By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Arline_Curtiss]Arline Curtiss Depression is a bully you must finally face down. I'm a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist who was once diagnosed with manic depression. I'm one of those who went into the field of psychotherapy to help myself. I found out that, when forcefully encountered, depression lets you alone. Depression is like living in a room of pain. You can learn how to leave the room. Depression only occurs in the subcortex, the feeling part of the brain. There is never any depression in the neocortex, the thinking part of the brain. You can learn to switch from one brain system to the other when depression hits. The use of simple mind techniques can thoughtjam depressive focus and keep it at bay. Then, neural activity will spark up in the neo-cortex while powering down the depression happening in the subcortex. Depression is like the bully who terrifies you as long as you are afraid, but fades at any real resistance. When you focus your attention on painful feelings, your fear keeps triggering the fight-or-flight response which continues to pump stress chemicals like adrenalin (epinephrine) and norepinephrine into your brain, causing the chemical imbalance feeding your depression. Simple mind exercises like singing a nursery rhyme, or repeating some mantra like "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes" for five or ten minutes immediately starts to lessen pain in the subcortex by enhancing cognitive focus in the neocortex. It absolutely works. The hard part is to withdraw your attention from your pain and sing some dumb little song to yourself. But this will brainswitch the neural activity from the subcortex to the neocortex and give you some immediate relief. When you feel the blues hit, try imagining a penguin conducting an orchestra. He turns to you and says, "Okay, one and two and three, now sing!" The latest new evidence of neuroplasticity is new hope for every kind of depression. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to re-wire itself as a result of changes in one's thinking and behavior. When you do dumb little exercises instead of doing your depression, you are actually building a get-out-of-depression neural pattern in your brain. The book TRAIN YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR BRAIN by Sharon Begley, the science editor of Time, gives new credence to neuroplasticity and re-wiring your brain to get out of destructive neural patterns. Another book, THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF documents fascinating individual cases of the power of mental force. The book BRAINSWITCH OUT OF DEPRESSION applies neuroplasticity more specifically to depression. With mind techniques you can stop the habitual depression patterns from activating themselves by re-wiring a new neural path out of depression. Any neutral distraction helps to lessen your habitual reaction to the first downward spiral that plunges you into depression and despair. You can actually re-wire a get-out-of-depression-neural pattern that you can use instead of the old habitual neural depression patterns themselves. Here's a Don't-Do List to keep the blues from "bullying" you. Ten Things to Don't Do for Depression 1. Don't be caught unaware. Have a plan of action. A check-list to prepare yourself as if you are going on a trip. Depression is a trip you don't want to take. You need particular things to help you get out of it. Choose three thoughts you are going to think instead of the thought "I am depressed." A nursery rhyme: "Row, row, row your boat," a favorite poem or prayer, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," a mantra such as "Yes, yes, yes, yes." 2. Don't ignore that warning downer-feeling. Confront your depression right away. "Oh, I know what this is. This is depression. Okay, now I have to do my exercise." 3. Don't do the habitual things you always do when you're depressed. Habitual depressive routines maintain a direct neuronal connection to your depression. Break the depression connection. Your body will be screaming at you to go to bed, to not put on make-up, to not open the curtains. Scream back a neutral thought in your mind while you do those very things. Don't do what your depression wants. 4. Don't isolate yourself: call a friend, go to the park, go to the movies. 5. Don't remain immobile - move around, walk, jiggle yourself. The less you move your body the more your depression settles in. Movement is life. 6. Don't talk in a weak, sad voice. Look up some jokes on the Internet and laugh. Even a fake laugh breaks your neuronal connection to depression 7. Don't let yourself look like you're in pain. Look in the mirror and smile at yourself. Make funny faces. Not because you want to but because it breaks your neuronal connection to depression. 8. Don't think about yourself. The way you don't think about yourself is to think about someone else. Send someone a healing, a prayer. Anything to break the self-focus. 9. Don't pay any attention to your depression. Paying attention to anything else, any object around you, the pattern of light on the wall, the color of a sofa, breaks the direct neuronal connection with your depression. 10. Don't give in to your depression. Any physical action or objective thought that you do other than thinking about your depression helps to weaken it. Any physical action or objective thought works. Resistance is not futile. Brainswitch from the subcortex to the neocortex. Depression will fade. A. B. Curtiss is a board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist.and author of ten books including Depression is a Choice: Winning the Battle Without Drugs (Hyperion) and Brainswitch out of Depression (Healthworks Clinic Press). She has won a Benjamin Franklin award and a San Diego Book Award. Her op-ed articles have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and USA Today (Creative History Distorts Truth). Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arline_Curtiss http://EzineArticles.com/?Dont-Be-Bullied-by-the-Blues&id=470426 valium roche online purchase
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