Curing Your Own Depression

Even though the effects of depression might be all too real
in your life, depression is not real.  If you're suffering
from depression, you're only imagining it because depression
is the direct result of your subconscious mind's obsession
with useless thoughts that were impressed upon it during
your formative years.  I know that this may seem completely
unreasonable to anyone who is trapped in the dark by
depression - or, indeed, to anyone whose life is deeply
affected because a loved one or family member suffers from
depression.   But it is a psychological fact.   Not only
that, it's the way every single person's mind works.   In
other words, it's normal for your subconscious mind to focus
on the past - everyone's does - it's just that the
psychological snapshots that your subconscious is focused on
are more negative - and the subconscious mind loves negative.
 This is not your fault - it's the way we're all wired.   Nor
is it your fault that you're carrying more negative baggage
than someone else.   Your subconscious mind was impressed
with those thoughts by others, people and events that made
you feel bad, guilty, useless, upset or traumatised during
your childhood years.

Now, whilst it is normal for your subconscious to focus on
past deeply-rooted thoughts, it's doing you damage - you can
see it and feel the all too obvious results in your everyday
life.  Again, there's no need to feel bad about this -
everyone's subconscious mind is doing them damage - at least
you have the advantage over other normal people in realizing
that you've got a problem.

But that problem is solely down to what your subconscious
mind is focused on - there are no other broken pieces in
your make up, no damaged hard-wiring.   It follows then that
medication is not going to treat your problem, it's only
going to ease the symptoms.    What you have got to do is
tear your mind's attention away from those self-destructive
thoughts.  This is easier said than done for two reasons.
First of all, your mind has been 'comfortable' in focussing
on those old childhood snapshots for all of your adult life
- you're trying to break the habit of an adult lifetime.
Secondly, your mind's 'default settings' are set to pay
attention to what you do not want to pay attention to - it's
the way you're wired as a normal adult.

So, whilst your depression's cause is rooted in your own
brain - the ultimate and permanent solution to your
depression is also in your own head.  This solution is found
by embarking on a 'self-training course' in paying attention
to the only place and time that's real, the only place and
time that you can really live - the here and now.  This
training course requires daily commitment - perhaps only
five or ten minutes, but five or ten minutes every single
day - otherwise your mind will drift back to its default
settings.  But the good news is that you won't be training
yourself to do something that's foreign to you.  When you
were a child, you paid full attention to the here and now -
that's how you took those negative snapshots in the first
place.  Do you think that five or ten minutes each day might
be worth the bother?  Could ten minutes each morning make the
remaining twenty three hours and fifty minutes that much
better?  The answer is a resounding Yes!   But five or ten
minutes doing what?

You make 'sense' of your life by noticing what your five
senses are telling you and then interpreting that
information using your childhood snapshots.  As a result,
you make nonsense of the reality of the information being
fed to you be your five senses.  You've got to take your
childhood snapshots out of this process entirely, by
deliberately, for ten minutes each morning, only paying
attention to what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste.  For
those ten minutes, you simply notice what's going on, you
don't interpret it, you simply observe.  When you get
frustrated because your mind starts wandering - or your
subconscious tries to tell you that the exercise is a
complete waste of time - you simply see, feel, hear, smell
and taste.   I believe that the best way to relearn how to
pay attention to the reality of your five senses is
meditation - preferably, for starters, guided meditation.
It will take you a while to get into it, you will find it
difficult or strange or both but a little commitment will
yield enormous benefit.  And remember, you will be
meditating to clear your mind - not to ascend to some other
spiritual plane (if there is one) but to prevent your mind
paying attention to the unreal conditioning that's playing
havoc with your life.

If you do manage to turn your attention to the reality of
the here and now you will experience something that you
probably have never experienced before - there's no such
thing as depression, there's no such thing as fear or worry,
there's only a world full of possibilities and potential.
Pills or medicine won't enable you experience the difference
between reality and the illusion of depression - they might
make the pain go away for a while but your subconscious mind
will always wander back to those thoughts that are not real
but just an imprint of a past long gone.  The only way you
will experience reality - one without depression - is to
learn how to clear your mind.

About the Author:

Willie Horton has been a Personal Development expert since
1996 - working with top leaders in major organizations. An
Irish ex-accountant, ex-banker, published author and keynote
speaker, he travels the world, from his home in the French
Alps, enabling people "live the dream". All his work -
including his acclaimed Personal Development Workshop - is
now online at http://www.gurdy.net