In many ways, though, what you are now experiencing is a failure, but not one born of personal inadequacy or some such depressed notion.
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Rather, it is a lack of the training necessary to find a lack of (the sense of) self pleasant or liberating.
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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.
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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.
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Upset? Eat, exercise, watch a movie, masturbate, yell at someone (or whatever it is you do). Stress abate, but it always returns.
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This is not the *only* way to handle these sorts of issues, but it's the only way most of us have experience with.
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Depression takes all that away. Someone offers help? You're a burden. Masturbate? You're icky. Exercise? You don't even have the energy.
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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.
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(Meditation isn't the *only* way to fine-tune attention, but that's a discussion for a different thread.)
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I say not to meditate while you are depressed, because in a very real sense what is happening is you're *already meditating*!
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But instead of being something you choose to do, it becomes a compulsion; an involuntary, often torturous experience.
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That inability to let go of noticing that knot in your stomach, that heaviness, that pervasive feeling of emptiness? That's concentration.
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(Brb, another 10-20 minutes of work before I have to let the software run again.)
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So we have concentration. Now, that feeling of oppressive weight, annoyances or *everything* hurting at once? That's clarity.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In plain English, you have clear sensations of pain, discomfort, sadness etc., but you can't tell that those sensations are not continuous.
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If you could, you would notice that there is always something inside you that isn't terribly bothered by what's going on.
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"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:
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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.
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That said, feelings work by associativon in ways that can be hellishly messy. Joy triggers guilt triggers anxiety triggers anger, etc.
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When you're depressed, it's like every associative chain is eventually hijacked to include sadness, pain or other feelings of negative valence.
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Meanwhile, the positive associative chains, the kinds that take us from amusement to ease to contentment and so on, break down.
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There are all sorts of practical solutions you can use to break out, but there are also several attentional tricks you could use.
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(Brb again, need to write some logs before I finish work.)
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The first trick is the easiest, but it's one I recommend you NEVER exercise while you're depressed, unless you're in a recovery phase.
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If, however, you can exercise it between bouts of depression, you will find it helps when the negativity returns. This is what you do:
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Let's loop back to the beginning here. When you experience something negative valence (pain or any negative emotion), try to open up to it.
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When I say open up, I mean try to experience it fully, through all modalities. Feel it in the body, heed the associated thoughts...
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Let everything that feels negative be experienced. Don't interfere with it. Don't *try* to feel bad, though; just let it happen.
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If you can do this with a lot of clarity and concentration (practice, practice - depression actually helps!), equanimity typically ensues.
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I say "typically" because not all feelings can be tolerated, and that's fine. You can't fix every problem, but most problems can be mitigated.
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If you work on your ability to fully experience your negative feelings, you will notice that they tend to have a fixed beginning and end.
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Sometimes it's a solid block of sensation, sometimes it pulsates or throbs (like pain from a stab wound, if you've ever had that).
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Being able to tell these things apart is key to certain high-level meditative attainments, but it's also extremely useful when depressed.
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If you've trained this skill to a high enough level, you start to notice beginnings and ends even when depressed. This becomes a way out.
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Instead of this overwhelming, monolithic sense of hopelessness, pain, dread or whatever, you see that it's a spiralling pattern of feelings.
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You are not trapped in a state of depression; you are going through the process of being depressed. A process that can evolve.
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If you try to develop this understanding while you're depressed, however, you'll hardly see the point. It's just as oppressive as anything else.
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But if you work through it outside the context of your depression, you develop positive associations: it's liberating to feel pain fully.
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