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.

Related posts:

1. What is the cause of depression?
2. Negative Feelings associated with debt
3. Changing my emotional state

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!

Related posts:

1. It’s tough to write while depressed
2. Therapies for depression
3. Self conversation: Talk to your best friend

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…

Related posts:

1. What is the cause of depression?
2. Using affirmations
3. Procrastinating

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!

Related posts:

1. Changing my emotional state
2. What is the cause of depression?
3. Subliminal tapes and audio affirmations

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!

Related posts:

1. Using affirmations
2. Subliminal tapes and audio affirmations
3. Self conversation: Talk to your best friend

I’ve noticed this many times. If someone’s looking at me I invariably feel that and I can even feel which direction the “stare” is coming from.

I’ve also tried this with many different people. I pick someone and try staring at them for about 5 seconds or more. Most of these are people that are not looking straight at me or coming toward me. They’re either standing/walking perpendicular to me so I can see their side profile, or they have their backs towards me, so walking/standing with their backs to me.

I’d say that more than 90% of the people can feel that I’m staring and they turn and look at me.

It’s just one of those things that I’ve noticed but haven’t really thought about as to the why! I’m sure there is some explanation to it but I don’t know yet. Hmm…

Related posts:

1. Walk to work
2. One day challenge to stop gossiping
3. Changing my emotional state

It all goes back to the law of attraction and changing our vibrational state. Like I mentioned in a previous article, in order to change our vibrational state, one way is to put ourself in a different environment. In an environment that is more fitting to the person we want to become.

As an experiment I’ve been meeting different people who’re interested in investing in real estate. I am a real estate sales person as well so I can sell property but investing is a different ball game all together.

Coming from poverty, the idea of investing in real estate scares me as I do not have the money even now to buy an investment property. The fact that I would have to deal with tenants and any problems that might arise from them also discourage me. So, I thought this would be perfect.

There was a real estate investors’ meeting this past weekend which I attended. Every single person there had an investment property besides their principle residence. Every single person seemed to have a lot of money just sitting in the bank. They were talking about using 20%-25% down payment versus using 35% down payment to buy another investment property. An Indian person there with broken english was the star of the evening. Very helpful and one of the most positive people I’ve met. He apparently had recently just bought 60 properties.

I felt very uncomfortable sitting there. All sorts of negative emotions were coming out. I started to feel quite bad and poor sitting amongst them. I felt like there wasn’t much I could contribute to the meeting as well.

But then I reminded myself the reason for me being there. Near the end of the conversation I was feeling a lot more comfortable there.

Another reason I loved being there was because each one of these people had actually stepped outside the box. Where people at my work are totally conditioned to be employees for the rest of their lives, these people had actually realized that it was possible to be financially independent without a job.

Being around people like these could not hurt me in any which way!

So, the trick is: put yourself amongst people who’re where you want to be. Stay there until it starts to feel comfortable to be there. That’s when you know your vibration has changed and that’s when you’ll automatically start to attract things that’ll actually bring you closer to your goal! Easy, right?!

Related posts:

1. Meeting Revenue Canada auditor
2. Debt: How do you feel about debt?
3. Using affirmations

Affirmations

According to webster.com, an affirmation is:

- an act of affirming

- a positive assertion

Basically to affirm means to say something with positive conviction.

I think a lot of misunderstanding would be laid to rest if people actually find the real meaning of an affirmation. By that I mean that I would have saved a lot of time if I had actually done that!

We are using affirmations all day long anyways. The negative statements that we keep repeating in our minds about ourselves and others are nothing but affirmations, just negative affirmations.

Auto suggestion

From the beginning of time people have been telling us the benefits of auto suggestion. If we tell ourselves something over and over again, we’re going to end up believing it.  No matter what it is.

That little statement is sooooo powerful that it’s unbelievable! We can actually change our beliefs about anything and anyone using auto suggestion. We can literally change our life around using auto suggestion!

It depends a lot also on how we use affirmations. Do we just say the words? That will have minimal if any effect on us. More emotions we can engage while repeating affirmations, faster we’ll actually notice them making a difference.

I have soooo much to write about it that I don’t know where to begin and what to write or in what order to write. It’s quite possible that somethings might be repeated more than once as well.

How to use affirmations?

Most important thing to remember in using affirmations is that you must believe them when you’re repeating them. Initially, the first time you say something to yourself  you may not believe it. For example, if you say “I am good at cooking!”. Initially, you may laugh at this, that is if you’re a bad cook right now!

What you do is keep repeating this statement to yourself! Out loud! Sing it, write it down, repeat it but keep at it until you get a little feeling of belief inside of you.  I don’t mean do this during the day or over a few days. I mean at one time keep repeating it until you feel like you can be a good cook or that you are a good cook. Sometimes you’ll get that feeling after repeating an affirmation one time and sometimes it could be after several hundred times.

After you get that feeling, that positive feeling towards the affirmation, now you can let it go.  Now repeat this again the next day, or twice a day or however many times. Most important thing is not to ever just say the words out loud without reaching the point of believing in that affirmation.

Now if you just do that for a few days, again depends on how faithfully you do this it could be a few days to a few weeks but you’ll actually start to really believe that you are a good cook.

Now what?

If you have done it properly not only are you going to believe that you’re a great cook but you will actually be one. What happens if you’re affirming a statement is that you get excited about it, inspired ideas keep coming in your mind and if you were to take action on those inspired ideas you’ll notice yourself improving.

Now it becomes a positive cycle. More you affirm with conviction, more inspired ideas you get and more you act on those ideas, better you get and thus taking you to what you have been affirming and that “I am good at cooking!”

Related posts:

1. Challenges with affirmations
2. Subliminal tapes and audio affirmations
3. How to instill new beliefs?

EFT

I tried EFT and that seemed to help a little. I tried it for quite some time and the negativity seemed to go down quite a bit. One way to see if EFT is working is you’ll start to feel like a lot of steam exiting your body. Almost like stress, or negative emotions are separate entities which seem to be exiting your body.

Hmm… sorta like exorcism!

Even after 15-20 minutes of EFT I was still feeling bad. The negative emotions had subsided but it was easy for them to come back so I thought of trying something else.

Self Conversation

This is a process that also has helped me considerably from time to time. It’s just a form of talk to yourself but out loud. You have a conversation with yourself out loud. One side asks questions while the other side answers.

So, I started talking. I asked myself what the issue was and I also answered to myself about the issue. Main problem was that a lot of my friends who I went to school with or even I met afterwards seemed to be doing quite well. They all seemed to be earning good money and are married and well settled and over all happy.

While I was still struggling with debt and how it seemed to be a never ending vicious circle. I earn, I pay debt off a little bit and something happens and debt goes up even more and so on.

Then I reminded myself about the law of attraction. How whatever I focus on comes to me, especially if a lot of emotion is involved. I reminded myself of my vibration and how I was in perfect vibration to attract even more debt and other bad things in my life.

I asked myself what I wanted and it turned out that I wanted to be totally debt free. Then I asked myself what is needed for me to attract that in my life? I answered that I needed to be in a different vibration all together than I was in right now. So, if I really wanted to be out of debt and financially stable and secure, I had to change my current vibration so I could start attracting that in my life.

I talked like this with myself for quite a while but in the end I was feeling much better. I saw the hope and I was out of my gloomy state! I had realized that I was responsible for getting me in this state and I was also responsible for getting myself out.

I also realized that I knew enough about the law of attraction that I definitely could get myself out of this state. Wherever I am is the result of my past thinking/vibrations but what happens in future can be altered by altering the way I think, feel, vibrate right now.

Then I slept peacefully!

Related posts:

1. Debt: How do you feel about debt?
2. Real estate investors’ meeting
3. Self conversation: Talk to your best friend

Now, it’s been quite a few hours and I still feel pretty bad. Whenever I feel bad about money, I feel like I’m really tired, along with the out of breath feeling I mentioned previously. All I want to do then is to go to bed and rest. I do not have any energy then either. It’s one of the worst feelings that I’ve felt and it’s stayed with me no matter what I do to take care of it.

NLP and EFT

I’ve tried NLP and EFT therapy with some successful therapists but nothing helped. These were the people who had actually helped war veterans with post traumatic stress disorder and so on but it didn’t seem to work with me. Actually, it did not even help me 1%. Weird!

But both of these methods have helped me when I’ve used them by myself. I guess because I know myself better so I could change them to fit me.

I’ll talk more about both of these techniques in a later post. So far I feel pretty bad.

I am going to try a few things to make myself feel a little better. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve tried some self-talk but that didn’t seem to work. Let’s see…

Related posts:

1. Debt: How do you feel about debt?
2. Changing my emotional state
3. Therapies for depression