TRANSFORMING DEPRESSION

When it comes to the complex meta-state called “depression,” given that we create it (Neurons #53, #55), we can now ask, “How can we use these insights to transform and then transcend the experience?”

First, Distinguish the Levels of States. All states are not the same. The sadness that you feel at the primary level signals you of the difference between how you have mapped some facet of the world and your experience of the world. As such, all emotions are healthy and appropriate feeling responses. Sadness at that level is a response to loss and that’s good. Primary level sadness is good. You need it. It makes you human and real.

Without distinguishing the levels of states, you can mis-understand “depression,” thinking it is a primary state and about something out there in the world. It is not. It is a meta-state made up of negative thoughts and feelings about some other thought, belief, expectation, hope, demand, etc. This explains why it’s easy to solve sadness and why the sadness releases, but the same does not work for depression.

“Negative” emotions at the primary level have a very positive role and purpose. At that first level when your thoughts-and-feelings are in relationship to something “out there,” the emotions while unpleasant and distressful are valuable. Emotions simply reflect the difference between your map of things and your experience of what you have mapped. But when you turn your “negative” feelings against your own feelings (sad about sad, anger at sadness, fear of sadness, shame of sadness, etc.), these are the second-order emotions that damages you.

Second, Positively Accept Sadness and Negative Emotions. Knowing that all of your emotions on the primary level are good, valuable, and important, you can now feel great and even celebrate them. Counter-intuitively, you effectively manage your emotions by positively accepting your fear, sadness, anger, guilt, etc. You accept by acknowledge what you are feeling so that we can then decide what to do. You can also accept that you have brought negative feelings against yourself and so realize the mistake that you have made and commit yourself to not doing that.

Third, Avoid Tying to Cheer Up the Depressed Person. Have you ever tried to cheer up a friend who was depressed? Have you ever offered positive words of cheer and hope and optimism and confidently assured that the depression wouldn’t stand a chance in the face of your inspiring words? Have you ever tried to reason yourself or another out of feeling a feeling? How you ever felt assured of the common sense and logic for the depressed person to just

“snap out of it and start counting blessings? Ever try any of that? It didn’t help much, did it?

Would you like to know why? What happens for you when you’re feeling down and someone offers you “cheerful words?” Why doesn’t the “positivity” and “cheer” work the magic of putting us in a great state?

How to Create a Meta-Muddle The structure of trying to cheer up the depressed goes like this:

1) Begins with a state of sadness. You feel down. Discouraged. The “negative” feelings could range from sadness, grief, discouraged, fear, frustrated, stressed, tired, fatigue, etc. These emotions result as reflections of the relationship between your map of things, your expectations of things and your experiences in the world.

2) Attack the negative feelings. Do this by attempting to “cheer up” the person. When you try to cheer up a depressed person, you activate several frames by implication (FBI). By implication, your cheering up assumes that feeling down or depressed is not good, not right, and “should” not be. Your cheering up also implies a suggestion, command, or order, “Don’t feel bad.” Yet this frame by implication amounts to a demand to not have some feelings (sadness, pessimism) and a demand to have other feelings (cheer, optimism).

3) Let your attempted solution become the problem. As you keep commanding the sad person’s feelings, there will be several more frames-by-implication that will slide in. As you say, “Don’t feel X; feel Y” this solution itself will become a problem for the other. How does this work? It creates a problem for several reasons. First, emotions don’t respond well to commands. We actually have little power to “command” our emotions. So when you try to feel cheerful and don’t succeed at it, this increases your sense of failure. Then you will feel inadequate. That will induce feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and “badness.” Second, in being told or ordered what to feel, there’s a natural resistance.

4) Layer problem upon problem. It all began with some discouragement about something “out there,” but now the attempted solution of the cheering up has created more problems, all inside problems that the person can layer one upon the other. Now the person is sad, ashamed, guilty, afraid, angry, etc. at himself for being so helpless, powerless, inadequate! As the meta-problems outframe the first level problem, there will be more and more negative feelings about negative feelings. Eventually, it will set in motion a vicious spiraling pulling the person down further into a vortex of negativity. Now we’re creating full-fledge “depression.”

5) Let it all escalate so that it becomes a complete meta-muddle. As the escalating spiral increases, it becomes easier and easier to feel bad about feeling bad. This will continue until it emerges into impotent rage at oneself, life itself, and others.

Resolving the Meta-Muddle How do we get into such a meta-muddle? What kind of structure does this generate? Where did this get started and how?

1) First, identify the structure.

Detecting the matrix structure of the experience enables you to understand what’s going on. You then realize how the meta-muddle works. Frequently, it goes back to a parental command given to make things better, “Go to your room and don’t come out until you have a smile on your face.” Then this attempted solution became the problem. In forbidding the primary state “negative” feelings, you cannot use them as information and feedback. It is this mishandling of the original difficulty which was relatively harmless at the time that has now grown by negative meta-stating into a “dragon state” of mythological proportions.

2) Leverage the system with acceptance.

Counter-intuitively, by accepting the very thing you don’t like and don’t want gives you control over it. Acceptance refers to acknowledging what is, not to condoning it, wanting it, or approving it. Give yourself permission to feel sad, to feel down, to feel discouraged. Paradoxically, the more open and receptive and in tune you are with your emotions, you do the emotional work and the emotions pass on.

3) Honor the mind-body system with appreciation.

This isn’t new. It is simply applying the pacing process to your own mind-body-emotion system. It enables you to enter your own matrix or that of another with safety. Set a frame of celebration that you have the full range of your emotions and can fully feel them without being afraid of them. It is the fear of your negative emotions that creates “depression.” Knowing that they are “just emotions” and that you can learn from them frees you from their domination.

4) Challenge the system with meta-questions that quality controls the system.

This leading follows the pacing and enables you to remap things. After acceptance and appreciation, comes reality testing and quality controlling. Do I need to listen to this emotion? Would that enhance my life? Do I need to take counsel of this emotion? If so, what is the best response choice? If I act on this emotion, what would be the most empowering thing to do? If I don’t need to act on this, am I ready to release it and let it go? What thinking pattern or mapping has created this emotion that may need updating?

It’s easy to get into meta-muddles and to get lost going round and round your thoughts-and- feelings about things, especially if you’re not open and appreciative of your mind-body states. The meta-state magic of acceptance and appreciation transforms that. It is in stepping back from ourselves so that you can quality control your mental-emotional and physiological responses that you’re able to develop greater emotional intelligence and resourcefulness for living.