27/08: Check out my squidoo lens
07/05: Worry
I've come to find out after doing the allowing approach for a while now and other techniques that going to the mind especially when there are negative thoughts is not worth it. It seems like a good idea to stay with the negative thoughts when they start showing up, but it actually gets me nowhere. Of course, people can't stop the worrying automatically especially when they start getting involved with the first negative thought that leads to the next negative thought and the cycle starts. This cycle sets the mood for depression, anxiety and whatever the negative thoughts generate. So it is not a good idea to fight the cycle after it happens. It is a good idea to just make the decision to withdraw from the negative thinking field when you become aware of the first negative thought and you start feeling that the negative thought is pulling on your attention. On other words, you attention is so much on what is going on your head, you start to become one and identify with the negative thoughts. One way to lower this association with the negative thoughts is by doing the allowing approach regularly. Another way is by manipulating your attention from you mind into your body or outside by asking yourself a question like "am I still breathing" or "is my arm still there". It can also be done by doing something that
takes you away from the negative thoughts for a while like exercising, watching a good movie, listening to music, anything that takes you totally from your mind. Negative thoughts are convincing especially when you associate with them, and there will be no real benefits of reasoning with them or fighting them aggressively by trying to control them. You can transform your reaction to them by acknowledging them and allowing them and then they start to change due to your tolerance with their presence. This help stops the worrying associated with the cycle of thoughts.
takes you away from the negative thoughts for a while like exercising, watching a good movie, listening to music, anything that takes you totally from your mind. Negative thoughts are convincing especially when you associate with them, and there will be no real benefits of reasoning with them or fighting them aggressively by trying to control them. You can transform your reaction to them by acknowledging them and allowing them and then they start to change due to your tolerance with their presence. This help stops the worrying associated with the cycle of thoughts.
14/04: Oprah and Eckhart Tolle
Oprah has teamed with Eckhart tolle to discuss his book a new earth which is about being awakened. I watched some of the episodes and I think there are great excercise that can help people who suffer from social anxiety and depression. Oprah and eckhart do these exercises that take the attention from the mind into the body or the breath in a way that is effective in shifting the attention. One of the exercise that Oprah and eckhart do and I found effective with my social anxiety along with the allowing approach is the breathing exercise in which Oprah and eckhart ask the question, "am I still breathing?", this automatically take the attention from the busy mind into the conscious breathing. I tried this and found it beneficial, when I have too many thoughts-- it is a refreshing break from the thoughts. It is also very relaxing for someone who suffer from anxiety and bring about a peaceful feeling for someone who has the heavy depression feelings. Oprah and Eckhart also do this exercise where they ask the question "is my hand or arm still there?" and this takes the attention again from the mind into the body and into what Eckhart call the inner aliveness or being. This inner aliveness exercise is refreshing as well and when I do it I can feel the tingling sensation in my hand and after a few minutes I feel relaxed. Oprah and Eckhart also talk about experiencing things in a new way and from a fresh perspective by adding the line " this is called ------". For instance, this is called a tree, this will allow people to experience the tree in a new way, because this is called makes seem like it is not actually a tree, but it is called that, you see the difference. And so I thought that I can do the same thing with anxiety and depression by allowing the feelings, but
14/04: Thoughts
For the longest time, I lived in my head and still do occasionally only now I don't believe every thing I think. I would get the thought, " I am worthless", and suddenly I get extremely depressed and I would be in that depression for a week and more. I would get the thought, "I am awkward" and I would just avoid people and even my family for weeks. I would have positive thoughts and I would get excited and happy that I have positive thoughts. Then I would get negative thoughts and suddenly I am very depressed and sad and broken. It is truly a roller coaster and I am always riding-- up and down, negative and positive, happy and sad. When I started doing the allowing approach, I also started giving myself the permission to have negative thoughts. At first I only knew the philosophy, but wasn't really sure if it will work. The philosophy being "what you resist persist", so the more I resist having those negative thoughts, the more they persist. Sometimes I resisted and that was okay too, but I tried to acknowledge my thoughts whether I think they're good or bad and allow them to be. After a few months of doing that, I began to notice that thoughts are unreliable especially when they just hit you. I know that they serve a purpose sometimes, but I certainly don't see a purpose for depressing or anxious thoughts. I also noticed that they come and I don't invite them or control their flow, they're just there all of the sudden. This made me realize that looking for a specific thought is not realistic. Chasing after positive thoughts is not beneficial when they don't show up.
14/04: social anxiety II
Social anxiety is the discomfort to fear of social situation; it varies in degrees and in different situation. With my social anxiety as well as with many other people who suffer from social anxiety, I noticed that fear of judgments is a huge factor. Social anxiety situations bring about this underlying fear of judgments. in my case, because my social anxiety was so familiar to me, I was in this cycle of knowing what judgment I feared and yet I discredited them. The judgments associated with my social anxiety were always there where ever there were social situation. So with my social anxiety, I had judgment and beliefs that made me more uncomfortable even fearful of social situations yet I always overlooked them. So when I started doing the allowing approach with my social anxiety, I had to sometimes write down my recurring thoughts that were very familiar and I often regarded as insignificant. I had everyday thoughts that were repressed and when I started allowing, they began to show themselves to me. With my social anxiety, I always used to feel down and disappointed after almost every social interaction especially group interactions which I tried to avoid at all cost. So when I started allowing, the thoughts that came across my head a lot were " I am worthless." , " I will never be at the same level with everyone else.", "I am not normal." Now these thoughts were very familiar and part of my everyday social anxiety struggle, so I just treated them like a routine that was supposed to be there. It is funny, but I never regarded them as not true or even argued with their validity, I just accepted them and lived by them unconsciously until I started examining them.
19/03: ALLOWING
ALLOWING negative thoughts and feelings means allowing whatever thoughts, negative or positive, good or bad, rational or irrational that are associated with the disorder or not and experiencing the feelings completlely. Allowing; however, doesn't mean approving of those negative thoughts or feeling or embracing them. It simply means giving those thoughts and feelings space so that they can flow and thus become less intense and powerful. Allowing is necessary because what you resist persist, so the more you resist those thoughts and feeling, the more intense and powerful they get.
13/03: Depression
My depression always seemed like just a heavy feeling over my chest and sometimes I felt like my heart was drowning in pain. My depression was there first thing in the morning just a very heavy feeling and there at night weighing me down to sleep and not wanting to get up. My depression was very severe to the point where life and death were not different. I actually wished that I would die every day before I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning I hoped that I was just dreaming and that I wasn't actually waking up. My depression made very afraid of just even sensing my existence. I was afraid of waking up and going to bed. My depression was also like a handcuffs on my whole being. No matter what I did I still felt depressed. The thing that people say like walking, going out, just getting out of the house; nothing really helped. Sometimes if I did something that took my mind off my depression, I regreted doing that because the next day when the better feeling left, I would hit rock bottom. I also had suicidal thoughts because life was looking that appealing anymore. After years of living with depression and then getting worse life loses its meaning. With my depression sometimes I ask myself what am I even doing here on this planet, why am I even alive just to suffer. I always tried to keep my depression at a certain level, but it kept getting worse although I was trying to be positive and see the good side of thing. Being positive and hopeful was just so hard to do; it's like there was a wall, one of those electric fences. I just couldn't keep it up or even just hold it. So after a while I just gave up on being positive or even trying to treat my depression. And people around me never can understand the fact that I was really depressed. They always think that my depression was something that can pass, as if it was just a bad mood; they don't that it is much more than just a bad mood. SO by the end of last year, my depression was very severe and I was just waiting for something to happen that will take me out of this awful pathetic existence. I always like to go online with my depression; I liked reading these hopeful messages and then I would hate reading them. When my depression got extremly unbearable I started just watching people's video on youtube about depression. I watched those videos and I felt like someone somewhere can actually understand what I am going through. Because after a while of living with depression, I just felt like no one can actually understand how hard it is to wake up in the morning, or even smile, or go to work and interact with people. After a period of checking the video, I stumble upon spirtual video that were talking about the nature of suffering and people's relation to their thoughts and feeling that brought them misery. Although I didn't believe that there is anything out there that can ease my depression, but I kept coming to the videos. The thing that attracted me to the video was their recipe of coping and managing painful, negative thoughts and feeling. Because I have never heard anyone talk about dealing with the negative thoughts and feeling the way those spirtual teacher do. Everyone told me indcluding my counselor is that I need to do something to get out of myself like going out, doing an activity, volunteering, just doing something that took my mind off me. But they were saying I didn't have to disown my negative thoughts and feeling in order to feel better. And quite frankly I was too depressed to even try to change anything; I just didn't see any point of trying at that point.
04/03: The EGO
The ego in psychology according to Freud balances between the id and the super-ego, between the primitive instincts and the higher morality. So the ego makes it okay to meet the basic needs as long as they are within the norms of society and the culture. The ego's mechanism appears when the id's primitive nature is in conflict with the morals of society or defies reality somehow. So the ego is like the mediator. In spirituality, however, especially in non-dual, and eastern religions, the ego works with the mind to make sure that its future is safe; the ego seizes control and influences behavior to remain in control. I've come to find that the spiritual definition is more at play in everyday life and more accurate in describing the ego. What does the ego have to do with depression or anxiety? Well, many people say that they start feeling better and then somehow relapse, guess what's behind a lot of the relapse and going back to the unfavorable state. The ego hates change and doesn't feel safe with change. Change and the lose of control drives the ego into frenzy. This happens when someone has depression for a period of time and then starts getting better, the ego pulls that person back to a relapse because the comfort zone is now changing. Before getting better, the ego knows all the patterns of the individual; the individual is an open book to it, but when the individual starts to change that means the ego has to change to adapt to the new comfort zone and that's the last thing the ego is willing to do--change. I know that because I would get a little better with my depression and then suddenly I start slipping back. Sometimes, it happened in the same day, feel a little better and then I crash. Things that didn't bother me for a while starts bothering me again. And it is like a snow-ball effect. One thing happens leads to another things very quickly and starts with one negative thoughts or feeling that I avoided or rejected. Then before I know it I am feeling depressed and relapsing into the last depression I was in. Now how can that change?
29/02: DEPRESSION
Depression is very hard to deal with especially the way everyone deals with i and that is by trying to get rid of it or run away from it, which isn't even possible either way. It is true what they say, "What you RESIST PERSIST." My depression was always severe. I remember always not wanting to get out of bed or doing anything and not feeling good about myself or my life. I extremly dreaded going to work or being outside the house. Now, my depression had reasons. I always had low self-esteem and I had a lot of family conflicts and fall outs and emotional abuse ever since I was young and that contributed a great deal to my depression. The last couple of years, my depression was at its worst. I stayed in the house all the time, I didn't have any friends or even family around me. I slept sometimes 12-14 hours and just saw no reason to be alive. I actually prayed to god to take me; I wanted to die. Every time, I had to get out of the house, I prayed the day before to god to take me. I didn't want to committ suicide so I wanted god to take me and spare me from the misery. Although I didn't see no point of living anymore, I still thought that if I just get rid of my depression, maybe I will want to live and maybe I will see a reason to stay alive. I got help while searching the internet something I did to numb out my depression, that and food. I was using youtube and I typed something about depression and it led me to see a group of people who were depressed and professionals who were giving advice on how to treat depression. That actually made me more depressed because the people looked in so much pain and the ones trying to help talked about things that I tried and worked for a while, but never were good enough to get rid of my depression all toghether or to prevent relapses.
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