Everyday Mindfulness

I am putting this post here in case anyone else, suffering with depression, could benefit in any way.

I have been practising quite intensely for a year now and the initial aim was to be free from stress and anxiety. I would have to say that those areas have been greatly reduced to the point where not a lot actually bothers me anymore.

I also have a lifelong history of depression which has now come to the front. Before I guess suppressed feelings can turn into anger and stress and now that I invite feelings and allow them to be there, there is less stress and anger.

Now I allow depression, I try loving-kindness to bring some self-compassion. One great insight over the year has been about compassion and it is so true, I have virtually no compassion for others and the real reason is because I treat others as I would myself. How we treat others is really a mirror to ourselves.

The depression is not centred on rumination, I have no thoughts I churn over, just a deep feeling and emotion of extreme sadness. I acknowledge, I invite, I explore, but it still sucks. In theory, I should neither like nor dislike the feeling as that causes suffering. But it is unpleasant. I am trying to not resist the feeling as resistance x pain = suffering, apparently.

Somewhere I am either not fully letting myself accept, or I am offering resistance or I have to accept I feel sad 50% of the time.

If anyone has suffered depression and can offer some tips then great, otherwise just writing this makes me feel a couple of grams lighter

Following on from above the depressed state is still here. So I have been busy reading up on possible ways to truly let it go.

MBSR and MBCT forms of mindfulness are a great into and have definitely helped. I have found they helped me a lot more with stress and anxiety than depression. I believe the reason is that stress can have reasons that are immediate and by learning to cope with the reasons using mindfulness brings fast results. I would imagine the same applies to depression that is event based, e.g redundancy, illness etc.

As a sufferer of chronic and acute depression since the age of 11, there are no obvious reasons to explore and let go of.

Research has led me to Jack Kornfield's A Path With Heart. Jack was one of the first to bring mindfulness to the west around 1974 and has a Ph.D in clinical psychology, so I thought someone worth reading.

When general feeling, naming, and "letting go" fail and the difficulty keeps returning persistently then there are further tools that can be used. Jack states that such stubborn returning difficulties, in my case depression, have been known about for thousands of years and they are called sankaras in sanskrit.

Possible tools that I am starting to really put a lot of effort into exploring one at a time. The descriptions for each are 1-4 pages in the book so just summarised here:-

1) Expand The Field of Attention - always exploring a difficulty on one level may not solve. The difficulty can felt in the realm of Body, Feelings, Thoughts, Basic Attitudes (fear, aversion etc) By trying to examine difficulty in another realm can bring greater opening. Look for the connections

2) Full Awareness of Feelings - for a few days meditate on the feeling fully exploring it, deeply

3) Discover What is Asking for Acceptance - Try to ascertain exactly what is asking to be accepted.

4) Open Through The Center - Going very deeply into the centre of the difficulty and expanding outwards

5) Letting Go - One may have to be quite an advanced meditator to fully let go completely.

6) Letting Be - When it doesn't go, try to let it be there, in the present moment

7) Transforming the Energy - Try redirect the energy of the difficulty into some positive use or feeling

8) Putting Aside - Leave it for a while, a better time

9) Acting Mindfully and in Imagination - Role play the difficulty out step my step mindfully examining all points

10) Enacting Mindfully - Actually do it in reality (as long as not harmful to self or any other being) mindfully.

There are a lot of tools mentioned and some go very deep. The book suggests using some with the help of a teacher.

What's my message here? (talking to myself) - Just because on first inspection mindfulness is not truly solving a problem completely, there are deeper methods of mindfulness to explore and work with.

Should I make any massive breakthroughs I will detail in this journal thread. I am not giving up, just going deeper in

Great stuff, mybubble. You are in safe hands with Kornfield - a very wise teacher.
All best,
Jon

Thank you for sharing mybubble.

Your post really resonates with me - it sounds like you are on the right path. Good on you!

Update and major breakthrough.

For the last 12 months, along with meditation I have also been continually reading to broaden the scope of my understanding. Many authors and teachers in these books have mentioned that when faced with a difficult emotion, in my case depression, you need to invite it in, not push it away. Well I have discovered there is a huge difference in reading about it, mentally understanding it and truly experiencing it.

I sat down to practice a couple of weeks ago and normally I do a few routines to get into the zone, e.g. focus on sounds, body, then narrow to breathing. My intent for the session was to follow the breath lightly and allow feelings to rise up in awareness. On this day, I could not even get into the prep stage 1 without overwhelming sadness and depression coming up. I tried to push the depression away / let it be, until I could at least get settled. But no, it was not going to have any of it and I thought that if the feeling of depression is so eager to be here, I will just let it be with me and sit with it.

So my depressed feeling and I are sitting there, eyes closed. Even though numerous times in the past I had looked for where it appears in the body, I remembered Kornfield's suggestions and took another approach; looking for associated thoughts. There were none, so I pushed myself just to come up with any thoughts, just to blurt them out, anything that occurred, brain-storming in a way The thoughts I raised were:-

-I am useless
-I hate myself
-I hate life
-I dont want to be here
etc

I thought this was strange as I don't consciously think those thoughts so maybe I making this up.

Major breakthrough 1) It occurred that if I could never find a reason for my depression and there were no conscious thoughts, the feeling must be coming from a deep and forgotten subconscious level. 2) As it is not in consciousness there is absolutely no point trying to think about depression logically 3) the difficult emotion is not an alien wondering thought/feeling that will come and go 4) the emotion is me (or at least a deep hidden part of me)

With this realisation I saw the depressed feeling as almost like a young child, part of me, deep down that just wanted to be acknowledged and comforted. It didn't want to be analysed and it didn't want to be ignored or pushed away. Just like an injured, unhappy child, I invited it to come and sit with me whenever it wants and, as part of me, I felt a huge amount of love and compassion towards this hidden part of my mind and myself.

I then started laughing out loud, at the breakthrough and clarity of it all. Thoughts of I am just making this up popped up. I laughed out loud again realising this was just another part of me, the harsh critical part. I invited it to hang around too.

We all sat together and when it was time to get up, I asked them all to come back whenever they were in pain. When I rose I had a completely different relation to the feeling. I actually wanted the depression to come back and visit again so I could comfort it some more. Two weeks pass and nothing much has come back. I have had since then light feelings it is there, both when I sit and when awake. I just ask it to join me.

Then a few days later I happened to come across the Mind Model and it detailed how unconscious sub-minds work, pretty much as I had experienced. I was very glad I discovered this myself instead of trying to work to a written model; it makes it more real for me. In my loving-kindness practice I now say "may we be happy" (my subminds and me)

Since then I have read some more interesting stuff. Apparently, one knows when one has truly accepted and let go of a difficult emotion/feeling and that is when it makes no difference to you if it is there or not. Wanting it not to be there, means it has not fully been let go and that more work may be needed. I think I now pass this rule of thumb test with depression. It has taken me 6 months of working with the feeling to get to this point.

After 35 years of depression I am under no illusions that it will not come back. But so far, it has come back very mildy and I have welcome it. Only the future will tell if it stays that way.

After my experience the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, come back to me as being so true. Reading them is one thing, understanding another however experiencing it in a medatitive practice is mind-blowing. We really do need to drop everything and cradle our difficulties, like one would cradle, love and comfort a baby.

mybubble, this is very inspiring. Did you join classes for this or did you use books and online resources?

Thank you for your feedback. I just read a lot of books, none really go into detail on one topic but lots of parts fit together showing common themes. I then try and observe their ideas in meditation.

MBSR & MBCT books I find are good in a introductory technical manual type of way, they help reduce the symtoms of identifying with thoughts, as opposed to working with root causes. I have found Eastern authors tend to work more with root causes, have a lot more compassion and focus on the attitude needed, but have limited instructions as to how. Western authors who have spent years abroad as monks are inbetween.

What has helped me get to this stage, on top of normal meditation:

Loving Kindess mediation (LovingKindness - The revolutionary art of hapiness, by Salzberg)
The mind model (The Mind Illuminated - 5th/6th Interlude) - highlights how most of our thinking is automatic and subconscious. PM me, I have this bit scanned.
Thich Nhat Hanh Fear or Anger books - really highlighted the attitude needed to deal with internal issues.

I still have a long way to go with depression. Why does the depression increase and decrease, go from not being there to there? I am starting to pay extremely close attention to try and find the barely perceptable thoughts, I feel are there, that trigger a stored subconscious memory or reaction, which then shows as a depressed emotion a fraction later.

Overall what helped me was the self-compassionate attitude and by changing focus to realise the emotion comes from a hidden part of one's self, is in need and wants to be acknowledged and consoled.

Thank you for your response. I am struggling with the technique part of it as well. I get the idea behind it conceptually, but find it hard to apply.

I recently bought The Mind Illuminated, and will look into the other 2 books you mentioned. I also need to get back to my practice, I keep procrastinating and put it off.

Great post, mybubble. Very inspiring.
Maybe you'd like to turn that into a blog for us?
All good things,
Jon

Thank's Jon. Perhaps when I can test this out for a few months more.