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Over the past few years I’ve tried various different therapies for depression. Here are my experiences:

Family doctor – My family doctor never thought there was anything wrong with me. I had to try repeatedly to get a referral to see a therapist/psychiatrist. He kept saying “don’t worry, it’s just stress! Everyone has stress these days, it’s no big deal!”

Psychiatrists – I saw a few different ones. Few of them saw nothing wrong with me as I seemed to be knowledgeable about what might be causing me stress and what I could about it. They said “you know what to do, you don’t need anything, and you’ll be fine!” While one suggested I could try to go on medication which I refused at that time.

Talk therapy – Quite effective. I worked with a good therapist and she knew just the right questions to ask me to make me think deeper about my issues. By just talking with someone who’s not going to judge can be very comforting in itself.

Only thing is that it can easily make you dependent. Plus those were one hour sessions and she would always be looking at her watch to keep track of time so I never really felt comfortable opening up as I would always be thinking of trying to summarize every thing so it could fit in that one hour session.

Eft – I mentioned in a previous article about how I cured my lower back pain using EFT. After that I worked with an EFT practitioner for some time to resolve a lot of deeper issues. Even though she thought everything was ok, working with her actually did not help directly. She was very good practitioner and a good person but I think the problem arose because she tried to use techniques of EFT without really taking into account my background.

After we had stopped the sessions I continued with EFT for another six months at least and for 1-2 hours every single day so I got quite knowledgeable in applying EFT. Every time something negative happened in my life, I would just apply EFT and get rid of the negative association to that event. This enabled me to look objectively at the situation and thus learn from it but overall it did not help me resolve deeper issues.

I eventually stopped using it so much when I started using NLP.

NLP – I worked with a highly qualified NLP practitioner. He was highly recommended and had done a lot of good in the community using NLP. He had helped a lot of people deal with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and not to mention a whole lot of other disorders and phobias very successfully.

We went through really extensive NLP sessions. He assured me that I did not need to remember specific events in order to deal with them with NLP. Interesting thing is that nothing worked. We went through a lot of issues, with many different NLP techniques, but not a single one of them went away. So, that was kind of disappointing.

Thus, I found both NLP and EFT to be very good at dissolving negative feelings if I could remember specific events. They’re both relatively easy to learn and use. They’re also very good at curing phobias as you know specifically what it is that’s causing you discomfort.

On the same note, I have found that unless you can get to the core issues, it’s very hard to totally resolve an issue with them.

With EFT, the set up phrases and phrases that are recommended to be used while tapping may not work for everyone either. Problem is similar to problems with using affirmations, as I mentioned in my previous article.

So, there you have it. Please keep in mind that every single one of these therapies has actually helped a lot of people. Just because I didn’t find help using them doesn’t mean they don’t work.

This is just my experience and they did not help me. Also, I could have tried going to different people with in the same field but I was fed up with it all.

Still, I actually learned a lot about myself, from each of these different forms of therapies, so these experiences were not totally wasted.

What exactly is depression? You can read my previous post for the symptoms of depression. But what is the cause of depression?

Let’s remember one thing! You were not born depressed. Therefore, your depression is not permanent.

Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about some disability though, which is different all together. I am talking about people who’re born healthy otherwise but fall into depression due to the circumstances in their lives.

Also, there are a lot of people who’ve cured their depression without medication so we know it is possible. This is a very good start.

You have a bad experience in your life. Now every time you think about it, it causes you to feel some kind of negative emotion. Not only that, but negative feelings get associated to anything that reminds you of that experience, or even anything that’s a little similar in nature.

What if you have many different negative events in your life? For example, what if you grew up in extreme poverty, experienced racism, had poor health, and grew up without real friends and so on?

Now, almost everything you look at might put you in a negative state.

You’re feeling sad all the time. More you feel sad, more you reinforce your current state and harder it gets to get out of sadness.

In a law of attraction term, you are always in a vibration of sadness. And since you attract in your life what you’re vibrating, you keep attracting other people, circumstances, and things that keep you in your current vibration, which is sadness. You’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

You stop to think about why you’re feeling sad but there is no answer since it’s been going on for quite some time now. It might have been a simple new gadget that someone bought that you didn’t have. Even though you might be able to afford it now but subconsciously it took you to a time when you were unable to afford anything. Or it might just be the way someone looked at you on the road, or way someone was dressed, or certain smell, or certain tone of voice, or people of certain religion/culture and so on.

It can be anything at all. It all depends what was around you when you had your negative experience(s) in your life. If in your negative state you focused in on a certain person then everytime that person’s around you, you might feel the same negative emotion. Actually, this is called a negative anchor in NLP. That same negative feeling gets anchored to that person.

So, how do you deal with it now? What do you do when you can’t even pin point the cause of your depression, of your sadness?

Take your attention away

One way is to take your attention away from sadness and by deliberately placing it on something that you like, something that makes you feel good.

If even for one moment you change your focus to something positive, at least for that moment your depression is no longer there. For that one moment you are feeling good.

You could try focusing on your breath. Focus on one complete breath, inhaling and exhaling. For that one breath your attention was taken away from depression to peace and tranquility. For that one breath you were at peace.

When I experimented like this, that’s when I realized that I did not need medication but needed to deliberately focus on things that brought joy to my life, things that made me feel good.

So, even if I couldn’t pin point the root cause of my depression but if I could feel good for just one moment then there there is hope that I could feel good for a whole day. It is just a matter of being in that state for longer periods of time daily.

This again is encouraging!

I have so much I want to write about but just don’t have the energy or the desire to start writing. I wanted to write about depression, what it is, what therapies I’ve tried, my current plan of action and so on.

I have no desire to stay in this state any longer. It really is not a pleasant way to spend my day. It’s an awesome feeling to be happy! I want to stay in that positive state all the time!

When I’m happy, not only do I feel good but everyone I come in contact with feels good around me.

I just feel so down that can’t seem to write what I really want to write so I thought I might just start by writing this simple post.

But soon…

I have been experimenting with various forms of self-talk in the past little while. One form that I find very effective is called self-conversation.

Self-conversation

Basically, you start talking out loud with yourself and have a conversation with yourself just like you would if you were talking to your best friend. I’ve found this to be the most effective method of getting any answers that I might need, any advice, or just getting myself to feel better when I might be feeling down.

Example

I ask myself “Ricky, how are you?” and then I reply to myself “I’m feeling a little sad!” Then I might ask “but why are you feeling sad?” To which I might reply “I feel like I should be progressing at a much faster rate but I’m not, I feel that I’m lazy!” And then I listen to the guidance from with in. If I ask myself or talk to myself in such a way and actually listen to what I’m talking about, I am often amazed how I have all the answers with in myself. I give myself amazing advice and I often feel much better by the end of the conversation and usually am back on track.

I’ve used this method to motivate myself, to stop beating up on myself, to stop constant self-doubt, stop self-defeating thoughts, bring myself back on track, and come out of guilt and a whole bunch of other negative thoughts that can occupy my mind.

The trick I found is to talk out loud and actually listen to yourself as if you would listen to your closest and best friend. If I just do it mentally it doesn’t seem to work as well. I think it’s because when talking out loud, your attention is all there and it’s hard to ignore your words. But if you’re doing it mentally it’s so easy for other thoughts to interfere and thus losing your focus.

Also, never, ever, ever put yourself down. You can have a tough love sort of talk with yourself but never put yourself down, never criticize yourself. Your answers should always be from love.

You can say stuff like “Ricky you know that you can do this! Reason you’re feeling like this is because of this but you know that you can do this, you have done it before many times!”

Try self-conversation and you may be amazed at the results!

I’ve been using affirmations for years and majority of the time without any positive result.  The affirmations that are playing in the background in my mind, without any conscious help from me seemed to be the only ones consistently working and producing results (negative that is)

But consciously repeating affirmations have been very disappointing to me.

One famous affirmation is “I love myself!” I’ve repeated this affirmation hundreds of times daily without any result showing for it.

What is your mother tongue?

You maybe fluent in English but what is your mother tongue? Try repeating the affirmations in your mother tongue and see if that makes more impact.

What language do you think in?

Even if you speak English, you have to find out what language you think in. What language do you dream in? I think and dream in English so it’s much better but there have been instances where these English affirmations had no effect on me.

What language was used when you were a child?

A lot of our negative self talk is basically just a repetition of what adults around us used to say when we were kids. If adults told you that you were no good, that you were lazy, that’s what you’ll notice yourself affirming to yourself subconsciously.

In order to effectively overcome those negative affirmations, you have to find out when it all started. By that you should be able to find out in what language were they spoken to you. That’s the language you want to use to combat those negative affirmations.

Even if you speak English fluently and even think and dream in English now, language that was used when you were a child has a very strong affect on you.

Do these words even mean anything to you?

Affirmations such as “I love myself”, “I love everything about myself”, “I forgive myself”, “I approve of myself” did not produce any kind of emotion in me. I kept repeating them over and over but nothing happened.

I even tried repeating these affirmations in my mother tongue but still nothing.

Louise Hay gives examples of people starting to use affirmation (while looking at themselves in the mirror) “I approve of myself” and how they got so upset that they started crying, some of them threw the mirrors away, some of them yelled and screamed and ran out! I would be ecstatic if I had emotions like those. It would mean that I’m getting somewhere.

Why was that?

I finally realized it was because the words such as “love”, “forgive”, “approve” do not hold any meaning to me. I was brought up in a culture where these words are taboo, they’re just not used, or they’re just used so commonly that they lose their meaning.

I might as well be affirming in Chinese because that’s what these words were to me.

So, I tried using words such as “I like everything I do”, “I like everything about myself” and now I was able to feel a little bit which was still infinitesimally more than before!

Before repeating any affirmations just ask yourself if what you are affirming even has any meaning to you. If it doesn’t, like in my case, then find out what would work, what evokes any kind of emotion in you that is similar in nature. Emotions could be negative or positive, doesn’t matter, as long as there is some feeling evoked by using those words

I’ve had to do a lot of experimentation on every single affirmation. I repeat it with feelings and strong emotions and in different languages to find out what works better for me.

So, don’t give up on just yet. There are challenges with affirmations but if done properly they can be very rewarding indeed!