Depression and Mindfulness

by Ulla Sarja Psychotherapist, educator, coach

New research sees stress as an important background to depression;
when we are exposed to stress, we can develop a range of stress-related symptoms such as disturbed perception and ability to concentrate and impaired memory and learning ability. Other symptoms may include hypersensitivity, irritability, aggression, anxiety and sleep disorders. These symptoms are also common in depression and states affected by brain areas that are susceptible to stress.

The fact that many depressions are triggered by stressful circumstances or life events has been known since long time ago. Studies show that episodes of depression are caused by external stress factors, sorrows and disappointments.

Research has mostly focused on the dramatic and clearly seen negative life events as causes of depression. But even another prolonged stress can cause depression, although research is not as extensive on this.

The body's stress system adjusts constantly to our thoughts and our experience of the surroundings. Therefore the bodily symptoms of stress vary all the time. Blood pressure, heart rate and breathing are controlled by our thoughts and rise in the traffic jam to fall once we arrived at the job.

The problem is that the threats we experience, at our work for example, are rarely visible. It can be a vague feeling of not being able to respond to the demands placed on one. Or it can be a feeling that a relationship with your manager does not work.

Alarming conditions are often long-lasting, especially if the state of stress is linked to the work situation. We can´t get rid of the stress by physical discharge in the form of escape or defense.

If you get to know your own negative thoughts and understand that they are just thoughts and nothing else, it is easier to see them objectively and relate to them less personally. They are included simply to the depressive pattern and have nothing to do with the reality. Or can you seriously say that if for example a thought like "I'm a loser" describes the reality? There are no people who are born as losers and no one needs to be a loser if they do not want. In the depressive state we don´t use to perceive that this is just thoughts and nothing else. But when you have taken yourself out of the state, it is easier to see that you actually are not a loser. Sometimes you cannot even understand that you have been thinking like that and believed it being true.

No one gets depressed over night but it is a process, like a downward spiral, a treadmill in which a thought solves a feeling and a sense solves a thought, and finally the anxiety is there and the paralysis is over you and then you are down, depressed. I will point out that there is a difference between ordinary sadness and clinical depression

But in general, someone who is suffered from depression is feeling as if it all had come to an end and now there is nothing more.
But depression can also be seen as a starting point, if you are on the bottom the only path is the one that leads upward.

It is your self-critical thoughts, which may be the result of an event you have experienced as insulting or as like you had been criticized, leading downwards. You dwell and dwell and in the end those thoughts are completely automatic and are triggered by very small negative events that makes you feel worthless.

The feeling is not the same as being in the objective truth, but it is difficult to understand that if you are already down.

Self-critical thoughts are very powerful but the same applies to the positive thoughts, they are also very powerful. Our whole world of thought is constructed of interpretations of events and these interpretations are not always true. These negative interpretations are those we should not let take over our mind, this is, after all, just thinking and no real things or objects that we can touch.
To be unhappy in some point is not abnormal; on the contrary, it is part of our lives. But it is when the harsh and negative reviews are activated when it is going to be a real problem. That's where we can put an end by trying to be aware of just what's happening here and now. Breathing, again, breathing is the best way to stop these thoughts, and finally, after some training, they have disappeared. But if they do not stop they are reinforced every time you think of these negative thoughts.

With mindfulness, you can free yourself from identifying with your thoughts and see yourself as a person who thinks and chooses how to respond to the thoughts that your own mind have created.
So: thoughts are just thoughts and nothing else.

Methods to use:
• Respiratory anchor (to consider the breath is said to give a unifying and focusing effect, calming the mind and make people more present)
• Conscious Yoga (a simple form of yoga that push you more to the presence in the movement because you have to challenge yourself in keeping the position)
• Meditation (used to calm mind and focusing)
• Walking meditation (same as above, but it is very slow walking, with the intent to be deeply aware of each step)
• The formula SOAL (Stop, Observe, accept, let go)

The most important is perhaps the last thing: stop, observe, accept and let go. Which means that a thought or a feeling is just a thought or a feeling that you may observe, to be able to see it as neither good nor bad, and then let go ...
It is mindfulness!

You can stop your stress NOW!

Contact me and I tell you more about mindfulness, free courses etc.