Please read my previous post https://steemit.com/life/@conditionedminds/depression-how-it-is-formed-and-sustained if you have not already done so before continuing.
So now that you have a proper understanding of how depression could have come upon you, it’s now time to erase it from your life completely. Does this mean that you will never feel sad again? No, sadness and all other feeling are a natural part of life and only become problematic when experienced too often over a long period of time due to the reasons we discussed in my previous post.
We can see this by observing a young child, they can go through many different feelings in the space of any hour. They simply express their feelings and carry on with life in a content manner. It is when we forget this natural expression of feelings that we were born with, we start having problems.
So where do you start?
If you suffer from depression, you more than likely get pulled around by your mind and your thoughts. What I mean by this is, your attention would get pulled in by your thoughts and you would accept them as being true. There would be no space for observation of your mind from an objective perspective.
First, what you must realise is that, you are not your mind, you are not your thoughts and you are not your feelings. It is all learned. It is important that you understand this and keep it in mind throughout the release process.
The first step is to expand your awareness and become familiar with how your mind works and what situations are triggering your undesired feelings. A mind with low awareness works like this, a thought arises of an unpleasant nature which causes an unpleasant feeling, your attention is pulled in and you believe the thought which means you suffer the pain of the associated feeling. Little or no awareness creates the illusion that you are your mind. There would be very little or no space for observation from an objective perspective. You will need to expand your awareness, gaining insight to the causes of your suffering. When you do this and become aware of your minds habitual nature, it makes it significantly easier to sit back and allow the feelings to be released.
This ability, like any other, needs to be learnt and practiced. With time and practice you will gain the ability to detach yourself from your minds pull and learn to observe your thoughts without being taken back by them.
In order to do this, you need to train your awareness to stay still/centered while allowing thoughts and feelings to arise freely. You can start by taking some time out every day and observing your mind at work. The best way to describe this is, you stay aware, allowing whatever comes up while not placing your attention on any one thing. Remember that it is your attention/focus that is feeding the cycle and keeping depression a part of your life.
At the beginning, this can seem like a daunting task as it is highly likely that you are used to getting pulled in by your thoughts and feelings. You need to give yourself time. You are not going to develop this ability over night, you will have to be patient. The time you invest in this will create the foundation for mental freedom. To practice this, you can sit or lie down comfortably and allow whatever arises to arise freely while you stay centered in your awareness. You want to greet whatever arises with curiosity, this will help you to stay detached and also help you uncover the true causes of your feelings. If your attention gets pulled in by certain thoughts or feelings, just gently bring it back to your awareness. This will definitely happen and its all part of the training process so be easy on yourself. You may notice your attention getting pulled right away or you might get caught up in one of your minds ‘stories’ for a little while, either way just bring it back and continue once you notice that it has strayed.
You are likely to find it difficult at the beginning. This is the same as anything else you first learn how to do, like driving a car or learning how to write. This can cause frustration as you are probably tired of the mental suffering and want it to stop. If you experience frustration, treat it like any other thought or feeling, it has pulled your attention so come back to your awareness and allow it to flow while you stay aware of anything else that arises. Just be aware of anything that arises, be that frustration, anger, sadness, guilt, fear etc, and don’t forget, be patient and go easy on yourself.
As you gain the ability to detach yourself from your mind, what will begin to happen is, the thoughts and feelings will begin to gradually lose their strength and over a period of time fade away. This happens as a result of us not ‘feeding’ them. The neural pathways in our brains cannot survive without being fed/sustained. All this time, you have been unknowingly sustaining and reinforcing them through your belief that they are true, over-thinking them, trying o figure them out and so on as we have discussed in the previous post. All of these things are reinforcing the neural pathways in our brains which are keeping depression firmly in place.
As you remain centered in your awareness, your thoughts and feelings that had been suppressed are going to come to the surface for release. The fact that this happens is proof that they cannot simply be avoided through suppression or distraction. All of these feelings are yours and yours only. You have felt them all before but have not released/expressed them properly. Don’t be afraid of what might arise, get familiar with them by greeting them with curiosity and you will soon find that it is the same feelings coming up over and over again disguised as different external events in your life (triggers).
The release of the build-up of feelings will not be pleasant but it is necessary that they be felt/expressed and allowed to run their course naturally. It is essential in the clearing out of the old ‘baggage’ and the releasing of old thought patterns and the feelings attached to them.
We have different ways of expressing different feelings. The main feeling that causes depression is sadness and sadness is expressed through crying so it is common to experience crying during the release process. Don’t hold it in, just go with the flow and remember that these feelings have been building up and compounded over years or more so they will take time to lessen in intensity and fade away.
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