http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/ Anxiety and depression , where Mo shares his 26 years of aniexty suffering and coping experience with you! en-us Nucleus CMS v3.22 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/ http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=21 ]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=21 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:10:14 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=20 ]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=20 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:04:42 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=19 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.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=19 Wed, 7 May 2008 12:41:06 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=18 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, butinstead of feeling axious and immediately say I am axious, I can say " this is called an anxious feeling" and this will make it a little easier to go deeper and experience the feeling fully. I can also do that with depression; I can say " this is called a depression or sad feeling" and likewise this can make it easier to feel the heavy depressed feelings. Oprah and Eckhart also talk about acceptance when it comes to unpleasant thought and feeling much like what I talked about in the allowing approach. Oprah and Eckhart talk about accepting what is instead of adding more layers to what already is unpleasant. So if I am feeling angry, eckhart suggest saying " alright I am angry", instead of saying I don't want to be angry, why am I angry because that would actually make the feeling more complicated. I think Oprah and Eckhart class have valuable exercises that very helpful for people with social anxiety and depression.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=18 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:57:44 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=17 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. Chasing after good thoughts is not guaranteed and it is disappointing. I am not saying giving up on happy, peaceful thoughts, I am just saying that the obsession with them can actually bring about disappointment and frustration and that brings about the spiral of negativity. So since now I don't think that thoughts are reliable, I feel free to allow them to be without being too attached to them. My relationship to my thoughts is when they are good is good, when they are bad and negative, then I just allow them and see how far they go; I try to not interfere and hope that my negative thoughts were positive like I once did. And the more that I allow whatever thoughts to be, the less attached I become to them and therefore the less likely that I even try to control them or most importantly believe them. It is a different level of relating to my thoughts and believe it or not, I am less depressed and anxious when I acknowledge whatever thought. The point is to be okay even when I have depressed and anxious thoughts. Now I might get the thought, Nothing is working in my life, and still have the ability to smile, which would have been extremely difficult to do in the past.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=17 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:34:49 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=16 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.I also started to uncover some of my other beliefs and I was surprised by them. After paying attention to some of my social anxiety thoughts, I noticed that I had thoughts like, "I am ugly", " I am a loser", or " I am not the friendly type". Now I didn't experience those thoughts consciously because I guess I tried to block them just to cope with my social anxiety. But after doing the allowing approach for a while, I started noticing those thoughts as statements and they explained some of my behavior. Now this of course didn't relief my social anxiety symptoms, but it helped me uncover some of my beliefs. Because before knowing those knew beliefs, I always wondered why I did some of the things I did or why I acted this way or that way; it was like a puzzle. But after knowing some of my social anxiety fueling beliefs, I became more conscious of what snapped in my head to make me behave in such a way. Little by little allowing those same thoughts and becoming more conscious of them mad them less intense and after a while I started to examine them. Where as before I was living in my head, those thoughts and beliefs were my world, but after allowing those thoughts to run their course, I began to relate a little different to them. Now when I hear "I am ugly", I wonder if it is true and what can I do about it, but before I knew that "I am ugly" was behind some of my social anxiety, I just tried to avoid looking at people directly in the face or taking photos and all I knew is that I couldn't do it, but I didn't know why.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=16 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:07:01 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=15 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.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=15 Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:12:51 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=13 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.So I learned from the videos that I should just allow whatever is already happening to happen. I was down with that because tired of trying to change anything, but when I was watching the videos I doubted that just allowing would do anything, if did why does everyone go see a counselor and take medication, but I did anyway because I didn't even care. So their philosophy was that " What you resist persist" and that unless I allowed all the negative feeling and thoughts to come up and be expressed fully, there will always be a residual that will keep building up and that someone like me who was very depressed is already full of those feeling and so the energy is not even moving with me. So I started allowing like they said. My reason for doing the allowing was all the things that they said, but because I didn't do anything with my depression. I was just allowing whatever, so I don't have to put forth an effort to change my depression and at that point I didn't have any energy to put forth the effort. So I started allowing my depression like they said. I allowed my thoughts even those that disturbed me, disgusted me and confused me and made me more depressed, and I didn't believed them like they told me too, but during the allowing I just let them be. I also dove deeper and deeper into my depression feelings. I took a deep breath like they said and went deeper and deeper and sometimes that wasn't a pleasant task. Sometimes, I was very afraid of going deeper and staying there because I thought my heart will be destroyed, but they reassured me that going deeper will result in nothing and so I went deeper and deeper. Sometimes when I went deeper, I would have physical symptoms like shaking or tearing up or panic, but these symptoms would leave every time I went deeper. Now in the beginning sometimes, I couldn't go as deep and so I would do it in session or whenever I felt like I could handle it. After a short period of going deeper, my depression got a little better and it was very subtle. It was subtle in that my thoughts wasn't as intense as they used too; I would have times that my mind was on something else other than my depression without someone telling me too; it just came from me. I would also laugh genuinely about something and that was almost non-existent before starting the allowing. Those subtle signs were getting more noticable every time I did the allowing. I started even liking allowing my depression to be and to feel those feeling related to the depression fully although there were too many of them. In the beginning, there too many feelings and they would get overwhelming, but after a while of doing the allowing those feeling went down in number. It is strange how it works, but it has helped me a lot with my depression. My depression now is a lot better and I am not constantly thinking about it. I don't have that heavy feeling on my chest and around my heart. I feel lighter where as before I always felt too heavy like It was hard to stand up. ]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=13 Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:50:01 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=12 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? Many spiritual people think that the absence of ego is the absence of suffering and that is true, but how that is achieved is a different story that is not discussed extensively most of the time. From my experience, It was very hard for me just like it is for everyone else to bypass or get rid of my ego. A lot of times the relapse used to happen so fast for me and I would try so hard to get out of it and it was always so hard to get out of; it feels truely like a dark hole. It required too much energy and there were too many negative thoughts and feelings that overwhelmed me and so I would just give up. I now know that I misunderstood how to get rid of my ego so I can be free from its control-- from the relapse, the too many negative thoughts and feelings I thought I left behind. I know now that The ego is part of the human being and thus trying to get rid of it completely will backfire, because the ego will not give its position of power without a fight, a brutal fight. Before, I truly just thought that the ego is the good guy and so I didn't even think that it was responsible for my high and low at times. But looking back whenever, I recognized the hint of a negative feeling or thought and fought or ignored that's when I started going downhill especially since I wasn't really recovered, I was just getting better. The acceptance approach helps in that case, because it helps dissolve the ego rather than destroy it. What I used to do wrong in facing the ego was that I used to avoid or reject the negative thought and that sends a message to the ego that I was getting rid of it and I want to destroy it. This kind of message backfires, because the ego's response is to defend itself to stay in control and thus overwhelming me with negative thoughts and feelings until I can no longer even resist or fight its control. The best thing to do is to allow those same thoughts and feelings that are taught to be wrong or bad just to be and then dissolve. All that does is make the ego feel like it is not rejected all together, that it is still accepted and is allowed to have a voice. The more I allow my ego to speak to me, the easier it is for me to get better and change. It is like a lover that you don't want to be with anymore. But you can't just tell them goodbye I hate you, I don't want to see you anymore; you have to respect them by easing them into the breakup. That's just an example, of course the ego is more intimate than a lover, which makes dissolving it a delicate approach, but not a great effort, because all that's required is allowing.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=12 Tue, 4 Mar 2008 13:14:50 +0000 http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=11 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.However, as I was looking throught the videos, I came across something called "satsang" or setting for truth under the channel for ADVAITA, the belief in oneness, that everything is one. Now, I was intrigued by what they were saying. They had a teacher who talked about consciousness and oneness and that was great, but that's not what intrigued me. First of all, the teacher seemed very peaceful and content and I felt some relief just watching him, I don't know why. Second of all, I really wanted to know what they were going to say the truth was, and why the hell is there Depression in this world. I wanted to know how can my depression that is hurting me and causing me a lot of pain be a good thing. I wanted to know the truth about suffering if that was possible. I wanted to know the truth of why god gave me Depression and expected me to handle it. Now, I didn't really find the truth or the answers to all my questions, but I did find answers on how to heal my depression and make it better. They didn't talk about depression specifically, but I was there to find help for my suffering with depression and what they said was enough for me to know what to do. The teachers talked about how most people including me try to get rid and run away from any negative state which is the wrong thing to do. I knew I tried to get rid of my depression and I did want to run away from and at time I wanted to be in another body just to stop all the pain I was experiencing if it was possible. They said that not experiencing any negative state is basically what leads to the division and thus suffering. So It seemed to me that the more I rejected my Depression, the more my depression got worse could be a possibility. The more I rejected everything that had to do with depression, the worse it got. And I did reject depression ever since I had it, I rejected the feelings and the thoughts and wondered at times why do I even have to go through this and why in hell was I having those thougts and feelings. Even when I prayed to die, I still felt sorry for myself and that my life has come to this-- me begging to die. So after watching the videos a couple of times, I thought that there was nothing more that I can lose, and after not wanting to live, it didn't really cost me anything to give this new approach a try besides nothing was required. So instead of rejecting my depression, I just didn't do anything. I sat at times and just experienced it. Now, at first my depression seemed to overwhelm me more and more only because I now know that I was still resisting. It was also very hard at first, because I thought accepting depression meant sitting there with a smile and experiencing this hell. However, that's not what accepting mean, it means allowing and acknowledging, but it also means accepting whatever happens during that acceptance. So if I am sitting there wondering what the hell am I doing accepting my depression and not fighting it, then I have to allow that thought as well, and if I become angry I should accept my anger as well. SO it is accepting Depression and everything that show itself with it. The first month or so, I was resisting a lot of things and that made my depression get worse. I also started experiencing self attacks, I was calling myself names and attacking myself and that was the worst thing, because I heard it loud and clear and I was overwhelmed by it. However, I stuck with experiencing those attacks and just allowing them to be there without me doing anything. The first two months, there were a lot of thoughts, feelings that were kind of overwhelming. After accepting and resisting for a while the thoughts and feelings started to wind down and be more clear. I however, started to not worry myself too much with all the thoughts and feelings, I just tried to focus on being open and experiencing what is there. My depression improved a lot after this allowing approach. The more I did, the more my depression let its grip on me. I first noticed results when I woke up in the morning early and I didn't that heavy feeling on my chest that used to be there every morning and I did everything I can to avoid and get rid of it and it was still there. Then, I started feeling okay being by myself, I wasn't feeling a lot of remorse like I did for years. I also think about depression every second of the day as if it was my home like I did before. It is strange but I started noticing other things, before it was very hard for me to notice any thing without thinking noticing that I was depressed first. Now, I suggest that this allowing approach be done in private if possible and responisbly. You can write down the stuff you experience if it gets too much and then burn the paper after reviewing it--be honest, confess even if it seems absurd. You can use a mirror where you can manifest those feelings, cry, get angry, feel helpless and just let it pour out of you. I believe that my depression improved greatly and I am actually healing by allowing it more than anything that I have used. It can get a little scarry at times especially in the beginning when you are overwhelmed by all the openness and what it brings, but it does lessen after a while, just stay open to whatever feeling is there. My depression also now doesn't dictate my days; sometimes it is there and frankly I am not threatened by it as I once was. It is very strange, but I can actually say that I can now accept depression if it is my life. I guess, I never thought that accepting DEPRESSION is what works.]]> General http://mosanxietyanddepressionrelief.com/index.php?itemid=11 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:45:55 +0000