During my struggle I came to realize that I was hindering myself with mistakes I was making, and it was only when I overcame these that I started to make real progress.
I often talk with people who have been or are going through the same kinds of problems, and I notice just how many of them also come up against these mistakes. So what are they?
1. Resisting:
When we feel a bad mood, depression, or panic coming on, our first wish is to get rid of it as quickly as possible, to change the “bad” mood into a “good” one. This is natural; it’s how we’re made. But all too often our attempts just make everything worse.
Resistance forces us to think constantly about our condition, to focus all of our attention on it, to feel bad because it won’t go away, to wait tensely for relief.
But the simple truth is that you can’t control everything. Attempting to get your condition “under control” often leads to extra stress and unwanted bad feelings. It’s sometimes best just to relinquish control and cease resistance.
If we relax and let our depression or panic come without trying to control anything, accepting that they’re only temporary feelings which will pass in due course, things become much easier.
2. Feeling bad about feeling bad:
We start to have thoughts such as “I’m going to die or go crazy,” “This’ll never end,” and “I hate that I can’t enjoy life like other people; I feel utterly miserable.”
Our mind starts to add new fears and negative emotions to the depression we already have. And, as I saw for myself, these fears and feelings end up constituting the main part of our condition.
It’s actually your mind, not the depression and panic themselves, which makes each episode so unbearable.
If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: The next time you’re overwhelmed by an attack, try to simply observe it without getting caught up in or assessing it in any way. Just watch it in its pure form, without any thoughts. Try to notice which parts of your body you feel it in and how it comes and goes.
In this way, you’ll remove your mind from the formula of your distress. You’ll notice how much weaker the attacks become when they’re no longer supported by your thought processes. Give it a try, making notes of the results if you like. Would it be true to say that it’s not all as terrifying and dreadful as it seemed at first?
When you stop feeding your depression with fears and thoughts it becomes much easier to shake off.
3. Comparing:
“Everything was so good when I wasn’t depressed! What an amazing time it was, and how awful it is now. Why can’t I go back?!” These are the kinds of things many people think, me included, but such thoughts bring nothing but harm.
If you want to beat depression or panic, you have to stop comparing. Forget that there’s a past and future. What’s happened has happened. Don’t dwell on it, and instead live in the here and now.
Start with what you have, and don’t think about how it all was before. Learning how to live in the present moment will make your depression or panic much more bearable.
4. Asking pointless questions:
Many people spend hours asking themselves all kinds of questions: “When will this end?” “Why me?” and “What have I done to deserve this?”
To make use of a well-known Buddhist parable, these questions are as much use as trying to figure out the source of the arrow which blinded you: it’s just not that important. What you need to know is how to pull the arrow out.
Questions of the “Why me?” ilk just make your condition worse, forcing you as they do to complain and be upset about something that’s already happened. Focus on what will help you get past your depression and don’t bother with questions which don’t serve this purpose.
5. Believing your fears:
We think that because we experience such fear at the idea of going outside, meeting people, or going on the underground, it means that something bad is going to happen. There’s nothing surprising in this, because nature has made fear in order to warn us of danger. We’re made in such a way that we instinctively believe this fear and respond to it.
But our fear hardly ever arises due to a real threat. For example, the fear of losing your mind or suffocating during a panic attack is simply fallacious. Stop believing this fear. Whatever it is you’re afraid of at these times isn’t going to happen.
Fear is nothing more than a feeling, a chemical reaction in your head. If you’re overcome with terror when you go down into the underground, it doesn’t mean that something horrific is laying in wait there. It’s like a malfunctioning fire alarm—just because it’s going off doesn’t mean there’s actually a fire.
So stop listening to your “inner alarm” every time it goes off. Don’t pay it any heed: go out, meet your friends, get on a plane, and let the alarm keep ringing. Nor should you try to “switch it off,” as this doesn’t always work. Just ignore it. In other words, stop taking your fear as something real.
Hopefully this article helps a lot there.
I often talk with people who have been or are going through the same kinds of problems, and I notice just how many of them also come up against these mistakes. So what are they?
1. Resisting:
When we feel a bad mood, depression, or panic coming on, our first wish is to get rid of it as quickly as possible, to change the “bad” mood into a “good” one. This is natural; it’s how we’re made. But all too often our attempts just make everything worse.
Resistance forces us to think constantly about our condition, to focus all of our attention on it, to feel bad because it won’t go away, to wait tensely for relief.
But the simple truth is that you can’t control everything. Attempting to get your condition “under control” often leads to extra stress and unwanted bad feelings. It’s sometimes best just to relinquish control and cease resistance.
If we relax and let our depression or panic come without trying to control anything, accepting that they’re only temporary feelings which will pass in due course, things become much easier.
2. Feeling bad about feeling bad:
We start to have thoughts such as “I’m going to die or go crazy,” “This’ll never end,” and “I hate that I can’t enjoy life like other people; I feel utterly miserable.”
Our mind starts to add new fears and negative emotions to the depression we already have. And, as I saw for myself, these fears and feelings end up constituting the main part of our condition.
It’s actually your mind, not the depression and panic themselves, which makes each episode so unbearable.
If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: The next time you’re overwhelmed by an attack, try to simply observe it without getting caught up in or assessing it in any way. Just watch it in its pure form, without any thoughts. Try to notice which parts of your body you feel it in and how it comes and goes.
In this way, you’ll remove your mind from the formula of your distress. You’ll notice how much weaker the attacks become when they’re no longer supported by your thought processes. Give it a try, making notes of the results if you like. Would it be true to say that it’s not all as terrifying and dreadful as it seemed at first?
When you stop feeding your depression with fears and thoughts it becomes much easier to shake off.
3. Comparing:
“Everything was so good when I wasn’t depressed! What an amazing time it was, and how awful it is now. Why can’t I go back?!” These are the kinds of things many people think, me included, but such thoughts bring nothing but harm.
If you want to beat depression or panic, you have to stop comparing. Forget that there’s a past and future. What’s happened has happened. Don’t dwell on it, and instead live in the here and now.
Start with what you have, and don’t think about how it all was before. Learning how to live in the present moment will make your depression or panic much more bearable.
4. Asking pointless questions:
Many people spend hours asking themselves all kinds of questions: “When will this end?” “Why me?” and “What have I done to deserve this?”
To make use of a well-known Buddhist parable, these questions are as much use as trying to figure out the source of the arrow which blinded you: it’s just not that important. What you need to know is how to pull the arrow out.
Questions of the “Why me?” ilk just make your condition worse, forcing you as they do to complain and be upset about something that’s already happened. Focus on what will help you get past your depression and don’t bother with questions which don’t serve this purpose.
5. Believing your fears:
We think that because we experience such fear at the idea of going outside, meeting people, or going on the underground, it means that something bad is going to happen. There’s nothing surprising in this, because nature has made fear in order to warn us of danger. We’re made in such a way that we instinctively believe this fear and respond to it.
But our fear hardly ever arises due to a real threat. For example, the fear of losing your mind or suffocating during a panic attack is simply fallacious. Stop believing this fear. Whatever it is you’re afraid of at these times isn’t going to happen.
Fear is nothing more than a feeling, a chemical reaction in your head. If you’re overcome with terror when you go down into the underground, it doesn’t mean that something horrific is laying in wait there. It’s like a malfunctioning fire alarm—just because it’s going off doesn’t mean there’s actually a fire.
So stop listening to your “inner alarm” every time it goes off. Don’t pay it any heed: go out, meet your friends, get on a plane, and let the alarm keep ringing. Nor should you try to “switch it off,” as this doesn’t always work. Just ignore it. In other words, stop taking your fear as something real.
Hopefully this article helps a lot there.
