Defeating Depression Ebook

Defeating Depression in Just Minutes A Day!

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Copyright 2006, by Emotional IQ Institute, LLC. The contents of this book may be copied, reproduced or redistributed in any manner, so long as the ENTIRE contents of the book is copied, reproduced or redistributed, without editing of any kind. Editing of this document will constitute a violation of this copyright, resulting in possible fines and/or civil prosecution.

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Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................................................. 4 The Bad News About Depression................................................................ 5 The Good News About Depression!............................................................ 6 The Box We’re Stuck in Emotionally.......................................................... 7 The #1 Mistake People Make Emotionally Everyday!................................ 9 Changing the Channel on Your Emotions!............................................. 13 A Universal Law on Dealing With Difficult Emotions .......................... 13 How Bob Keeps Shooting Himself in the Foot When It Comes to His Love Life!............................................................................................................ 16 Another Way To Look At Pain............................................................... 18 The Skill of Integrating Feelings ............................................................... 19 The Exercises So You Can Begin To Practice The Skill........................ 20 Sadness.................................................................................................... 20 Anger....................................................................................................... 21 Fear.......................................................................................................... 22 Practical Magic: How To Make Feelings Disappear!............................... 23 The Five Minute Emotional Secret! ............................................................. 24 The Integration Exercise ............................................................................ 26 The Number One Emotional Skill ............................................................. 30 Three Important Perspectives on Depression ......................................... 30 How Feelings are like the weather! ........................................................ 32 How to Depress Yourself Out of Depression!........................................... 33 The Uplifting Exercise:.............................................................................. 34 The Depressive Exercise............................................................................ 36 The Depression Killer Movement! ......................................................... 41 Is There A Message In Your Emotions??..................................................... 42 The Secret Message of Depression!........................................................... 42 One Easy Step to Dealing with Emptiness and Meaninglessness!............ 44 Change Your Circumstances! ................................................................. 45 A Common Food You Eat Everyday That Causes Depression!................ 46 Brain Food – It Really Works!................................................................... 50 Summary .................................................................................................... 52

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Introduction Depression is an interesting phenomenon, affecting millions of people around the world. In the last twenty years the prescription of antidepressants has gone up twenty fold and it is a many multi-billion dollar a year business. So, obviously, a lot of people are depressed. It is a serious and important issue that deserves special attention and care. Now, to begin with, I am not a doctor or psychiatrist. This book is not offering medical or psychiatric advice. If you have feelings of depression that get in the way of your functioning, your ability to work or get out of bed, then please see a doctor or therapist and get support. There is good, quality help available for people suffering from depression. Reading books or articles like this one on emotional intelligence is good, but direct one-onone coaching and support for any serious issue in life is almost always a wise course of action. If you are dealing with depression and have already gotten medical support, are already taking drugs and/or getting therapy, good for you. If you are currently taking prescription drugs for depression, or are considering doing so, then good for you for doing something about a serious psychological condition. And, in this book, I’m going to describe a few approaches to dealing with depression that do not involve drugs or psychoanalysis. You can simply try this out and discover for yourself if it makes a difference in your life. This book offers some lay opinions that you may or may not find useful.

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The Bad News About Depression There are several different kinds or forms of depression. From manic depressive to listlessness, there is an assortment of types of this illness. This book can help with most feelings of depression. But there are some forms of the disease that will need medical or psychiatric care. For that reason, I recommend that you see a doctor or therapist if you haven’t done so already. Get professional help. This book can support you in managing your moods and defeating many forms of depression in just minutes a day, within just a few days. So while you are getting professional help, you can help yourself and learn some valuable tools for feeling great no matter what kind of depression you may suffer from. Sure, read the book and enjoy practicing the tools and developing lifelong emotional skills. And, see a therapist and get one on one support. You will win and come out ahead both ways!

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The Good News About Depression! First off, depression isn’t “bad.” As far as I can determine, all human beings get to deal with depression. It happens, it comes up in life. Depression isn’t bad or wrong, it is simply human. It actually goes with having an emotional body, and it ain’t bad and you aren’t wrong or broken for feeling it. Depression is generally described as feeling listless, empty, devoid of energy, unhappy, deficient, bad and wrong. So I’m saying that feeling bad and feeling an unpleasant sense of “wrongness” is often a part of depression, but you aren’t bad or wrong for feeling depressed. Feeling deficient - not ok - is part of depression, but you aren’t deficient or not ok because you have those feelings. Obviously, we all feel some of the symptoms of depression from time to time. We all occasionally feel unhappy. We all feel like we don’t want to get out of bed at times. We all feel like we aren’t getting pleasure anymore from things that gave us pleasure. Depression is generally diagnosed when we have these feelings often and repeatedly - lasting about two weeks or so. To feel unhappy, listless, lethargic, gloomy, despondent, hopeless, downcast and wrong is human, we all have to deal with those feelings. But when those feelings seem to stick around for longer than a few hours, a few days or a few weeks, depending on our perspective, we diagnose ourselves as depressed, or go get a diagnosis of depression. So depression is quite serious, because it is all these feelings that we don’t want to have for a few minutes, let alone a few weeks. You could even say one of the major features that goes with depression is resistance, we don’t want it. Which is why taking drugs to numb those feelings is so popular. You aren’t bad or wrong for feeling depression! Depression is called a mental “illness” or “disease.” Are you bad for catching a cold or the flu? Of course not. Just so, you aren’t bad or wrong for feeling the illness of depression. And, just like the flu, it feels bad, sometimes awful, like you are going to die. But you aren’t “wrong” for feeling like you are going to die when you have the flu, and you certainly 6

aren’t bad when you feel miserable from depression. It happens, and there are ways to make it go away quickly! So the “good” news about depression is that it isn’t bad, and you aren’t wrong or “not okay” for having it. In fact, you are only “bad” if you do nothing about it and let it run or ruin your life. But if you can look at it as a learning experience, an opportunity to heal yourself and move forward powerfully in life, then you are ahead of the game! Depression can even be looked at as an exciting step in your personal growth and development. It is an opportunity to learn a lot about yourself, how you work, what turns you on and turns you off, how to deal with the difficult emotions that come up in life, and what you need to know to actually thrive emotionally. Depression can actually lead to self awareness at a very impactful and rewarding level. So let’s dive in and explore this experience right now!

The Box We’re Stuck in Emotionally One of the first obvious things to discuss around depression is unpleasant feelings. Difficult emotions. And if you look, it’s 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 • Happiness • Excitement • Contentment • Inspiration • Enthusiasm • Gratitude • Exuberance • Hope • Etc.

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These we call “good emotions.” We all like having them and want them as often as possible. What are some emotions we don’t like and don’t want to have? See if most of these qualify: • Sadness • Anger • Fear • loneliness • Hate • Depression • Hopelessness • Anxiety • Shame • boredom • Humiliation • Emptiness These are what we call “bad emotions” and we try to avoid them as much as possible. If we can’t avoid them, and can’t help but feel them, we try to get rid of them as quickly as we can. So what is this simple box we operate from around emotions? The box is that there are “good” emotions and “bad” emotions. Pretty obvious, right? We all seem to just “know” that when it comes to emotions there are good ones and bad ones, and the game in life is to feel good and not feel bad. This is so obvious that it goes unexamined. Of course this is the way you deal with emotions! And, of course, all the feelings that go with depression we classify as bad emotions, to be avoided or gotten rid of as quickly as possible and at all costs. But there is a big problem to this approach of trying to get rid of all the feelings associated with depression, and it begins with a common mistake we make all of the time.

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The #1 Mistake People Make Emotionally Everyday! To begin with, let's take a look at emotions. What is an emotion? It's a feeling. Like all feelings, it is going to be centered somewhere in your body. And, like all feelings, we generally work hard to hold onto emotions we like and avoid the ones we don't like, right? Now, let's look again at these favorite emotions of ours. What feelings do you personally like and try to have as often as possible? The feelings I like to have often are (If you can’t be bothered to write it down, at least think of a short list in your head!) ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ Now, let's look at the opposite side. Which feelings do you personally dislike and try to avoid?

___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________

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___________________________ ___________________________

Now, what do we do with feelings we don't like? (Okay, now we're beginning to get somewhere!) If you don't like something, whether its Difficult Emotions or Lima Beans or Horror Movies, you will try to avoid it. The interesting thing to consider for a moment is this: What do you personally do to try to avoid your negative emotions? What do we do to avoid or resist our negative emotions? Go ahead, take a moment now and think about what you do to get rid of your negative feelings. The kind of things I do to stop feeling bad are:

___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ Review this list of common answers and see if there are any you’d like to add to your list: Go for walk Drugs Music Call a friend Play games/sports Alcohol 10

Get busy doing something else Eat Party Garden Watch tv When you look at it, there are only three basic ways we have figured out to deal with difficult emotions. The first way is that we 1. Anesthetize If you eat enough chocolate ice cream and junk food, you soon won't feel anything but a kind of sugar coma/sleepiness. Food is one of the most common tools used for anesthetizing feelings. How many of us have used doughnuts or chocolate cake or ice cream to narcotize our feelings? You’re home alone on a Friday evening, feeling lonely, so what’s to do? Eat a bunch of junk food! A higher level of anesthetizing feelings is to drink or do drugs. A few margaritas or a few joints and we sure ain’t feeling no pain! The problem with anesthetizing feelings is that when the food or sugar coma or drugs or drinking wears off, the feeling seems to "come back" or you feel even worse. So what you then want to do is eat more or drink more or do more drugs. It becomes a vicious cycle. And, as we'll soon see, I'd like to suggest that when you anesthetize your feelings you aren't making them disappear, they just go below the surface for a while then come back up.

2. Acting Out A second way we all deal with difficult emotions is to project them onto others, to dump them onto the people around us. It's also called ACTING OUT. How many of us have ever had a parent do something like this? They come home from work, maybe they've had a bad day, and they say:

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"GET YOUR SORRY ASS OFF THAT COUCH AND TURN OFF THE TV AND GO GET YOUR DAMN CHORES DONE!" Raise your hands, how many of you have had a parent or seen a friend's parent do that? Okay, good, now how many of you as parents or adults have done something similar? Another way of acting out is if you're sad or depressed and a co-worker who is in a good mood comes up to you and you demand: "WHAT ARE YOU SO HAPPY ABOUT? You messed on up on page 3, 6 and 8 of the report and it needs to be fixed NOW!" How many of us have ever seen anyone do that to another person? Or we punch the wall or kick the dog or throw something. These are all ways of trying to get the feeling away from us. We all have a tendency to project our unpleasant feelings to those around us. What do you think of this way of dealing with difficult emotions? What do you think of acting out and projecting as a way of coping? So where most anesthetizing behaviors damages our bodies, projecting and acting out damages our relationships in life. Kinda like “misery loves company.” Not very healthy or very kind, is it? 3. Change The Channel The third way human beings have to deal with difficult emotions is to CHANGE THE CHANNEL, kind of like going from an AM radio station to an FM radio station. Going for a walk, playing sports or games, gardening, putting on some music you love, getting lost in work or a project are ways that we all already know of and practice to deal with difficult emotions. You should already have a few favorite ways of changing your emotional channel, like taking a bubble bath or dancing. Please think for a moment and list your preferred ways of changing channels: ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________

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___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________

Changing the Channel on Your Emotions! This third method of dealing with "bad" emotions is good! These are generally healthy ways of dealing with difficult emotions. They don't damage our bodies, like with anesthetizing behaviors, and they don't damage our relationships, like with projecting our feelings onto others. Changing the channel on your emotions is an essential skill to mood management. If you feel sad at work, it is probably going to be inappropriate to start crying. If you wake up feeling hopeless, it isn’t going to work very well to just stay in bed, you’ll probably get fired. So we all need to develop our talent at changing our emotional channels so that we aren’t run by our emotions. In fact, if you don’t develop this skill, you will often get stopped by your emotions. So, one of the skills you can develop to support you in thriving emotionally is to get even better at changing the channel. Particularly if you are dealing with depression, which can be very heavy and thick and feels like it will never go away. Look for what works best for you in changing the channel. If a bubble bath really helps, that’s good to notice. If cleaning the house helps, very good to notice. If going to a movie does it for you, great. Keep trying new things and notice what works best to switch your emotional state. Over time, see if you can increase your repertoire of channel changing methods. A Universal Law on Dealing With Difficult Emotions Now we don’t want to take away from the healthy ways you have (or will develop) of changing your emotional channel, but there is another approach

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to dealing with difficult emotions you can try on and add to your emotional tool kit. To understand this new way of dealing with emotions, you first have to learn A UNIVERSAL LAW, a kind of rule about how things work in the universe. You have to do a 10 second exercise to learn this universal law. Now, when you do this exercise you have to really get into it, so you can learn this universal law for yourself. Ready? (Read through this once to get the idea, then take the 10 seconds to actually do it.) Hold up your left hand in front of your face. Now grab your left wrist with your right hand. Then I want you to resist your left hand with your right hand. With your left hand try to touch your face and with your right hand try to keep your left hand away from your face. Got it? Okay, for 10 seconds really get into it, go! (Please do that exercise now before reading further. It will be worth the ten seconds!) *********** Okay, so now let's see if we can figure out what universal law we just demonstrated. When you resist something, what happens? When you resisted your left hand, what happened to your awareness of it? YOUR LEFT HAND GOT "BIGGER" IN YOUR AWARENESS. It became very noticeable. Now let's say that your left hand was an emotion like sadness, and your right hand was just you resisting that sadness internally, trying not to feel it. And instead of for ten seconds, it was for ten hours, days or months! 14

Resistance causes the feeling to do what? RESISTANCE CAUSES PERSISTANCE! Can you begin to see that? This “truth” has been recognized for thousands of years, the Tao te Ching is an example of an entire philosophy built around it. So, if you're feeling a difficult emotion and you start to resist it, what will happen? It will get bigger & it will last longer!! Now what was true about your left hand before the exercise? It was just there, you didn't even think about it, no big deal. And as soon as you stopped resisting it and started reading about resistance causes persistence, what happened to your left hand? It went back to being no big deal! It’s just there. It disappeared from your awareness, didn't it? Because the universal law is always working, and that is if you resist something it persists, and if you don't resist something it doesn't persist and will disappear! So let's look at the emotions you listed earlier. We've got the good ones and the bad ones. Now here's what's true about being a human being: Human beings have emotional bodies. Your emotional body is going to feel all of these feelings, not just the good ones. Your emotional body will feel anger, sadness, happiness, excitement, joy, fear, worry. That's what the emotional bodies of human beings do. They feel. It is what our emotional bodies are designed for. It is similar to your skin. Your skin

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will feel all physical sensations, hot, cold, warmth, silk, sand paper, itching, pain, the pleasure of a caress. Try on this idea about your emotions: You can't cut off the bad ones and only have the good ones. When you cut off the bad ones you shut down or suppress your emotional body. EMOTIONS AREN'T GOOD OR BAD, THEY JUST ARE. This is a radical idea for most of us! We are so used to thinking of emotions as good and bad that it is automatic. We don’t even think about it. Of course you should try to cut off or kill or avoid bad emotions, what else is there?? Meanwhile, we have an emotional body, and it is just doing its job, feeling your feelings. The more you try to kill off the bad feelings, the more you distance yourself from your emotional body and choke off feelings of any kind. Trying to only feel good emotions is like trying to only feel silk on your skin, and not feel hot, cold, feathery, wind, sunshine, etc. It takes a lot of effort and it won’t work anyway. Not only that, our emotions often contain lessons for us, they are communications. How Bob Keeps Shooting Himself in the Foot When It Comes to His Love Life! Take the story of Bob and Sue: Sue broke up with Bob because Bob didn't treat her very well. So what Bob does instead of feel the sadness and the pain of the loss of that relationship, he anesthetizes the feeling by going to bars and drinking and trying to pick up women. He can't stand being alone at night in the house all by himself so every night he goes to a bar and drinks and meets women until he starts another relationship. Now if Bob had allowed himself to feel that sadness, he might have realized that he didn't treat Sue very well. That sadness, that emotional pain, might have caused Bob to learn to treat women better.

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But instead, by avoiding the loneliness and the sadness and just picking another woman up at a bar, he will likely repeat the same problems he had with Sue and lose this relationship as well. And that's exactly what Bob did. After six months this woman dumped him too. Do you see how by anesthetizing the pain rather than feeling it he missed an opportunity and doomed himself to repeating the pattern? Supposedly painful feelings, when we allow them, can inform and change us. Sadness, fear and anger can add to who we are and who we are becoming. Sometimes (not always!) our “bad” feelings have “messages” we simply need to dwell on for a few minutes so that we can “hear” what they are saying. And in the listening we get added to, we become more whole. Good feelings, on the other hand, usually tell us we're on the right track. If you're playing sports and you feel happy and excited, you feel good. Your emotions are telling you that you're on the right track, doing something that is right for you. If you're dancing in your living room with the music turned up loud or you're singing in the shower and you feel joyous, your emotional body is telling you that you are on the right track, doing something that is right for you. But when you feel angry or sad or depressed or afraid, your emotional body is trying to tell you something else. If you feel angry about something, say someone disrespected you, your emotional body is trying to say something like "Don't let that happen to you again!" The anger helps you to focus on what you don't want in your life. If you feel sad because you argued with a friend, that emotion might be trying to tell you to learn from that, to try not to argue or fight in your relationships. The sadness can help you to learn. If you feel afraid your fear might be telling you need to watch your well being, what you're doing or thinking of doing might not be safe, or you might not have the skill for what you're about to attempt to do… But if you resist the difficult emotion, you won't get the message or learn the lesson.

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Emotions are not good or bad! They are just part of your emotional body that can guide and support you in life. Another Way To Look At Pain Try on the idea that pain is just a communication that something's happening that you may want to change. Consider this for a moment: Painful feelings are neither good nor bad! Look! If you're having headaches a lot, you can anesthetize the pain by taking aspirin, right? But what if you're getting headaches because you're constipated? Or because you need glasses? The pain isn't bad, it's a communication. If you're the one having the headaches, you're the one who has to listen to the pain and figure out what it's telling you. Painful emotions aren't bad either, they are often guides in life, saying pay attention to something. So if you have a lot of anger in your life you can avoid it by kicking the dog and getting into fights, or you can start to look at what the anger is about and what it might be telling you about your life. When you resist and try not to feel difficult emotions, you can get away with it, but you'll probably miss the message and only cause the feeling to keep coming back! You can easily get stuck in the same cycle of repeating circumstances in your life, like Bob will until he learns from his sad feelings and changes the way he deals with women. We're not saying that sadness means this and anger means that and depression means that… What we're suggesting is that you are a human being and you have a physical body and a mental body and an emotional body and just like pain in your physical body can teach you not to touch a hot burner on a stove, pain in your emotional body can be a message as well. 18

Now, painful emotions don't always have messages. And you don't have to figure them out or do analysis. Sometimes, they are just negative patterns and habits we get into! If you always go around blaming others for your problems, you're going to be angry a lot or feel like a victim a lot. But that’s an issue for a different lesson.

The Skill of Integrating Feelings For now, we’ve come to a fourth way to deal with difficult emotions, and that is to Integrate them. Integrating an emotion is allowing it, accepting it and honoring it so that it adds to the quality of your life. How do you integrate a feeling? You begin to integrate feelings when you actually feel your difficult emotions, when you allow them and notice what part of your body they are centered in. It’s as “simple” (once you get practiced at it) as: “I’m angry and it feels like a burning in my jaws and tightness in my neck and shoulders.” “I’m sad and it feels like a heaviness in my gut.” “I’m afraid and it feels like a bowling ball in my stomach and my knees feel weak…” When you actually feel your difficult feelings, you will notice that generally they are located somewhere specific in your body. And if you can notice where in your body an emotion is located, and what it feels like in that body part, you can accelerate the integration of that feeling. The emotion will become part of you. Like your left hand not resisted, they will simply be there. Sometimes you are sad. Sometimes you are angry. Sometimes you are afraid. When you can let these feelings be there in your body just as they are, you can learn from them, you can be added to and enhanced by them, you can become more than you were before.

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What’s that you say? You already feel your feelings? Actually, rather than just feel our feelings, most of us conceptualize them, as in “I feel awful”, or wallow in them as in “woe is me,” or suppress them as in “I’m not going to feel bad!” None of us were taught in school the simple skill of locating where in your body they’re centered and how they feel (“bowling ball in my gut”). For the purposes of this discussion, we say that you feel your feelings when you locate where specifically in your body they are centered, and how specifically they feel (tight, hot, heavy, icy, empty, crushing, etc.) In the exercises below you will take some simple steps to actually begin to feel your feelings and integrate them. Try it, you’ll like it! The Exercises So You Can Begin To Practice The Skill Now we're going to do some exercises so you can begin to practice feeling your feelings rather than resisting them. Just try these exercises out and take what you get. There is no “right answer” to get in any of these exercises. Whatever answers come up for you are the “right” answers! Sadness To do this exercise correctly, remember that Sadness is neither good nor bad. Even so, if you are a human being, you have a history of resisting the heck out of it. For this exercise, try to look at your sad feelings calmly. Take a few minutes and complete this phrase again and again: Sometimes I feel sad when __________________. Sometimes I feel sad when __________________. Sometimes I feel sad when __________________. Sometimes I feel sad when __________________. Sometimes I feel sad when __________________. 20

Sometimes I feel sad when __________________.

Keep struggling with this, keep looking at where you feel sad… The point is to get that we all feel sad at times about various things. This exercise is simply to note some of the places where you feel sad. Sadness is okay! See if you can notice these sadness areas without judgment or avoidance. It is okay to feel sad sometimes when you watch the news on tv, its very human. It's okay to feel sadness where ever you feel it. Begin to notice that sadness is part of your emotional repertoire. Allow it. Now, think back to a few of those sad feelings and observe where in your body sadness seems to be located and what it feels like. For example, Sadness for me seems to be located in my belly area and in my jaws, and it feels like a heavy weight in my gut and a slack emptiness in my jaws. Sadness seems to be located in my _________ area and it feels like ____________. Anger Sometimes I feel angry when ________________. Sometimes I feel angry when ________________. Sometimes I feel angry when ________________. Sometimes I feel angry when ________________. Sometimes I feel angry when ________________. Sometimes I feel angry when ________________.

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This exercise is simply to note some of the places where you feel angry. See if you can notice these angry areas without judgment or avoidance. It is okay to feel angry sometimes when you watch the news on tv, its very human. It's okay to feel anger wherever you feel it. Begin to notice that anger is part of your emotional repertoire. Allow it. Appreciate it some. Now, think back to a few of those angry feelings and observe where in your body anger seems to be located and what it feels like. For example, Anger for me seems to be located in my facial area and in my gut, and it feels like a tightness in my gut and a burning and tightness in my face and jaws. For now, just get a sense of where anger seems to reside in your body and what it feels like. Feelings are always going to be located somewhere in your body. Anger seems to be located in my _________ area and it feels like ____________. Question: How do you recognize the difference between anger and sadness in your feelings? Answer: Because they feel different ways in different parts of your body!

Fear Sometimes I feel afraid when ________________. Sometimes I feel afraid when ________________. Sometimes I feel afraid when ________________. Sometimes I feel afraid when ________________. Sometimes I feel afraid when ________________. Fear seems to be located in my _________ area and it feels like ____________.

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Acknowledging Resistance When I feel sad, sometimes what I do to deal with it is _________________. Another thing I sometimes do to deal with sadness is _________________. When I feel angry, sometimes what I do to deal with it is _________________. Another thing I sometimes do to deal with anger is _________________.

When I feel fear, sometimes what I do to deal with it is _________________. Another thing I sometimes do to deal with fear is _________________.

Notice that when you take the negative labels and judgments off your feelings, you can begin to simply have them or allow them and that they feel certain ways physically. This is an ENTIRELY different approach to resisting them, avoiding them, and doing your best to project or anesthetize them.

Practical Magic: How To Make Feelings Disappear! Now we come to the final part of this new skill on how to deal with difficult emotions. WHEN YOU DON'T RESIST THEM, EMOTIONS COME AND GO. KIND OF LIKE WAVES ON THE SEASHORE, OR THE WEATHER IN COLORADO. If you are in a rage and really angry at a friend, you can't stay at a peak of rage for very long. After a day or two whatever you were so angry about will lose its charge.

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If you are sad because a relationship broke up, and you don't resist that sadness, after a while that sadness will disappear. The more that you allow your feelings, the more quickly they will integrate and stop persisting for days or weeks. But we all have a basic subconscious fear that if we let ourselves really feel sad or really feel afraid that we will get lost in it, that we will get stuck and feel that way forever. "oh, woe is me…" and we're afraid we'll get even sadder and more miserable. But as we've been suggesting, if you can stop resisting your feelings and start letting them just be there the way that they are, they will disappear or lose their charge just like when you don't resist your left hand it isn't a problem.

The Five Minute Emotional Secret! So when you feel your difficult feelings for just a few minutes, they will begin to shift and integrate and disappear. To help yourself to feel your feelings fully, what you can do is notice where feelings are located in your body. As we've discussed, if you feel fear, for example, you might feel it as a weight like a bowling ball in your gut. Or maybe like a tightness in your chest and inability to breathe. But whatever the feeling is, it will generally be located some particular places in your body. How do you know the difference between happiness and anger? Because anger feels one way in your body, and happiness feels another way. And when you can locate where the feeling is in your body, as close as possible, and then allow yourself to feel that bowling ball in your gut or 24

tightness in your chest rather than try not to feel it, it will begin to dissolve and integrate and lose its charge. YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS OUT TO UNDERSTAND IT. It's all gobbledygook until you experience it. We are all set to try to resist our negative feelings. We want to make them go away by resisting the heck out of them. We try to ignore the fear, the feeling of a bowling ball in our gut, to make it go away. This is exactly the "wrong" way to deal with bad feelings. As you discovered when you resisted your left hand, what you resist often gets bigger. To make feelings "disappear" you have to have the courage to feel them. Just for a few minutes. That's all it usually takes to begin to transform and shift most feelings. For just a few minutes, you have to do the exact opposite of what feels "natural." For just a few minutes for the next week, each day when you feel a "negative" emotion relax for a few minutes and simply allow it. Stop judging it, stop beating yourself or others up for it, simply acknowledge it (i.e. "I feel angry right now!") and then notice where in your body it is located. If it feels like a bowling ball in your gut, feel that. Don't think about it, just explore the feeling for a few minutes. Then see what happens. Does it shift? Do you feel more relaxed? Does it get worse? There isn't any right thing for the feeling to do, but it will shift. Feelings you don't resist begin to integrate, they become simply a part of your experience, as they are not resisted they lose much of their power. Kinda like "Oh, I just saw two people kissing, and I thought of my recent breakup, and I feel somehow ashamed and lonely and sad all wrapped up in one." When you feel that feeling, allow it, explore it for just a few moments, it will begin to transform and integrate. Sometimes you as a human being will feel somehow ashamed and lonely and sad all together, that's just the way it is. Just like you have a left hand, sometimes you will be aware of feelings like that. When you don't resist them, when you stop trying to positive think them and/or argue with them in your head, they move from the shadows of your psyche to become part of your strength.

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And all it takes is a few minutes! In two to five minutes of exploring and allowing a feeling you can begin to change everything! You can start to accept and allow and shift a lifetime’s worth of emotional damage, avoidance and repression. Often times, I do this exercise at the end of the day, just taking a few minutes to note any unpleasant feelings that came up and seeing if I can allow myself to just feel them at a time when I can relax and focus on the emotion. So I end my day with this exercise and it feels good. The Integration Exercise This exercise should be available on our website so that at any time you have five minutes you can go and click and be talked right through it. This is an exercise that will empower you to begin to integrate any difficult emotion. Now, to put this all together for yourself, do this simple exercise. Close your eyes and take a deep, relaxing breath. Recall a time you felt a difficult emotion recently. Picture that situation in your head. What was happening? Were you alone or with others? Who was doing or saying what? Good. Now, step into that feeling a bit. Allow yourself to feel that feeling again. As best you can for now, step back into that feeling… Thank you. Now, give that feeling a name. As best you can describe, What would you call that feeling? Sadness, anger, shame, fear? Name that feeling as best you can. Good. Now, notice where in your body that feeling is located. Does it feel like a bowling ball in your gut? Does it feel like heat and flushing around your head? Coldness? Tension across your upper body? Tightness in your jaw? See if you can notice the places where that emotion is located in your body. It might be one place, like your gut, or a few places, like your jaw and your chest. It might be one feeling, like coldness in your belly, or it might be a few feelings like heat and tightness in your jaw. 26

See if you can notice where the feeling is located in your body. Good. Now, just let that feeling be there. Just notice it and allow it to be there. Good. Now, PUT that feeling there. HAVE THAT FEELING BE THERE. If its heat, put that heat there! If it is tension in your jaw, put that tension there. Good. Now, take a moment and emote that emotion! RADIATE THAT FEELING OUT INTO YOUR SPACE! Whatever that means to you, radiate the feeling or emote it. Give it out to the world around you. Do this for ten seconds! Great. When you can emote an emotion, you are definitely not resisting it. Now, acknowledge yourself for doing such a good job of feeling that feeling and let the feeling go. Good. Now, take a deep breath and relax as you breathe out. Good. Now, take another deep breath in and out and begin to be aware of your surroundings. Okay. When you’re ready, open your eyes! ***** How was that for you? Summary. That's it for the basics of dealing with difficult emotions and feeling your feelings. Integrating difficult feelings is one of the most powerful things you can do in the journey of life. Instead of striving ceaselessly to change the outside world so that you never feel bad, you can now begin to strive to allow the full range of your inner feelings, integrating rather than suppressing them only to have them recur again and again.

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When you can actually feel a specific feeling in a specific body location for just (usually) a minute or two, it will shift. It will either get better or worse! If it gets worse, explore for a few minutes longer then change the channel. If it gets “better,” it has begun to integrate. If you are sad and you do the above exercise, we’re not saying all of a sudden you’ll be happy. You may just feel more somber. If your sadness “shifts” to sobriety then it has integrated, or begun to integrate. It has begun to become an accepted aspect of your emotional makeup. Over time, sadness, fear, rage, shame can all be integrated. It may not happen the first time you do this process, but the process will begin in fairly short order. Keep working with difficult feelings until you feel a shift towards acceptance and peace. That’s a sign of integration. Sometimes it may take a few days of working on the same feeling, for five minutes a day, but usually within a few days to a week most feelings should have moved clearly towards more integration. You will feel them fully, but with acceptance and with less resistance. You may still find them highly uncomfortable but as they integrate they will become nothing to run from or make yourself wrong about. When you can feel your feelings instead of resist them, you can begin to learn the lessons they may offer and you can begin to make them “disappear,” just like your left hand disappears when you aren't resisting it, its just there. We suggest you take baby steps with this skill and practice it every day next week with different feelings that come up. Don't wallow in your feelings! We aren't saying if you feel sad to dive in and start seeing the whole world through dark-colored glasses. Just take a few minutes to locate the feeling in your body and put it there, have it be there. Notice if the feeling is about anything, relationship or job issue or an unpleasant experience, and see if the feeling suggests you change some

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behavior or whatever. But then just put the feeling there where its located in your body and let it be there. Don't wallow. Just explore it for a few minutes then change the channel and go on with your life. You don't have to get to the bottom of it or have some big realization or anything. Just feel it for a few minutes then let it go and get on with what's next in your life. If when you do this exercise the feeling intensifies, that is not bad! Since we have spent lifetimes avoiding and suppressing some feelings, when we open up to them they can come on with an overpowering surge at first. This is ok. Again, you’re only going to allow yourself to feel it for five minutes at the most! At any time you feel too uncomfortable, you can step out and change the channel. Don’t worry, it will be there the next day to work on some more! And as with all skills, this takes practice. Every day, different feelings come up, see if you can begin to work with them for a few minutes a day in this way and see what happens. Over time, you'll notice a shift from resisting feelings to exploring them and honoring them! When you can allow yourself to feel the way you feel, when you stop running from some feelings, you can just relax and let your emotional body help you through life rather than stop you. This is a very basic and important emotional skill. This most basic of skills can be called FEEL YOUR FEELINGS, or Integration, or EMOTIONAL APPRECIATION. When you can begin to feel your feelings instead of anesthetize or project, you can begin to integrate and strengthen your entire emotional body. Feelings are a process. You don’t need to “solve” them. Enjoy the flow!

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The Number One Emotional Skill Feeling your feelings is a way of telling the truth to yourself. Tell the truth, acknowledge what you really feel, and then feel where that is located in your body. You will feel more whole, more centered, less split and scattered or caught up in useless anger or worry about people “out there.” This skill truly is one of the deepest, healthiest and most transformative emotional talents you can ever develop. Learn it, practice it, share it with friends, it'll give you a warm fuzzy most every time. Simply follow the bouncing ball and you'll master this in almost no time! And remember, it is just the first, most basic emotional skill. There are many other powerful emotional skills to come, but they all build off of this one. There is whole series of lessons that deals with this, which you can get for free on the website www.emotionalskills.com. We won’t go into all that material here, but it is useful and valuable and will help you build your emotional iq, which is something they never offered to teach you in school.

Three Important Perspectives on Depression So the very first perspective to consider to have a shift in dealing with depression is simply this: there are no good and bad emotions, there are just emotions. We are all wired up to want to feel love and joy and enthusiasm, and we call those good emotions. And we all don’t want to feel hopeless and sad and afraid, and we call those bad emotions. But however we label them, consider that maybe there are no bad emotions, there are just emotions. You have an emotional body that feels emotions. That is what it does. You have a mental body that thinks thoughts, that’s what it does, a physical body

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that feels sensations, and an emotional body that feel emotions. They are all connected, but that’s a story for later. Your emotional body doesn’t know good emotions from bad. It just feels emotions. Like your skin just feels sensations. Your skin doesn’t just get to feel silk. You may want your skin to feel soft and silky feelings all the time, but it feels burlap and hot and cold and rough and hard as well as soft. Well, your emotional body works the same way. It is designed to feel all emotions, not just the ones you want. The Second Perspective on Dealing with Depression for you to consider is that when you stop trying not to feel the difficult emotions, when you start opening up to them and allowing them, your relationship to difficult emotions transforms, and difficult emotions become much less difficult. When you resist sadness it becomes a big deal, when you allow it it becomes something else, a part of you, something that can strengthen and sober you. So please consider this very radical idea for dealing with difficult emotions, which is to allow them, to appreciate them, to open up to them rather than try to keep them away. It creates a shift in your entire emotional body that is healing and energizing. Don’t do the obvious! So a very radical perspective about depression that I want to make sure you try on is this: there is value in allowing rather than resisting difficult emotions like sadness and hopelessness. Further, I suggest that if you can allow and explore your difficult feelings for just five whole minutes a day you will experience a huge shift in your emotional well being within a few weeks. Now, most people I know have no difficulty in dealing with difficult emotions if its only for five minutes at a time, they can handle that, and in the work we’re going to do on depression it won’t really be for more than five minutes at a time. You don’t get to go thru life, none of us do, not feeling difficult emotions like sadness, despondency, gloom, and hopelessness. And if you go through life resisting these feelings, trying not to ever feel them, you will just create more problems for yourself, a kind of constipation in your emotional body.

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How Feelings are like the weather! And a third perspective that is vitally important to dealing with depression is to understand that all feelings change. Feelings are like the weather. They move in and move out. Emotions don’t ever stay the same. And you know this is true from personal experience, because you’ve been happy and it went away, didn’t it? We’ve all been happy and excited and thrilled at times in our lives, and we wanted to stay on that high, but we couldn’t, it went away. That’s because you can’t get happy and stay happy. You can’t get happy once and then live happily ever after. It doesn’t work that way for you, and a key thing to understand is it doesn’t work that way for anyone else either. We all are happy at times and sad at others. But, what is unsaid about emotions is that we believe that if we can just figure out the answer, or get what we want, that we’ll be happy forever. That it won’t change. That we can conquer or do away with negative feelings. And the quick answer here is It Don’t Work That Way. Nobody finally figures out life and gets happy and stays that way forever. Now, here is an important point: if, as much as we all want happiness, it doesn’t stay, the same is true for difficult emotions like sadness and gloom. You can’t get gloomy and stay that way forever. Even if you wanted to. Emotions don’t work that way. So what I’m suggesting is that, for the vast majority of human beings, depression is going to occur, but it will also pass, you can’t get depressed and stay depressed forever, just like you can’t get happy and stay happy forever. To carry the analogy of the emotional body a bit further, the job of your emotional body is to feel and process emotions. All emotions, the good ones you like and the difficult ones you don’t like. When you get happy your emotional body processes it, eats it if you will, and it goes away. Like your physical body eats food and processes it and you get hungry again and want another meal, good feelings work the same way. You feel them, you process them, they go away, you want more of them later.

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But when you feel difficult emotions like fear and gloom and hopelessness, if you resist them, try not to “eat” or process them, then you get kinda constipated emotionally. One of the ways this constipation can show up is depression. Depression is generally not one solitary difficult emotion, like sadness, it can be more the result of several difficult emotional experiences “unprocessed.” So a viewpoint for you to consider, not like its true, but just something to try on, is that depression is “constipation” in your emotional body. Things have been jammed up and suppressed and avoided for so long that your emotional body is constipated. And that once you begin to open up and appreciate all of your emotions, once you begin to process your difficult emotions and integrate them, depression will shift and begin to move through you rather than stick around for days or weeks. So to deal with depression, I’m suggesting that you simply begin to process the emotions you’ve been resisting or avoiding like the plague. But the key is, for only five minutes at a time! Explore your dark feelings for five minutes at a time and you begin to process them and they move through you and your emotional body starts working properly again and depression can shift dramatically, within a few days to a few weeks. Just because I’m saying you need to appreciate your difficult emotions, you don’t need to wallow in them at all. And usually, five minutes is more than enough to feel an unpleasant emotion. So to have a major shift in depression, all you may need to be willing to do is feel the emotions that go with it for five minutes at a time, once or twice a day, and within a short time, a week or two, you should notice a significant shift. How to Depress Yourself Out of Depression! Enough theory. Let’s start some anti-depression exercises! And the way to start is going to seem crazy. I’m going to ask you to do the exact opposite of what seems natural. The Anti-Depression Exercise consists of two parts that take a total of ten whole minutes. First, depress yourself on purpose for five minutes. Then uplift yourself for five minutes on purpose. That’s right. Depress yourself for five minutes on purpose! Why? Because you “learn” how you personally do depression. You will understand it from 33

the inside out. When you depress yourself on purpose, you are Allowing and Appreciating your depression. You are most certainly not suppressing or trying to avoid it! This has MANY benefits, you simply have to do it to begin to understand them. Then, once you’ve spent five minutes doing that, you spend five minutes uplifting and enthusing and inspiring yourself. This is a very powerful way to change your emotional channel. It’s fun and can be very exhilarating. Melt away your depression! And that’s it. I could give you a bunch of theory, but it doesn’t matter. This exercise works for most people, it begins to inoculate you from unconscious depressive forces in your psyche. Do those two things for ten whole minutes a day and within a few days to a few weeks you should notice a significant shift in your emotional states. Your depression may seem to “melt away” all by itself. And when depression starts to come up in the future, you should notice that you move through it quickly, in hours or minutes instead of weeks and months. However, to begin with, we are going to reverse the process and have you practice enthusing and uplifting yourself first! Because depression is so heavy and thick and enveloping, you want to first insure that you can change the channel successfully before you step into it for five minutes on purpose. In other words, until you can do the Uplifting Exercise successfully, don’t do the Depressive Exercise. You need to prove to yourself that you can switch your emotional channel before you spend any more time being depressed!! So, practice the Uplifting Exercise by itself for a day or two (or as long as you need) until you feel confident that you can actually make yourself feel pretty good, then start the full Anti Depression Exercise of Depressing yourself first then Uplifting Yourself. The Uplifting Exercise: For the next five minutes, I want you to consciously enthuse yourself. Read through this, then close your eyes, do this exercise, and see what happens. • Straighten your spine • lift your shoulders, 34

• breathe a few deep breaths, • hold your head up high. Now, imagine a great future. (It can be any great future, like a great vacation or winning the lotto or being a rock star or whatever) For now, focus on the lotto. Imagine that you’ll win the next lotto. Not the million dollar lotto, but the 50 million power ball lotto. You win all that money for yourself. What would you do with 50 mil? Think of how much you’d give away. Who would you donate money to? Whose life would you brighten and make happy? How big a house would you buy? Where would you go first on vacation? What toys would you buy? Where would you buy your first vacation home? How much would you give to family members and friends? Imagine the smiles on their faces as you give them that money. Go ahead, take five minutes, and ponder these questions. Really step into it. How would you spend the first million on yourself? Imagine yourself spending it and getting whatever that is. How would you give the first million away? See the faces of people as they receive your gifts. Very good. Finally, whatever this means to you, there is no right way to do it, put that feeling of vibrance there. Have it be there in your body just the way it is. Great. Now step back out of that feeling of vibrance and exuberance. Stop imaging all those good things happening to you. Let that go for now. ****** That’s it. You should feel somewhat uplifted and pleased. Pretty much everyone daydreams and finds it pleasant and fun to think of what they’d do with ten or fifty million bucks. All you did was “daydream” on purpose. Sure, you don’t have the 50 mil, but the mind doesn’t have to have something to get excited and inspired. Just imagining or daydreaming you can tap the power of your mind to get Very, Very Excited.

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If you successfully enthused yourself, lifted your mood, then good for you. You are learning that you can use your brain, imagery, visualization, to quickly change your emotional state. This is a powerful emotional skill! If you didn’t successfully uplift yourself, not to worry! Some of us aren’t as visual, and that is a more visual method. It takes a while to really imagine ourselves getting and spending 50 million bucks. You may need to try it a few more times to really get into it. If this exercise didn’t work for you, you can try “daydreaming” about something else that you like, such as a favorite vacation spot or receiving an award in your field and getting the admiration and acclaim of thousands (or millions!). Writing a book and having it published, or becoming a rock or dancing star and performing in front of thousands. Whatever lights you up! And finally, if that doesn’t work for you, you can try a more kinesthetic exercise, like remembering one of your more delightful sexual experiences or some other sensual delight, like flying in a glider or snorkeling in the warm Pacific or getting a great massage. It’s all simply a way to use your “imagination” on purpose to change your mood. This is a basic emotional skill using the power of your brain to change your emotional state. So, practice this until you can make yourself feel pretty good with just a few minutes of “daydreaming.” Once you can, then you are ready for the Depressive Exercise. Here it is:

The Depressive Exercise Think of a negative situation in your life. Read through this, then close your eyes and for 5 minutes • think negative thoughts. • Slump your shoulders. • Breathe shallowly. Think of all the reasons why it ain’t going to work out. Whatever you’re concerned about, imagine it not working out and how bad you’ll feel. It could be a concern that you’re depressed and it will never lift. It could be

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that you’re alone and will never get a lover. Or that your lover leaves you. Or that you end up broke. Whatever you tend to be concerned about. Get as depressed as you can. You’re only going to do it for five minutes, so let yourself go. Step into it. At this point you should be sitting there fairly depressed. Shoulders slumped, head hung, woe is you, life sucks, it all sucks kinda depression. Have you stepped into it as fully as you can? Now, notice how the depression feels in your body. Explore it some. Where does it mainly seem to be located? In what main body parts? Is it a heaviness in your gut? An empty feeling in your abdomen? A weight in your jaws? For each of us, it will show up differently, just see if you can get a sense of where the major feeling of depression resides in your body. Depression is a feeling, your body feels feelings, so it’s got to show up in some body parts. Explore it and see if you can find out where. Next, what main sensations are you feeling in those body parts? Is it a heaviness? An iciness? An emptiness? A sharp pang? Again, depression is a feeling, you will feel it in certain parts of your body, and it will have particular sensations in those body parts. Take a minute and explore those body parts and see what kinds of sensations go with your feeling of depression. You’re just an explorer here, go ahead and explore for a minute. Finally, just sit with your feeling of depression. And now try something radical, which is to take 30 seconds and put that depression there. There is no right or wrong way to do this, whatever that means to you, as best you can, put that depression there. Have it be there just the way it is for you. Very good. Now step back out of depressing yourself. Thank yourself for creating and exploring depression and step back out.

Try any and all of these approaches until the sense of depression has gone: • Straighten your shoulders. • Breathe deeply. • Think of something positive in your future. It could be the next meal where you’ll give yourself a great treat. It could be of a fun place you’re going to travel to soon. 37

• Move your body. Play a dance song on your stereo. • Stand up and shake off the depression. ********** How did that go? Were you “successful” at making yourself feel bad?? If so, very good for you. Here, you daydreamed on purpose again, just using the power of the mind to make yourself feel awful. The mind can be used to depress or uplift yourself! Once you learn this viscerally, from experience, you are well on your way to inoculating yourself against depression! And just to check, have you been able to shake it off, or do you still feel rather listless and deficient and empty? This is very important to notice. The problem with being depressed is not that there is something wrong with you, the problem is that we tend to get stuck in it. It is heavy and weighty and sucks us down like quicksand. We get depressed and then it seems to hang around and linger for hours. Just notice how much your sense of depression lingers. As we’ve been discussing, an important secret in dealing with depression is being able to change the channel. So now go ahead and do the Uplifting Exercise again. ****** Ok, so let’s look at what happened here. You took five minutes to consciously feel depressed. To make yourself depressed. You brought it on. Congratulations! That in and of itself is a great thing. Lots of good results will come from this. First, you stopped resisting depression for five whole minutes. That is very powerful. You started to explore it and allow it and witness it and all of those things begin to shift the way you relate to all of your difficult emotions. You started to process the glut of emotion rather than resist it. What did you learn? Where is depression mostly located in your body? What does it feel like in those body parts? How did it feel to actually put the feeling there, have it be there?

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Instead of depression slaying you, you “did” depression. Instead of being victimized by it, hit over the head and heart by it, you graced yourself with it. You made it happen. Now, if you can do that every day for the next two weeks, something remarkable may begin to occur. Depression may entirely begin to lift or loosen its hold on you. When you can do depression some, rather than be done by it, you can become a bit of its master!! [Remember, I’m not promising that this will occur. And you can only find out by doing this exercise. But if it does occur for you, you win big time. You are on your way to thriving emotionally! If you do these exercises for a week or two and notice no effect, you still feel significantly depressed a majority of the time, then by all means get to a doctor if you haven’t done so already!] And another very powerful thing you did was to enthuse yourself. To consciously change the channel and leave depression and reach for exuberance. Adults need to develop skills at managing their moods, and when dealing with depression this is vital. So spending five whole minutes imagining winning the lotto is a great start. You can also spend five minutes planning a vacation in your head. Or plan the perfect date with your perfect mate. It all tends to powerfully lift your mood! Now, this being the first time, maybe these exercises didn’t impact you much. Maybe you found it difficult to step fully into depression, or even more difficult to actually get a little turned on by imaging winning the lotto. Maybe this didn’t happen very strongly for you. Maybe it seemed rather silly or fake at first. Whatever you got was ok. This is just a start. Consider this idea. There is no intellectual secret or set of words of wisdom that can make depression go away. Depression is not really a mental body phenomenon. It occurs in your emotional body and depresses your physical and mental body. It is an emotional body issue. So while I could talk to you for hours and tell you lots of interesting things about feelings and thriving emotionally, it really is going to come down to you processing your emotions. You doing the emotional body work to begin to heal and integrate the difficult emotions that have backed up and combined into depression for you. You’ve got to exercise the muscles and 39

develop the skills to deal with the most difficult of emotions. You’ve got to become an explorer and healer of your own emotional body so that depression begins to break up and move through you rather than stick around like a dark cloud. These two five minute practices are a powerful way for you to exercise your emotional muscles, to build your skills at dealing with difficult feelings. I’m asking you to practice them for two weeks, once or twice a day. Can you give yourself ten or twenty minutes a day to build your emotional muscles? If, at the end of two weeks, you feel it has made no difference, then drop it and look for another solution. In no case should you need to do this exercise for more than two weeks!! My recommendation is that if this Anti Depression Exercise doesn’t melt away your depression within a few weeks, please go see a doctor or therapist and get professional, personal, one on one help. There is nothing wrong with getting help, whether it is information like this from a book or seeing a specialist. In my own experience, when depression starts for me I have never had to do this for more than a few days, five days at most, and that was it. The Anti Depression Exercise is not a lifetime thing where you have to spend 10 minutes a day for the rest of your life to heal depression. A few days here and there when depression starts to strike and you can be “inoculated.” We are each individuals with different biochemistries and bodies and psyches and circumstances in our lives. What works for you may not work as well for your neighbor. I simply want to be clear that I am not giving you a lifetime exercise. If this doesn’t work for you within a few weeks, drop it and explore other approaches to your emotional well being. But the solution to depression is not likely to be some ideas or new “information.” Depression is an emotional body issue. To deal with it effectively, in most cases, you must learn some ways to deal with difficult emotions and to manage your moods. One of the most powerful things you can do to dissolve depression is to begin to deal with your difficult feelings by spending at least five minutes a day appreciating them.

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Emotional appreciation is a basic skill that is unfortunately not taught anywhere in our school system. And it is as simple as feeling your difficult feelings for five minutes at a time. And not just wallowing in them or getting overwhelmed by them, but actually noticing where in your body your sadness or fear is located, and what it feels like in those body parts. Depression, as I’m sure you have noticed, has a quality few other feelings have, and that is it can suck you in and quickly color ALL of your experience. You feel depressed and hopeless and no energy and no life and it seems endless and pervasive and PERMANENT, like it will always be this way. Depression is a very powerful set of feelings to begin to process. Treat it with great respect. The way to do this is to be very rigorous about changing the channel after you’ve explored it for five minutes. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO SHIFT YOUR ENERGETIC STATE. Here are three favorite methods of mine for changing your energetic state. You can use one or all three as often as you need to: 1. Body Shifting: Get up, stretch, stand tall, move your body, breathe deeply. Engage in a physical activity like biking or gardening or hiking or cleaning your house. 2. Sharing! Call a friend to chat about their life. Converse with a coworker. Volunteer. Have dinner with a family member. Do something with people. 3. Imagination! Use the power of your mind. Think about nice things, going on vacation, falling in love, winning the lotto. Again, do this only for a few minutes, til the feeling of depression has lifted. And recognize that it is simply a visualization exercise, intended to lift your spirits. Otherwise you will start getting depressed because you can’t go on vacation or don’t have a lover or whatever… The Depression Killer Movement! So as you work on dealing with depression, one of the main skills you will develop is your ability to change your emotional channel. We never got any training on this in school, and yet it is vital skill for thriving emotionally in life. 41

A final point on changing the channel is this secret depression killer practice: if nothing else seems to work, in the privacy of your own home or room, turn on a favorite rock song, turn up the volume, and dance like a fool. Let yourself go and move with the music. No one is watching, so dive in! If that doesn’t lift your depression, then you had better be under a doctor’s care!

Is There A Message In Your Emotions?? Another perspective that helps to deal successfully with depression is the fact that emotions often contain messages for us, which we referred to earlier with the story of Bob and Sue. Emotions don’t always contain messages, but they often do. So if you are feeling sad, it is worth exploring the feeling for five minutes, and part of the exploration can be “is there anything this sadness is trying to tell me?” In other words, what is the sadness about? I am not recommending getting “all intellectual” about your emotions, that just gets you into your head and causes the emotions to stick around longer. But you can always feel out an answer to the question: Is there anything this emotion of sadness is trying to tell me?” When you do, just sense if there is an answer. Sometimes there will be. “Well, really, I think I’m sad because I feel lonely. My best friend has been busy lately and we haven’t been able to get together and I feel out of the loop…” Very useful information, right? You often don’t just wake up sad in the morning for no reason. If you explore it and find yourself feeling lonely or out of touch with a friend, then you can call the friend or make a new friend or whatever. Not always, but often, emotions contain messages that we are not consciously aware of. The Secret Message of Depression! So what is depression trying to tell us? What message might it contain? Well, there is no one message, the answers are as varied as the people feeling depression. But there may be a few broad strokes we can consider that may or may not apply to you personally.

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Depression is painful. Now remember, pain is neither good nor bad, it is just a message that says “pay attention!” Pay attention to what hurts. Well, depression hurts, and it is saying pay attention to this feeling of emptiness. This feeling of hopelessness. The feeling of meaninglessness. This feeling that nothing I do matters or counts. These are some very powerful feelings and potential messages to pay attention to. But if you are feeling empty, maybe it is because your life is empty! Sure, maybe you’ve accomplished the American Dream, you have two kids, a nice house and a dog, but you have this persistent feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness. Maybe depression is saying to look elsewhere for meaning! Look elsewhere for richness and satisfaction. Fulfillment doesn’t live in possessions. You can be a billionaire and feel very empty and dissatisfied. Recall Elvis Presley and his addictions. So perhaps depression and massive feelings of deficiency and emptiness are a message saying something like “Look elsewhere for satisfaction!” That one message can give you a lifetime of great fun and work and discovery: • Where does meaningfulness live? • How can you get more of it? • How do you fill yourself with the opposite of emptiness? Look, if you feel depressed and like your life doesn’t count for anything, nothing wrong with that strong emotional message. Start making your life count! Do the work of finding out what gives you a sense of meaning and fulfillment and instead of sitting around moaning and whining get busy and start making your life count, however that adds up for you. We won’t go into it here but there are hundreds of books on finding your purpose and mission and living it in your life. Hundreds! There are courses you can take and much to discover about what lights you up and turns you on and gets your juices flowing. Consider this. If emotions contain simple messages, when you are singing like a soprano in the shower and feeling great, or when you turn the music 43

up when you’re all alone and dance like a fool, you quickly begin to feel energized, happy, turned on. Those feelings of exuberance are telling you that you’re doing something good, something right for you. If you pay attention to that feeling, you will try to work more things into your day that give you that kind of a lift and positive emotional state. It’s very obvious and natural, we all want to do more of what turns us on. One Easy Step to Dealing with Emptiness and Meaninglessness! And, if you are having feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness, one message could be that you simply need to find something meaningful to you in life. Something(s) full of meaning. Maybe it’s doing something creative, like art or writing. Maybe it’s doing something nurturing, like mentoring or helping homeless dogs. It could be getting into a new relationship or whatever. You have to do a little witnessing, self observation, a little work, to find out what kinds of things give you meaning. But if you are depressed, it could be because you aren’t doing anything in your life that gives you meaning. It could be because of several other reasons, but something to look at in broad terms is that if you are getting the painful feelings of hopelessness and emptiness and meaninglessness in your life, you can certainly explore what you can do to give your life hope, fullness and meaning. Maybe we all come here to sing our song in life, to add our thread to the weave of life. Maybe depression is just a sign that you aren’t singing your song, you aren’t living your purpose, you aren’t making the difference you sense can be made. Look, if your life has been spent making a living and trying to raise a family, good enough, but those are not the only games in life, and they will show up as meaningless and empty at some point. But if you can add something to your life in addition to those things, something that gives you a sense of making a difference or a sense of individual expression - like maybe coaching a little league team, or making crafts to sell at the flea market because you love being artistic, or leading aerobic dance classes because you love to dance - your life will start to fill with meaning and richness.

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What I’m pointing out is that if you feel depressed and empty and deficient, it might simply be the obvious, because something is missing and lacking in your life. You can take drugs to make that feeling go away, but it won’t deal with the underlying cause. As we’ve already pointed out, you can get a headache and take aspirin, right? But what if the headache is because you are constipated? The pain of the headache is a message from your body to pay attention to something! If you don’t discover the message, you’ll end up taking aspirin for a long time instead of dealing with the cause, which is constipation! Just so depression! If there is a message that your life is empty and meaningless, pay attention! Start the journey of finding meaning and passion and fulfillment. It’s a journey! You can enjoy it! It is much more exciting and fascinating than doing nothing! Use the depression to motivate you, the pain to get you going!!! Now, that journey of self fulfillment is well beyond the scope of this discussion, but if you are dealing with depression, it may be a journey that you need to make, or continue making. So that’s it for this discussion. There is much, much more we could discuss related to depression, and please realize that this is just one cut, one way or approach to dealing with it. I AM NOT saying that your depression is due to lack of purpose or mission in your life, but it may be. We get no training in school on finding our life purpose, connecting our head with our heart. It MIGHT be something worth looking into, along with whatever other approaches to depression you are using. Change Your Circumstances! Another common message depression delivers has to do with the circumstances in our lives. If you get fired from your job, that circumstance can lead to “situational” depression. If you get a divorce or lose a loved one, the same thing can occur. There are situations that come up in life that can depress us and have us feel badly about who we are and where we are at in life.

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If you ask yourself “why am I depressed?” and you keep getting an answer related to a circumstance in your life, the message is probably as simple as change that circumstance! So, for example, if you feel depressed and what comes up associated with that is that your relationship sucks and you are with the wrong person and you don’t feel good about the way you are being treated, that is a strong message! Your depression is telling you – “Hey, pay attention, this relationship isn’t working!” So, if you want to get rid of your depression, you will actually need to heed the message and change your relationship. Either get rid of the offending mate or get into counseling together to make things start working for both of you. It may seem obvious as I write about it, but the messages in depression can sometimes be a simple call to action, to change your life, to risk something new, to move forward in spite of your fears and get outside your comfort zones. Comfort zones often can turn into depression zones! So what is the secret message of depression? It is for you to consider and reflect on and find out for yourself. And, if it is a message to find meaning in your life, or to find a new friend, or get a job that doesn’t insult your dignity, then use the pain of the depression to motivate yourself to get into action, to at least take a few steps towards a new future. Getting a life coach can often help you with this process, and they are available online with a simple google search. A Common Food You Eat Everyday That Causes Depression! Another important piece of managing one’s moods has to do with food and nutrition. Brain chemistry and biochemistry are obviously key, important aspects of how we feel physically and emotionally. When I was 21 I was very depressed. And I couldn’t figure out why. I was in college, had friends, life was pretty good, and there were several nights a week where I’d feel very, very bad about my life. At the time, I thought it was because I didn’t have a girlfriend, but I suspected these terrible, heavy, dark feelings were about something much more than that.

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It was awful, and scary, and I didn’t know why it was happening to me, I didn’t have any terrible things happening in my life, I had a good childhood, parents who loved me, enough money to live on, so why was I having these dark, hopeless, gloomy feelings? I had a few times when I couldn’t imagine living on like this! Why live if it feels like this??? Then, an interesting thing happened one day on my drive to college. After a full nights sleep of eight hours I was driving on the freeway and started nodding off. I couldn’t seem to stay awake! This had been happening to me more and more often in the last few months. At 21 years old, after full night’s of rest, I was nodding off while driving my car in the morning! Well, on this morning, I nodded off and ran into another car! Oouch! Now, the car I hit was going in the same direction on the freeway, I just bumped into him in the next lane, but it scared the Bejeezus out of me (and him)! No real damage to either car, just damage to my self esteem. So like any good American young male I went to a doctor to see if there was something wrong with me. The doctor said I had classic symptoms of hypoglycemia. I had low blood sugar! That’s what was causing me to nodd off! Up to that point I didn’t even know what low blood sugar was, and that it could possibly be a problem. The doc told me to stop eating sugar and sweet things, and to go on a healthier diet of protein and veggies and vitamin supplements. Again, up to this point, I had never even thought that sugar could be bad for you. They never told me that in school! So I stopped eating sugary foods, and it was a MIRACLE! In three days, not only did I have more energy, but I no longer felt depressed! At all! I had no more nights of deep misery feeling empty and hopeless and dark! I still had worries and concerns but they were “normal.” They didn’t send me into dark depression. The conclusion? Sugar was a major culprit and cause of my depression. Who’d a thunk it? I had thought it was some deep psychological issue or failure or lack that was the problem. I became convinced that there was something wrong with me, John, and I felt very ashamed. But no, it was sugar! 47

So biochemistry is a very clear component of many depressions and doctors obviously realize this as they try to balance people’s brain chemistry with anti-depressants. I’m not suggesting you are depressed because of sugar, we are all different and that may or may not be a cause of your mood swings and dark feelings. But you must pay attention to brain foods and nutrients. If you eat junk foods that rob your body of nutrients, that steal your energy rather than add to it, stop it!!! A lot of people don’t need drugs for depression, they need a healthier diet and lifestyle! At least discuss this with your doctor. Read the classic book “Sugar Blues.” From my personal experience, white, refined sugar can SIGNIFICANTLY exacerbate negative feelings. It can cause mood swings that can make you feel manic then depressive. Some causes of depression are “situational.” You get a divorce, lose a job, lose a spouse, these situations can trigger feelings of sadness and worthlessness that are related to a temporary situation. Using the Emotional Appreciation exercises can help you more quickly work through these feelings. And some causes are related to your body’s biochemistry. Sugar creates a sharp rise in energy for about 30 minutes as the amount of sugar in your blood rises. Then as your body pumps insulin into the blood stream you burn off the sugar and swing into low blood sugar, and for the next few hours you may feel lethargic, sleepy, irritable or sad. Low blood sugar affects not only your body’s energy level, but your body’s emotional state. Now, it affects everyone differently, and some of us are much more susceptible to the effects of low blood sugar than others, me being a case in point. I am so susceptible to low blood sugar that I can nodd off while driving on the freeway in the morning after eight hours of sleep! So it is no surprise that for me, blood sugar levels significantly affect my emotional states as well. I can feel sad or ‘low’ for no reason. And until I connected sugar intake with emotional swings it often seemed like there was no reason at all for how I felt. I had no reason to feel bad and yet I was feeling awful! 48

The other issue to point out with sugar is that it doesn’t just affect your emotional state for an hour or two after you take it. I have found that if I eat sugar on Monday, I can have “unexplainable” mood swings for up to two days afterwards. Now, as I said, I am highly susceptible to blood sugar swings in my body. You may not be as susceptible, but EVERYBODY is affected by sugar intake. And today, in our society, it is common for people to literally OVERDOSE on sugar Every Single Day. People stop at convenience stores and get 64 oz soda pops, sometimes just to start their day! 64 ounces of flavored sugar water! (Soda pop is basically a candy bar in liquid form, in case you haven’t figured that out!) And then, at lunch, it will be a Big Mac and a Milk Shake! Then, a candy bar or cookies before dinner, and cake or ice cream for dessert! Just one candy bar can cause mood swings for days for people like me. People less susceptible may notice no effect from one candy bar, but drink a couple cans of soda pop in one day and you are pumping an extra 100 grams of sugar into your body in a day. Add in a doughnut and a candy bar and cookies and ice cream and from the perspective of your pancreas, which creates insulin, you are OD’ing on sugar. Oftentimes, people then must drink coffee so that the caffeine can cover their energy swings. The only way some people can keep going with all that sugar in their diet is caffeine or drugs! You don’t have to cut out sweets altogether, your local health food store has lots of alternative sweeteners that can satisfy your sweet tooth without putting your pancreas and insulin production into overdrive. At any rate, if you feel depressed, and it seems like it is for no reason, then sugar may be the culprit. You owe it to your health to cut down on your refined sugar intake. And if you cut out sugar altogether for a few days, you may notice a significant improvement in your mood.

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Brain Food – It Really Works! Your local health food stores will have a whole shelf full of supplements that are generally called “brain foods” or “boosters” or “mood management.” If you are experiencing depression because of a biochemical imbalance, it can be fun and interesting to try some of these “just in case.” I myself take several supplements specifically to fuel my brain and balance out any mood swings. Supplements that help with mood management are L Glutamine. B vitamins. Brewer’s Yeast. Lecithin. Chromium. Sometimes you can find all of them in one tablet. There are several others listed on “brain booster” supplement bottles, that I haven’t tried, but that may help. Try some when you start to feel down and see if they make any difference! Now, everyone’s biochemistry is different. A supplement that works for seven out of ten people still leaves three people feeling ripped off. Another that works miracles for one person may not have any noticeable effect on nine others. How well supplements work depend on a lot of variables, including what other supplements you take and your diet and genetics and whether you exercise and other environmental factors. For these reasons you need to explore brain food for yourself and see what gives you a lift and what doesn’t. Here is a supplement cocktail I recommend you try to see if gives you a lift: L Glutamine 200 mlg A One a Day B Vitamin Complex Supplement Brewers Yeast, three tablets. Lecithin in liquid gel cap form, one tablet. Phenylalanine 25 mg Take all of those at one time when you are feeling down, and see how you feel within thirty minutes. (I have not been able to find all of these in one tablet at the health food store). This cocktail is something I take most every day to fuel my brain. It may work for you as well.

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However, if you are OD’ing on sugar, or pumping yourself up with caffeine and other stimulants, then this cocktail will probably have no noticeable effect, so it all depends on other dietary factors. Still, there are brain foods that can give you a lift, and if you explore you may find some that work for you!

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Summary The main approach emphasized in this book is to take five to ten minutes a day to feel your feelings and explore difficult emotions on purpose. This is the exact opposite of what feels “normal,” which is to try to avoid and resist all our deeper, darker feelings. The revolutionary key presented here is to take only five minutes to do this! Instead of getting sucked into difficult emotions and flushing our mood down the toilet right along with them, take just five minutes as an explorer and check them out then Change the Channel. None of us want to get lost in negative emotions, and the “five minute then change the channel” rule will help you to begin to integrate and heal all of your emotional ills. If you are dealing with depression, you are on a challenging part of the human journey. You have a great opportunity to explore and understand a lot more of your inner workings and come to a much deeper understanding of your self and how to manage your moods and deal with difficult emotions. The other side of depression is worth getting to! This book is not THE ANSWER to depression. Every person is unique and every person must discover what works best for them in optimizing their mood and emotional well being. I hope you have found some of these perspectives useful. These are not the only approaches to dealing with depression. These are not the only methods for thriving emotionally. As I’ve repeatedly said, we got no schooling on how to deal with difficult emotions. For more information on the subjects of joy, exuberance, depression, hope, etc., please go to www.emotionalskills.com to get a free course on Developing your Emotional IQ. It’s free, everybody should have it, and you deserve to give yourself this gift. Please feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] to let me know how the journey is going for you.

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