One of the very first points to understand about depression is that it obviously deals with bad feelings. Negative emotions. And when you look at it, it's fairly easy to see what we all come from a particular paradigm or box around our emotions. An obvious, easy to understand box.
What are some emotions you like having? The usual list is Love
pleasure
joy
Excitement
Excitement
hope
amusement
These types of emotions we call "good feelings." We want to feel them as much as we can. Just so, there are many emotions we don't want to have or feel at all. See if some of these negative feelings would be on your list:
Fear
Fear
anger
hate
Hate
Anxiety
Emptiness
Emptiness
These feelings we call "bad emotions" and we try to avoid or stay away from them as much as we can. If we must feel them, we try to get away from them as fast as we can.
Now you are ready to understand the box we operate from about our emotions. The box is that there are "bad" emotions and "good" ones. Kinda obvious, right? All of us just "know" that when it comes to emotions there are bad ones and good ones. Further, we know that part of the point in life is to feel good ones and avoid bad ones. This goes unexamined in our lives because it is so obvious and plain. Of course the way to deal with emotions is to feel good ones and avoid bad ones!
Given that, all of the emotions that go with depression we characterize as "bad" emotions, and we just "know" that our job is to try to avoid or get rid of these feelings at all costs. So you could say that we're stuck in a box about depression, which is that depression - and all the feelings that go with it - are bad. And we should resist all the feelings that go with this condition.
But there is a big problem to this approach of trying to get rid of all the feelings associated with depression, and it begins with a common emotional mistake we make all of the time. This emotional mistake has to do with trying not to feel bad feelings.
So try on the concept that you have an emotional "body," and that it has a job to do. The job of your emotional body is to feel all feelings. Good ones like inspiration and enthusiasm, and bad ones like sadness and anxiety. It's job is to feel ALL feelings, whether you like some or not. You can't stop your emotional body from feeling your feelings, that's what it does.
You cant keep your skin from feeling hot or cold, soft or hard. Your skin will feel whatever surrounds it. Just so, your emotional body will feel all of your emotions. You cant just feel good feelings. When you try to suppress bad feelings, you only cause them to get stuck. They then tend to stick around much longer. Trying not to feel the difficult emotions that go with depression can be a way to keep depression around!
Therefore, to get out of the box of depression, one way is to discover more emotional intelligence so that you can process difficult feelings more efficiently and quickly so that they don't stick around. There's no room in this article to get into the details, but just a few minutes a day of not resisting but exploring difficult emotions can begin to provide some real depression help.
What are some emotions you like having? The usual list is Love
pleasure
joy
Excitement
Excitement
hope
amusement
These types of emotions we call "good feelings." We want to feel them as much as we can. Just so, there are many emotions we don't want to have or feel at all. See if some of these negative feelings would be on your list:
Fear
Fear
anger
hate
Hate
Anxiety
Emptiness
Emptiness
These feelings we call "bad emotions" and we try to avoid or stay away from them as much as we can. If we must feel them, we try to get away from them as fast as we can.
Now you are ready to understand the box we operate from about our emotions. The box is that there are "bad" emotions and "good" ones. Kinda obvious, right? All of us just "know" that when it comes to emotions there are bad ones and good ones. Further, we know that part of the point in life is to feel good ones and avoid bad ones. This goes unexamined in our lives because it is so obvious and plain. Of course the way to deal with emotions is to feel good ones and avoid bad ones!
Given that, all of the emotions that go with depression we characterize as "bad" emotions, and we just "know" that our job is to try to avoid or get rid of these feelings at all costs. So you could say that we're stuck in a box about depression, which is that depression - and all the feelings that go with it - are bad. And we should resist all the feelings that go with this condition.
But there is a big problem to this approach of trying to get rid of all the feelings associated with depression, and it begins with a common emotional mistake we make all of the time. This emotional mistake has to do with trying not to feel bad feelings.
So try on the concept that you have an emotional "body," and that it has a job to do. The job of your emotional body is to feel all feelings. Good ones like inspiration and enthusiasm, and bad ones like sadness and anxiety. It's job is to feel ALL feelings, whether you like some or not. You can't stop your emotional body from feeling your feelings, that's what it does.
You cant keep your skin from feeling hot or cold, soft or hard. Your skin will feel whatever surrounds it. Just so, your emotional body will feel all of your emotions. You cant just feel good feelings. When you try to suppress bad feelings, you only cause them to get stuck. They then tend to stick around much longer. Trying not to feel the difficult emotions that go with depression can be a way to keep depression around!
Therefore, to get out of the box of depression, one way is to discover more emotional intelligence so that you can process difficult feelings more efficiently and quickly so that they don't stick around. There's no room in this article to get into the details, but just a few minutes a day of not resisting but exploring difficult emotions can begin to provide some real depression help.
About the Author:
For more emotional intelligence to help with depression, you can get a book about Depression Self Help here. John Stephan Laney teaches courses on emotional and relationship intelligence and you can learn more about Depression Treatment here. Many types of depression can be healed without drugs or psychoanalysis.
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