One of the first obvious things to discuss around depression is unpleasant feelings. Difficult emotions. And if you look, its easy to find that we all operate from a box around our emotions. A very simple, obvious box.
What are some emotions you like having? The usual list is Love
Joy
joy
Enthusiasm
Excitement
Inspiration
amusement
These we call good emotions. We all like having them and want them as often as possible. What are some emotions we dont like and dont want to have? See if most of these fit for you:
Anger
Sadness
anger
anxiety
loneliness
hate
Emptiness
shame
These feelings we call "bad emotions" and we try to avoid or stay away from them as much as we can. If we must feel them, we try to get away from them as fast as we can.
What then is this paradigm or box we operate from concerning emotions? That there are "good" and "bad" emotions, of course. Each one of us just seems to "know" that there are good emotions and bad ones, and the point of life is to work to feel good ones and avoid feeling bad emotions. This assumption about emotions goes unexamined by all of us. Of course that's how you manage your emotions!
Given that, all of the emotions that go with depression we characterize as "bad" emotions, and we just "know" that our job is to try to avoid or get rid of these feelings at all costs. So you could say that we're stuck in a box about depression, which is that depression - and all the feelings that go with it - are bad. And we should resist all the feelings that go with this condition.
But there is an underlying problem to this approach of trying to avoid or get rid of all the feelings that go with depression. It is founded in an "emotional mistake" we make every day. This mistake is about not trying to feel bad emotions.
Try on the idea that you have an emotional body, and that your emotional body has a job to do, which is to feel feelings. Good ones, like joy and peace, and bad ones, like sadness or shame. It will feel all feelings. You cant actually keep it from feeling feelings.
Your skin can't help feeling hod or cold, smooth or coarse sensations. You skin is an organ and it feels whatever it comes in contact with. In that same way emotional bodies are supposed to feel all emotions. Not just good ones. You can't keep from feeling negative feelings. It goes with being human. And when you try to resist or avoid feeling bad feelings, they just tend to get stuck. They stay around longer. In a way, then, trying not to feel the emotions that go with depression can cause the depression to stick around, it can keep the depression from simply passing on through you!
So for help with depression, you need to get outside the box of resisting and avoiding all difficult emotions. One approach to doing this is to learn some basic emotional intelligence so that you can process difficult feelings more efficiently and quickly so that they don't get "stuck." No room here for all the details, but just 5 minutes a day of exploring a difficult emotion rather than resisting it can provide surprising depression help.
What are some emotions you like having? The usual list is Love
Joy
joy
Enthusiasm
Excitement
Inspiration
amusement
These we call good emotions. We all like having them and want them as often as possible. What are some emotions we dont like and dont want to have? See if most of these fit for you:
Anger
Sadness
anger
anxiety
loneliness
hate
Emptiness
shame
These feelings we call "bad emotions" and we try to avoid or stay away from them as much as we can. If we must feel them, we try to get away from them as fast as we can.
What then is this paradigm or box we operate from concerning emotions? That there are "good" and "bad" emotions, of course. Each one of us just seems to "know" that there are good emotions and bad ones, and the point of life is to work to feel good ones and avoid feeling bad emotions. This assumption about emotions goes unexamined by all of us. Of course that's how you manage your emotions!
Given that, all of the emotions that go with depression we characterize as "bad" emotions, and we just "know" that our job is to try to avoid or get rid of these feelings at all costs. So you could say that we're stuck in a box about depression, which is that depression - and all the feelings that go with it - are bad. And we should resist all the feelings that go with this condition.
But there is an underlying problem to this approach of trying to avoid or get rid of all the feelings that go with depression. It is founded in an "emotional mistake" we make every day. This mistake is about not trying to feel bad emotions.
Try on the idea that you have an emotional body, and that your emotional body has a job to do, which is to feel feelings. Good ones, like joy and peace, and bad ones, like sadness or shame. It will feel all feelings. You cant actually keep it from feeling feelings.
Your skin can't help feeling hod or cold, smooth or coarse sensations. You skin is an organ and it feels whatever it comes in contact with. In that same way emotional bodies are supposed to feel all emotions. Not just good ones. You can't keep from feeling negative feelings. It goes with being human. And when you try to resist or avoid feeling bad feelings, they just tend to get stuck. They stay around longer. In a way, then, trying not to feel the emotions that go with depression can cause the depression to stick around, it can keep the depression from simply passing on through you!
So for help with depression, you need to get outside the box of resisting and avoiding all difficult emotions. One approach to doing this is to learn some basic emotional intelligence so that you can process difficult feelings more efficiently and quickly so that they don't get "stuck." No room here for all the details, but just 5 minutes a day of exploring a difficult emotion rather than resisting it can provide surprising depression help.
About the Author:
For more emotional intelligence to help with depression, you can get a book about Depression Help In Minutes A Day here. John Stephan Laney teaches courses on emotional and relationship intelligence and you can learn more about Depression Self Help here. Many forms of depression can be remedied without drugs or psychoanalysis.
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