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The Mindful Way through Depression (J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale, Zindel V. Segal)
- The mind seems to have a mind of its own.
- Is your speaking an improvement on silence?
- But what if there is nothing wrong with you at all?
- Not clinging to goals, even worthy goals, may be the way out of unhappiness.
- You cannot force the mind. And if you try to, you won’t like what comes of it.
- Ideas about our own self-worth are no more real than thoughts about an imaginary chair.
- When we stop trying to force pleasant feelings, they are freer to emerge on their own.
- See your thoughts as mental events that come and go in the mind like clouds across the sky
- Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
- Expectations can become goals, which only get in the way of the experience we are having in this moment.
- For some, especially young people, irritability is a more prominent experience than sadness in depression.
- Mindfulness could also be described as “heartfulness” because it is really about a compassionate awareness.
- the anatomy of depression and of its four key dimensions: feelings, thoughts, body sensations, and behaviors,
- We only compound our feelings of depletion if we deal with them by giving up activities that normally nourish us.
- gravitational pull of depression by reminding you in key ways of what science has now shown: it is actually okay to
- It wasn’t necessarily events themselves that drove our emotions but our beliefs about or interpretations of those events.
- Our habitual efforts to extricate ourselves, far from freeing us, actually keep us locked in the pain we’re trying to escape.
- Our reactions to unhappiness can transform what might otherwise be a brief, passing sadness into persistent dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
- But research shows that rumination does exactly the opposite: our ability to solve problems actually deteriorates markedly during rumination.
- depression forges a connection in the brain between sad mood and negative thoughts, so that even normal sadness can reawaken major negative thoughts.
- Our emotional reactions depend on the story we tell ourselves, the running commentary in the mind that interprets the data we receive through our senses.
- When we ruminate, we become fruitlessly preoccupied with the fact that we are unhappy and with the causes, meanings, and consequences of our unhappiness.
- The memories of previous failures and the images of feared future scenarios that we bring to mind in the process add their own twist to the spiral of worsening mood.
- the most ancient parts of the brain make no distinction between the external threat of the tiger and internal threats such as worries about the future or memories from the past.
- Being mindful means that we suspend judgment for a time, set aside our immediate goals for the future, and take in the present moment as it is rather than as we would like it to be.
- It is actually okay to stop trying to solve the problem of feeling bad. In fact it is wise because our habitual ways of solving problems almost invariably wind up making things worse.
- It turns out that every time a person gets depressed, the connections in the brain between mood, thoughts, the body, and behavior get stronger, making it easier for depression to be triggered again.
- Get out of our heads and learn to experience the world directly, experientially, without the relentless commentary of our thoughts. We might just open ourselves up to the limitless possibilities for happiness that life has to offer us .
- In this way, little by little , moment by moment, life can slip by without us being fully here for it. Always preoccupied with getting somewhere else, we are hardly ever where we actually are and attentive to what is actually unfolding in this moment.
- What if, like virtually everybody else who suffers repeatedly from depression, you have become a victim of your own very sensible, even heroic, efforts to free yourself—like someone pulled even deeper into quicksand by the struggling intended to get you out?
- Start living right here, in each present moment. When we stop dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we’re open to rich sources of information we’ve been missing out on—information that can keep us out of the downward spiral and poised for a richer life.
- Imagine what effect it would have on you if someone stood behind you all day telling you how useless you were when you were trying desperately to cope with a difficult experience. Now imagine how much worse it would be if the criticism and harsh judgment came from inside your own mind.
- The Exhaustion Funnel. The narrowing area of the circles illustrates the narrowing of life as we give up the things in life that we enjoy but seem “optional.” The result is that we stop doing activities that would nourish us, leaving only work or other stressors that often deplete our resources.
- If we have been depressed before, a low mood can become easier and easier to trigger over time, because each time it returns, the thoughts, fe elings , body sensations, and behaviors that accompany it form stronger and stronger connections to each other. Eventually, any one element can trigger depression by itself.
- And so we create a story—a drama about me—that may gradually wander far away from the here and now and far away from the way things actually are. Once the script we have concocted for ourselves has been set in the mind, we may unwittingly rely on it as a reference point for all present and future judgments—without ever checking back with the here and now. Without knowing it, our thoughts become words carved in stone rather than words written on water.
- Despite some initial skepticism about what our colleagues and patients might say if we suggested we were considering meditation as a preventive approach to depression, we decided to take a closer look. We soon discovered that the combination of Western cognitive science and Eastern practices was just what is needed to break the cycle of recurrent depression, in which we tend to go over and over what went wrong or how things are not the way we want them to be.
- Unhappiness itself is not the problem—it is an inherent and unavoidable part of being alive. Rather, it’s the harshly negative views of ourselves that can be switched on by unhappy moods that entangle us. It is these views that transform passing sadness into persistent unhappiness and depression. Once these harsh, negative views of ourselves are activated, not only do they affect our mind, they also have profound effects on our body—and then the body in turn has profound effects on the mind and emotions.
- Peace can exist only in the present moment. It is ridiculous to say Wait until I finish this, then I will be free to live in peace. What is this? A diploma, a job, a house, the payment of a debt? If you think that way, peace will never come. There is always another this that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you will never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only the hope of peace some day. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart
