Unless you're depressed, unpleasant experiences are always less oppressive if you let yourself feel them fully.
But doing that takes practice.
Conversation
If you are depressed, don't bother trying to accept or feel your emotions more fully. You are already hypersensitized towards them.
1
1
Accepting and working with your own emotions is no less important when you're depressed, of course, but it needs to be handled indirectly.
1
2
Rough analogy: a sick person may also need to exercise to get better, but you generally don't prescribe high-intensity interval training.
Replying to
My guess is, one of the biggest comorbidities with depression is that many of us are always just one step ahead of our own self-loathing.
1
The ego and its host of emotional self-repair mechanisms becomes dependent on a constant supply of positive feedback (from yourself or others).
1
1
When that breaks down, people experience a soft version of ego death. Not only does everything feel like shit; you don't even feel like a person.
1
1
While in many ways this is rarefied state of realization, you don't really want to experience it simultaneously with feeling like shit.
1
1
In many ways, though, what you are now experiencing is a failure, but not one born of personal inadequacy or some such depressed notion.
1
Rather, it is a lack of the training necessary to find a lack of (the sense of) self pleasant or liberating.
1
When you're depressed, everything has negative valence. Even being happy becomes a chore. In a sense, though, it's like that all the time.
1
That you don't notice it *all the time* has a lot to do with those egoic self-repair mechanisms I mentioned. You are constantly patching holes.
1
Upset? Eat, exercise, watch a movie, masturbate, yell at someone (or whatever it is you do). Stress abate, but it always returns.
1
This is not the *only* way to handle these sorts of issues, but it's the only way most of us have experience with.
1
Depression takes all that away. Someone offers help? You're a burden. Masturbate? You're icky. Exercise? You don't even have the energy.
1
I said there were other ways. There are of course several, but the one I know best is fine-tuning attentional skills, a.k.a. meditation.
1
(Meditation isn't the *only* way to fine-tune attention, but that's a discussion for a different thread.)
1
I say not to meditate while you are depressed, because in a very real sense what is happening is you're *already meditating*!
1
But instead of being something you choose to do, it becomes a compulsion; an involuntary, often torturous experience.
1
That inability to let go of noticing that knot in your stomach, that heaviness, that pervasive feeling of emptiness? That's concentration.
1
(Brb, another 10-20 minutes of work before I have to let the software run again.)
1
So we have concentration. Now, that feeling of oppressive weight, annoyances or *everything* hurting at once? That's clarity.
1
Here comes the missing piece: there is no equanimity. What's happening does not feel OK. Not OK at all. Not fun, either. Just shit.
1
2
This feeling of pervasive negativity, however, is actually distracting. We are in a state of deep clarity, but it doesn't go all the way.
1
We are concentrating a bit too hard, and it's using A LOT of processing power. We can't clearly identify moments of arising or passing.
1
In plain English, you have clear sensations of pain, discomfort, sadness etc., but you can't tell that those sensations are not continuous.
1
If you could, you would notice that there is always something inside you that isn't terribly bothered by what's going on.
1
1
"OK, smartass," I hear you say, "but how does that help?"
I'm not saying it helps you, now. But it definitely *can* help. Let me explain:
1
1
If you set out to look for a central self that feels your feelings, you won't find it. Feelings are mostly discreet experiential entities.
1
That said, feelings work by associativon in ways that can be hellishly messy. Joy triggers guilt triggers anxiety triggers anger, etc.
1
When you're depressed, it's like every associative chain is eventually hijacked to include sadness, pain or other feelings of negative valence.
1
1
Meanwhile, the positive associative chains, the kinds that take us from amusement to ease to contentment and so on, break down.
1
1
There are all sorts of practical solutions you can use to break out, but there are also several attentional tricks you could use.
1
(Brb again, need to write some logs before I finish work.)
1
Show replies