For Lex and Catherine

Disclaimer: This article contains some reflections of my journey of recovery from depression and does not purport to recommend or discredit any recovery strategy in an individual case.

I have always been a woman of action.  If I identified a social problem, I joined a group to address it.  If I identified something I was unhappy about in myself, I also joined a group, found a counselor or read a book to get to the bottom of it.

And why not?  Why go through life handicapped by negative thoughts and emotions if I can be free of them?

Of course I never was free of them.

My life became a veritable directory of psychotherapy and personal transformation programs, and my personal library a catalogue of self-help books.  So much so, that I never felt entitled to read fiction until I’d fixed myself up. Never mind that spending some time with great authors might have lightened my mood, given me some distance or even shed light on my personal situation.  No: there was work to be done and reading for pleasure was a luxury.

Until one day, in the midst of a debilitating depression, something I read, in what turned out to be not just another self-help book, clicked. And I realised why understanding more and more was helping less and less – why my search through counseling for causes and meanings was actually digging me deeper into a hole.

In my struggles with my personal demons, I have explored many avenues from individual to group therapy, from RET and CBT to EST and EFT, and from affirmations and visualisations to the Seven Habits, the Ten Commandments and the Twelve Step programs, all of which made important contributions to how I live.

What I never learned until recently, however, was that in the throes of depression or anxiety, when the vicious cycle of negative thoughts and unhappy mood has been triggered, when I’m walking through the dense fog and the blinders are on my eyes, all the diligent efforts I make to be happy actually only make things worse.

And just why, is what I want to share with you.

Mind Games: The Doing Mind versus The Being Mind

What if the problem with negative thoughts and emotions isn’t that we have them, but rather that we treat them as problems? What if it is not the thoughts themselves, but the process of focusing on them and on how to stop them that actually gets us into trouble?

That is a central premise of the mindfulness-based approaches to coping with depression, stress and anxiety. These evidence-based approaches propose that investing psychic energy in wrestling with our negative thoughts only serves to strengthen them and to weaken us.

Our compulsive rumination over how to solve problems, from seemingly healthy questions like “Why do I always feel so overwhelmed?” or “Why do I continue to repeat this pattern?” to the more sinister “What’s wrong with me?” only conspires to make us despair, and to mire us further in the funk.

Of course, we ruminate about our problems because we think it will help us to solve them. But according to The Mindfulness Way through Depression, clinical studies are now demonstrating that rumination and attempts to avoid it are actually key players in the maintenance of depression. ¹

Here’s how it goes.

Our minds operate in two modes: 'doing' and 'being'.  While this is not a new concept – it has deep roots in the ancient Buddhist traditions – it is a relatively new approach in psychotherapy. The doing mind is our conceptual mode. In this mode, our mind does the important work of analysing, planning, deciding, judging, comparing and self-reflecting – reviewing our life across time.  In it, we think thoughts like: “What if?” “Why didn’t I?” “When will…?” “What should I do?” and “That’s not fair!” but also like “I’m proud”, “I can”, “I’ll drive this time” and “That costs too much!”

Which is all fine on a good day.

Unfortunately, in a low mood, it is difficult for our thoughts to resist the gravitational pull down the spiral.  In these moments, the doing mind gets us all tangled in memories and second guessing.  For this reason, it is the wrong tool to pick up when we are depressed or anxious.  This is not the time to question or strain to understand from yet another perspective.

In a nutshell: we cannot free ourselves from our thoughts with our thoughts.

What we need in times like these, and in regular doses throughout our healthy lives, is our “being” mind. For it is our being mind that engages us with the present.  The being, or observing, mind is our experiential mode. In this frame we are hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, seeing and feeling the sensations inside our bodies.  This is our mode for living in the moment.  And it is through contact with the present moment that we can escape our traps.

Unfortunately, it is this being minds that we neglect.  And like a muscle that falls into disuse, it begins to atrophy.

Now There’s A Thought: Cultivating Mindfulness

“…the practice of mindfulness defuses our negativity, aggression, pain, suffering, and frustration…Rather than suppressing emotions or indulging in them, here it is important to view them, and your thoughts, and whatever arises with an acceptance and a generosity that are as open and spacious as possible.” Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 62

So how do we strengthen our being mind?

“Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to things as they are.” ¹

Whether it is through meditation, mindful breathing, yoga or the other excellent and time-tested techniques described in the books discussed here, we can strengthen our mindfulness muscles, like we do any other, through exercise.  All of these practices develop key mindfulness skills such as:

• Non-judgmental awareness;

• Heightened observation through our senses;

• Viewing thoughts as passing mental events; and

• Escorting the mind back from distracting thoughts to the present moment.
  

So again, the problem isn’t that we have negative thoughts.  Negative thoughts and emotions serve the important evolutionary purpose of keeping us away from danger.  The problem with negative thoughts is that we ‘fuse’ with them -- treat them as if:

• Thoughts are real and happening now;

• Thoughts are true and to be believed;

• Thoughts are important and merit our full attention;

• Thoughts are orders to be obeyed;

• Thoughts are wise and valuable advice to be followed;

• Thoughts can be dangerous and to be avoided. ²

But the mind is full of thoughts, images and memories.

Left to its own devices, the mind will chatter continuously, endlessly judging, evaluating, analysing, planning, reviewing, comparing.  This unruly prattling on can be completely immobilising and the content of the thoughts can undermine our effectiveness in life.

What’s the alternative?

Instead of struggling against our negative thoughts and empowering them, we can learn to ‘defuse’ them – simply notice them, breathe into them, allow them to be and then to pass.  If we do not subscribe to our thoughts, we can recognise them for what they are – mental events that will pass unless we indulge them and give them reason to stay.  Instead of ‘doing’ something to avoid them, we can learn to accept them and defuse them -- let them ‘be.’

Cognitive defusion² means we learn to recognise thoughts for what they are - stories our mind has created out of many experiences, interpretations, beliefs and influences throughout our lives.  And stories are all they are.  They are not real at the moment – not the thing itself, just a memory or interpretation of it.

As we know, there are always a variety of ways to describe an event or thing – even something as straightforward as a table could have many stories written about it: how it appears, what it is made of, who built it, where it is located, how it got there.  In Italian, the noun for table, tavola, is a masculine one unless the table is set, when it becomes a feminine noun.

And if thoughts are just stories, then it makes sense to develop a more discerning approach to them – to determining which ones to give our attention to, and which to let pass, like cars we can see from our window.

One way to create some distance between ourselves and our thoughts is to give our stories names: Oh, I’ve heard this one before.  This is the “It’s my fault” story.  The “I’ve wasted my life” story.  The “nobody loves me” story.

Another way is by recognising that: “I’m having the thought that… I’ll never make my deadline…I’ve never amounted to anything…I don’t have time to meditate… they’ll never forgive me…” and any other negative story you can think of.  This phrase gives us some space to see the thought for what it is and nothing more.  By noticing it as a thought, we can let it go instead of grasping at it and wrestling with it as we habitually have done.

Most of all, though, we need to ask ourselves: is this story helpful?  Does it help me to achieve my goals?  Does it help me in my work?  In my relationships?  With my children?  As a member of the community?  And if it doesn’t, it simply doesn’t deserve our attention. ²

“We are fragmented into so many different aspects.  We don’t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in.  So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.” 3

Like any other skill, mindfulness takes time and practice, and time to practice.  To practice some meditation.  To practice breathing.  To practice slowing down enough to notice the story that’s running me at the moment and to give it space.

But what better example can I set for my daughter than to be a woman learning to be alive in the moment, and to live with compassion for myself and others?

That’s the story.

¹ Williams, Mark; Teasdale, John; Segal, Zindel, and Kabat-Zinn, Jon. The Mindfulness Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness. Guildford Press, 2007.
² Harris, Russ. The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living. Exisle Publishing, 2007.
³ Rinpoche, Sogyal. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

Other resources:

http://www.thehappinesstrap.com/  This website includes free, downloadable worksheets that can be used in conjunction with the book.
http://www.mbct.com/Resources_sub03.htm 

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