r/streamentry • u/[deleted] • Apr 26 '18

Questions and General Discussion - Weekly Thread for April 26 2018

Welcome! This is the weekly Questions and General Discussion thread.

QUESTIONS

This thread is for questions you have about practice, theory, conduct, and personal experience. If you are new to this forum, please read the Welcome Post first. You can also check the Frequent Questions page to see if your question has already been answered.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

This thread is also for general discussion, such as brief thoughts, notes, updates, comments, or questions that don't require a full post of their own. It's an easy way to have some unstructured dialogue and chat with your friends here. If you're a regular who also contributes elsewhere here, even some off-topic chat is fine in this thread. (If you're new, please stick to on-topic comments.)

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/shargrol Apr 28 '18

Probably the most important thing I've learned (through mistakes) in this life is to "take the straight path" and directly solve a problem. If depression is your biggest challenge, you can work on things like diet, sleep, exercise, and meditation... but the faster way through it will be to find, read, and ideally work with an expert that knows how to deal with depression. If that is a possibility, then take the straight path. Just do it. It takes some humility, but it really is the best option.

Meditation is not a substitute for introspection and therapy, but it can support that work. Throughout the path of progress, meditation practice will make it easier to look at one mind and slowly understand the things that need to be done to find basic sanity -- but it doesn't simply "mitigate" depression. So I want to caution that meditation helps you "go through" depression, to do the work that cuts depression at the root, and come out the other side. It doesn't just make you "go around" or "avoid" depression or make it go away. And it only "helps", it may not be enough.

I definitely struggled with depression and it was one of the main reasons I began practicing. I knew in my heart (even if I couldn't quite "see" it) that something about meditation would help me, that part of my problem was they way I thought about things and the pattern of emotions I had. I definitely do not struggle with depression anymore, although life is very very very challenging at times. And I don't really see depression as a problem anymore, I know that if I start feeling depressed, there is something in my psyche that I need to look at and better understand. Depression is a kind of wisdom if it isn't indulged.

Depression is very much like an onion with layers around layers. There is the feeling of depression itself. There is the body and mental fatigue that comes from the high levels of stress hormones in the body. There is the lack of quality rest that comes from that stress. There is the self-medicating that happens, legally with coffee and alcohol, but sometimes other things, which creates an extra burden on the body. There is the feeling of shame and inadequacy. There is the aggressive sense of anger or that snarky passive-aggressive way of being nice and mean at the same time. There is the pattern of self-criticism that helps define "who we are" ("I am not good enough") and yet there is the sense of pride (that "everyone is full of shit and can't see the things that I see"). And deep inside there is the feeling of shame, abandonment, or betrayal and a very core feeling of being wounded and hurt, which is covered up with anger, which makes the body stressed, which fatigues and exhausts the body and mind, which makes us feel weak and inadequate, which makes us feel depressed.

There is no clear "meditation teaching" that will tease that all apart or help a person see all of that. It requires either a lot of personal dedication to getting to the bottom of things, or it takes working with someone that can guide us, basically some kind of therapist. Meditation will help us become aware of our internal states, but its really by working with guidance specifically for depression that all of this can become clear. That's why working with someone that knows the domain of depression is so helpful.

So you can see that my main point is that if depression is your challenge, then read all the books and study all the information >on depression<. Eventually you can read TMI or other books, but only after you have a good grasp of what your #1 challenge is.

Take the straightest path to fixing your problems in life. Life will wind up being a twisty road in actual fact, but your attitude should be to directly address what needs to be done.

Hope this helps (and I wish that someone said this to me when I was in my late teens and twenties -- it would have saved me a decade of trying to indirectly work on my depression.)

1

u/hurfery Apr 30 '18

What book(s) would you recommend first and foremost?

1

u/shargrol Apr 30 '18

Unfortunately, I don't know what is out there... Does anyone else have book recommendations?

2

u/shargrol May 01 '18

I'm sorry that you aren't getting more responses...My best advice is to read a bit more about psychological models of health. And actually Wiki is pretty good at describing the heart of things...

AttachmentTheory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory Psychological Trauma - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma Defense mechanisms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms Depression - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood) Major Depression Disorder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder

The point here is simply know that there are patterns of thinking which are very human and not uncommon at all. Then you should be able to recognize it better when you fall into a self-defeating way of relating to the world. Obviously, this takes work over time, but if you give yourself time and are kind to yourself, improvements will occur.

Depression is a normal part of life that happens when we face some harsh realities about life. It takes a while for us to accept and grow and understand how to live in this unpredictable world.

Meditation can help by giving us an opportunity to recognize our thoughts, digest our unfinished understandings, basically give ourselves time to learn to accept and grow.

But that said, major depression is very damaging and isn't supportive of "growth", it's more like an anchor tied to our foot while trying to swim. That's why it is important to try to get support when things get bad. Much better to fix the problem when it is smaller.

Hope this helps in some way.

1

u/WikiTextBot May 01 '18

Attachment theory

Attachment theory is a psychological model that attempts to describe the dynamics of long-term and short-term interpersonal relationships between humans. However, "attachment theory is not formulated as a general theory of relationships. It addresses only a specific facet": how human beings respond within relationships when hurt, separated from loved ones, or perceiving a threat. Essentially all infants become attached if provided any caregiver, but there are individual differences in the quality of the relationships.

Psychological trauma

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. A traumatic event involves one's experience, or repeating events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.

However, trauma differs between individuals, according to their subjective experiences.

Defence mechanisms

A defence mechanism is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli.

Defence mechanisms may result in healthy or unhealthy consequences depending on the circumstances and frequency with which the mechanism is used. In psychoanalytic theory, defence mechanisms (German: Abwehrmechanismen) are psychological strategies brought into play by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny, or distort reality in order to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses and to maintain one's self-schema or other schemas. These processes that manipulate, deny, or distort reality may include the following: repression, or the burying of a painful feeling or thought from one's awareness even though it may resurface in a symbolic form; identification, incorporating an object or thought into oneself; and rationalization, the justification of one's behaviour and motivations by substituting "good" acceptable reasons for the actual motivations.

Depression (mood)

Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings, and sense of well-being. A depressed mood is a normal temporary reaction to life events such as loss of a loved one. It is also a symptom of some physical diseases and a side effect of some drugs and medical treatments. Depressed mood is also a symptom of some mood disorders such as major depressive disorder or dysthymia.

Major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known simply as depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of low mood that is present across most situations. It is often accompanied by low self-esteem, loss of interest in normally enjoyable activities, low energy, and pain without a clear cause. People may also occasionally have false beliefs or see or hear things that others cannot. Some people have periods of depression separated by years in which they are normal while others nearly always have symptoms present.

[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source ] Downvote to remove | v0.28