Elisha Goldstein Ph.D. - Uncovering Happiness Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

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For Lev and Bodhi, for teaching me the art of uncovering happiness

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

MAYA ANGELOU, LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER

M ahatma Gandhi, the famed leader of Indias nonviolent independence movement, once described depression as a dryness of the heart that sometimes made him want to run away from the world. The Dalai Lama referred to it as the thoughts and emotions that undermine the experience of inner peace. Writer John Keats told of the hopelessness that depression created in his soul: If I were under water, I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

Every part of the mind and body can feel the weight of depression. It hijacks thoughts and feelings, influences behavior and choices, eats away at physical and mental health. It can be a serious medical illness that steals happiness and overshadows sufferers with darkness. It touches all of us, either directly or indirectly. Each year, twenty-five million Americans have an episode of major depression; many have experienced it before and will again in the future.

Depression has many faces. Some depressed people function relatively normally throughout their lives despite ever-present, low-grade feelings of chronic unhappiness. Others become incapacitated with rolling bouts of self-loathing thoughts and murky mazes of negative feelings that clog the mind. Many discover that activities that once felt playful, pleasurable, or satisfying now bring no happiness and are difficult to do. The ability to control thoughts and actions seems lost.

You may have experienced depression in the past. Or you may be depressed right now. Perhaps you have felt its spirit-sapping symptomsdifficulty concentrating, lack of motivation, boredom, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, guilt, feelings of worthlessness, emptiness, and sadness, and the incessant nagging of automatic negative thoughtsand have even considered suicide.

Whats the point of living? you may ask. No one can help me. Nothings ever going to change. You may feel so full of despair that, like Keats, you would scarcely kick to come up from under water.

Your feelings are very real. When you are depressed, you feel hopeless.

But that doesnt mean your situation is hopeless.

Heres the thing about depression: It tells you lies. It makes you believe that thoughts are facts. It can even take away every last ounce of hope in your soul.

In the following pages, Ill show you why there is so much reason to feel optimistic. Ill explain how huge advances in mindfulness, neuroscience, and extensive studies of the depressed brain have brought about major breakthroughs in what we know about depressions triggers and treatments. Ill show you how you can use a variety of straightforward tools and techniques to break depressions hold on you and begin to uncover the happiness that is the essential core of who you truly are.

There is hope. You can feel better. By following the steps in this book, you can take back control of your mind, your mood, and your life.

When you hear the word antidepressant , you probably think of a pill: a medication used to treat your illness. Medications are one kind of antidepressant. But theyre not the only kind.

Science is now showing that we also have natural antidepressants within our brains. Natural antidepressants are mindful mindsets (thoughts and behaviors) that build us up instead of tear us down and allow us to help ourselves improve our own moods.

These natural antidepressants can be gathered into five main categories:

. Mindfulness: a flexible and unbiased state of mind where you are open and curious about what is present, have perspective, and are aware of choices.

. Self-compassion: a state of mind where you understand your own suffering and use mindfulness, kindness, and loving openness to hold it nonjudgmentally and consider it part of the human condition.

. Purpose: a state of mind where you are actively engaged in living alongside your values, are inclined toward compassion for others, and possess an understanding of how your existence contributes value to the world.

. Play: a flexible state of mind in which you are presently engaged in some freely chosen and potentially purposeless activity that you find interesting, enjoyable, and satisfying.

. Mastery: a state of mind where you feel a sense of personal control and confidence and are engaged in learning to get better and better at something that matters.

By developing these five natural antidepressant fundamentals, which I will show you how to do step by step, you can strengthen your brains ability to act as its own antidepressant that can be as powerful asor even more powerful thanthe antidepressant medications.

Because you are alive, anything is possible.

THICH NHAT HANH, VIETNAMESE ZEN BUDDHIST MONK AND TEACHER

I recognize the value of antidepressant medications, and I believe they can play an important role in the treatment of clinical depression. Ive seen pharmaceuticals be lifesavers for some depressed patients, giving them the help they need to engage in necessary psychological treatment.

However, I also believe these drugs are heavily overprescribed and overused. For many patients, antidepressants cause more harm than good. They can create a cascade of mental health problems that go far beyond the depression they were prescribed to treat. Too many people get caught in the trap of jumping from one drug to the next or taking multiple prescriptions in order to offset serious side effects caused by individual drugs.

As I see it, the problem with current pharmaceutical treatments is that they havent caught up with recent discoveries in neuroscience.

A growing number of health care professionals are starting to integrate current science in the decision-making process when treating depression. They are beginning to look at the illness in a science-based, whole-person approach. But still, too many patients, health care providers, researchers, medical organizations, and government-funded agencies rely on outdated information to make decisions and recommendations about the use of antidepressant medications. They operate from the decades-old assumption that mental health can be restored to people with depression only by using drugs to balance the chemicals in their brains. That assumption is no longer accurate.

In recent years, research that youll soon learn about has revealed so much about natural antidepressants, mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and other nondrug approaches to treating depression and promoting long-term healing. Antidepressant medications are still a useful tool for treating depression, but theyre not the only tool, and in many cases, theyre not the most effective tool. Its important to be informed about medication and make the decision to integrate them or taper off of them as part of your treatment in conjunction with your doctor.

Whether you are on antidepressants and theyre working for you, youre on them and want to get off of them, or you are not on antidepressants at all, the work that you do through this book is going to support your ability to get better at overcoming the depressive cycles.