be fooled by the strategy of your depression to render you helpless by depriving you of motivation.

Remind yourself that you have will often enough when you aren’t depressed and can concentrate on it fully. Then you can start to build a neuronal thought pattern that will show up on its own, triggered by learned association, because you have linked it with your depression. When depression hits you will feel the same pain but a new thought will occur to you, “I still have will, and I can do an exercise and get out of this.” This is just one example of how you can physically change your brain by changing your thinking and behavior.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Dear A. B. I Hope Your Depression Comes Back and You Kill Yourself

I debated about posting this letter on my blog.because it is so incendiary. I decided to go ahead and post it because in addition to getting thank you letters for my work from people who have profited from my ideas, I also get hate mail from people about my work who can’t believe that their depression is not caused by some overwhelming outside force over which they have no control. Therefore they feel totally insulted by the title of my book, like I am rubbing salt into the wounds of their depression.

The title, Depression is a Choice, I admit, is probably not great but the title was my publisher’s idea, not mine. My idea for the title of my book was “The Woman Who Traded her Mind for a Green Frog.

But hate mail comes from someone who is suffering pain and fear and pain and fear is what my work is all about.

Dear A. B. Curtiss

Depression and other disorders are due to chemical imbalances in brain (myth my ass). It’s true meds. are not for all but to write a book that depression "is a choice”?" WELL F---K YOU! I HOPE YOURS COMES BACK BAD AND YOU KILL YOURSELF. THAT WILL SHOW HOW GOOD YOUR SHITTY IDEAS ARE. GO TO HELL. TiggyCat

Dear TiggyCat,

Thank you for your letter. I will post it on my blog. http://MobyJane.blogspot.com/

You are right. Depression is always due to a chemical imbalance in the brain but what causes the chemical imbalance? What causes the chemical imbalance is the triggering of the fight or flight response, our basic psychological defense mechanism. And the chemical imbalance can be remarkably altered in just a few minutes by mind exercises.

There is a chemical consequence in the brain for every thought you think. If your thoughts are angry, anxious, negative, sooner or later the fight or flight response will trigger and dump stress chemicals in your brain. These stress chemicals are very hard on the metabolic processes of the body, then comes the downer, helpless painful feeling of depression. If you spend a long time thinking about how depressed you are, you form a strong neural pattern in the brain that can later be triggered off by learned association.

Did you doctor ever tell you that the way you get from one thought to the other is learned association? This is important because this knowledge can get you out of any depressive episode. There is nothing forcing you to think about your depression. It is just a habit. A habit is a strong neural pattern in your brain that you have made through repetitive thinking or behavior over a period of time. Like playing the piano, you have been practicing depression so your brain is very good at it.

Some people get depressed and don't think about it, the don't form a strong neural pattern in the brain, and they don't suffer the way you seem to be suffering. They have learned to think about something else until the chemical balance equalizes and the depression lifts. You could also learn to think about something else and the chemical balance will equalize.

Here's the other thing that your doctor has probably never told you. He has probably never explained to you the process of pain perception. This is key to getting out of depression and how mind exercises work. Don't get me wrong. It is not easy to get out of depression by learning to think differently but thousands of people have learned how to do it. It is hard, at first, but it is simple.

The process of pain perception consists of the following: Depression, as well as physical pain if you cut your hand, or any emotion of any kind, only occurs in the subcortex of your brain. There is never any depression, pain, or emotion in the neocortex. Also for a human being to feel any emotion or pain, or depression, the signals must go up the brain and not only be received but acknowledged in the neocortex.

This moment of acknowledgment is usually beneath your awareness. . It is the reason hypnosis works and the reason that a player in a football game can even break a bone and feel no pain until the game is over because his neocortical concentration on the brain has prevented his neocortical acknowledgement in the neocortex that pain is being produced in the neocortex.

I've tried to hit the highlights for you about depression. I spent 500 pages in my book Depression is a Choice to explain it more fully and give examples. I spent 300 pages in my book Brainswitch out of Depression to give a lot of information about how your brain works so you can learn how to control your own thinking. Don't give up and think you have to remain depressed. You can do something about it. A.B. Curtiss