One Little Way to Stop Depression

I once learnt a neat trick to help with depression, called a "visualisation tool".  I think I learnt it from the Enneagram but I'm not exactly sure where I got it from. Not that it matters... what matters is that it worked for ME!

I have been able to break myself out of a rut ever since. Sure it won't work for everyone, especially those who are clinically depressed, perhaps on meds or suffering from manic depression. But for those of you like myself whose woes stem largely from negative self-talk, this helps. Not just helps - cures it. It goes like this.

Life is full of disappointments. Not everything goes smoothly. Things don't always work out. Ok, got that.

This happens to all of us, whether you are a saint or an axe murderer, or most likely somewhere in between. It's how we deal with it that makes us different as healthy individuals.

If you suffer from negative self-talk fixation these 'little things' can spiral downward, until they end up totally out of proportion. The trick is to cut it off, nip it in the bud, stem the flow, etc before you get into a down mood, aka "the blues". At this point it is worth noting that repetitive fixation does not achieve anything (aka 'going around in circles'). It is totally unproductive.

As soon as you recognise the familiar voices - "I'm no good", "I'm a failure", "I always muck things up" you have identified the process. If you can do that, then this visualisation tool will do the trick to stop it from getting worse. If you can't discern when your own negative self-talk kicks in, then I'm afraid this won't help you. Off to therapy for you. Sorry.

Here it is in a nutshell.

Most of us are stationary, often sitting or lying, when the negative self-talk first kicks in. This is one reason why activity, including sport, work, even mundane chores is recommended as therapy and is preferable to wallowing in our mires - because actions engage the brain and circumvent the inner thought processes. So we sit there, or lie there, echoing our deriding sentences criticising our ineptness and patheticness.

Now, imagine a switch on the opposite wall.

This is the magic switch that turns off depression. You have to believe or at least imagine that it works. All you have to do is get up and go over to the wall, visualise the switch and flick it off. Don't make the mistake of sitting there and imagining that you're doing it — get up and do it!

It doesn't sound like much, does it? What you have done is stopped your thought processes, halted them in their tracks and shut down the broken record of your life commentary that is playing. NSTF over.

Sounds too easy? Well here's why it works.

Most of the self-perpetuating misery is a bad habit that, yes, plays like a broken record. As long as you're sitting there with your head in your hands going over and over with reciting your inadequacies and personal downfalls, you are only reinforcing the negative thoughts and driving the depression further and further downward.

By getting up out of the seat we are breaking the cycle, interrupting the thoughts, halting the downward spiral. Visualising the switch gives us a goal, and flicking this switch is acknowledging that we have control. It is incredibly empowering to discover that most of our suffering is self-inflicted - where we repeat messages learnt as children as we navigate through life and learn and internalise correct behaviours.

Unfortunately we also internalise the parental chastisement and forget to turn it off once we have learnt how to succeed (behave). If you're anything like me and you don't need anyone else to remind us of our shortcomings, you may well be a candidate for using the Imaginary Switch Trick. Try it. What have you got to lose? (apart from looking like a bit of an idiot walking over to walls and seemingly stroking them upwards)

To cap it off... it is perfectly normal to react to bad news and events with sadness, dismay, shock, horror etc. To not do so would be unhealthy. But to wallow in self pity, replaying a crisis over and over is unproductive and downright pathological. The healthy approach is to identify the problem, get help if necessary, decide on a solution and implement it.

Don't wallow in Negative Self-Talk. Flick that switch! 

Conspiracy Theory Checklist

□ The Earth Is Flat
□ The Moon Landings were faked
□ UFOs come from inside Hollow Earth (yes I know, how can it be hollow if it's flat, ha ha ha)
□ Chemtrails sterilise the population and make us sick
□ The Illuminati and/or New World Order runs the world
□ Tinfoil hats prevent your mind being read by others
□ 432 Hertz (cycles per second) is the only correct pitch for A4; the A = 440 Hz reference point is an evil invention of the Nazis designed to make everyone weak, feeble and gullible. That's why all normal music is so terrible.
□ Green Lizard Men from Outer Space control society
□ Cultural Marxism created the Hippie Movement
□ HAARP weapons cause earthquakes and cyclones
□ Anti-vaxxers like Andrew Wakefield are stool pigeons used to make Big Pharma look good
□ The Beatles songs were all written by Theodor Adorno
□ Elvis is still alive and living in Japan/Mexico/Morocco
□ All religions are mind control devices
□ 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government
□ JFK was assassinated by the CIA
□ Global Warming is man-made and we're all gonna die unless we do something about it
□ The Bermuda Triangle is a black hole
□ Freemasons are evil
□ Donald Trump is the Anti-Christ
□ Fluoride is put in tap water to lower our intelligence
□ AIDS was created by the Church to punish homosexuals
□ Tinfoil hats protect your brain from cosmic rays
□ Heavy Metal music is a tool of Satanism
□ Marijuana is illegal because it frees your mind
□ Vegetarians don't get enough protein
□ Uri Gellar can't masturbate because he loses his erection when he rubs his penis
□ Alien abductors love faeces hence all the anal probing
□ John Lennon was assassinated because he was about to  expose that the Beatles were fake, used lookalike doubles, and couldn't actually play or sing. Oh, and Paul is dead
□ Anyone can buy a TM mantra and become God
□ Margaret Thatcher is an alien, so is Julian Assange
□ Hitler was a vegetarian and an animal lover, he was the first to make smoking in the workplace illegal, campaigned for better worker's rights (all true).The CT is that he was set up and the Holocaust was the work of the SS (the Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany) done secretly behind his back. Not a very polite thing to say in front of holocaust victims.
□ The Internet is spying on you - Big Brother is real
□ Television, media and radio are covert government brainwashing operations. So are newspapers, magazines, all social media and the internet. Wikipedia is a misinformation tool, owned and controlled by atheistic white supremacist pornographers
□ World Championship Wrestling is rigged (yes, we all know that one! More a conspiracy fact than a theory)
□ Every conspiracy theory is right on the money.