Depression And Anxiety Basics

This talk offers some basic tools and reflections to help meditation students with Depression and Anxiety. You will learn to recognize some of the optical illusions of mind, notice distorted thinking patterns, and learn to unblend from difficult mindstates.

Transcript

I'd like to start the talk with a cartoon.

There's a woman that does something called poorly drawn lines.

And there's a bear sitting on a park bench with a bird.

And the bear's on its cell phone and it says,

The world stresses me out,

Man.

The bird says,

You could try meditation.

And the bear says,

No,

I need to be fully in the ship.

Stress grounds me,

Reminds me that I'm here.

It's almost a spiritual thing.

So that's one way.

The other way is the way of cessation.

And learning to find cessation of depression,

Anxiety,

And the mind.

It's helpful.

And cessation is not just some pie-in-the-sky goal.

Deepa Ma,

Who I wrote about,

She had pretty severe fear.

She was a very fearful,

Anxious person.

And meditation completely eradicated it.

Uttejaneya was a Burmese monk.

He had very severe depression.

Meditation eradicated it.

Mingur Rinpoche,

A Tibetan monk.

He had very severe anxiety with panic attacks most of his life.

Just panic.

And meditation eradicated that.

And as I've told you,

I had suicidal depression most of my life,

And meditation eradicated that.

So it's really possible to make big changes through meditation.

And how is it possible?

The key is dis-identifying with mind.

That's really the key here.

And in a way,

If you have depression or anxiety,

You can be grateful,

Because it's kind of a segue,

Training wheels,

And to let go of your ego and your mind.

Because the depression and anxiety is so painful,

You have to learn to let go and dis-identify,

And then that's like the next step to letting go of the ego altogether.

So I guess you could count yourself lucky if you're working with it.

So what are some tools to dis-identify with the mind?

So this talk offers a lot of possibilities and tools,

So just bear with me.

The first and foremost tool that any Vipassana student knows about and uses is called labeling.

Labeling thoughts,

Emotions,

Whatever's happening,

Just as it is.

Just as it is.

And why we label is it helps us not push away something and not grab it.

This nice middle way allows you not to judge your thoughts or emotions.

And also it uses a different part of the brain.

They know this guy named Lieberman did some research studies with labeling and MRIs in meditation students.

And when you don't label,

An emotion generally lands in your brain stem,

Your fight-or-flight area of the brain.

And when you label it,

It moves it to the prefrontal cortex.

So it's a whole different area of your brain to process the emotion.

So that's why it's such a powerful tool.

It gives you space and it gives you an empathic witness when it moves from your brain stem to the prefrontal cortex.

And the more you do that,

You're doing this all day long in Vipassana,

You're having a moment reprieve from the mind state.

And then one second leads to another,

Leads to another.

So you're building this ability to have mastery of mind.

So you can label individual emotions.

You can label a constellation.

There's a constellation of thoughts and emotions that relate to anxiety and depression.

One thing to remember,

Anxiety and depression have no independent existence.

They seem like they're something of their own,

But they're more like a constellation of things.

So think about the Big Dipper when you look up at the sky at night.

You probably not see it here,

But there's these seven stars,

Right?

The minute you look,

You go,

Big Dipper.

There's no Big Dipper there.

There's just these seven stars in an order,

But every time you look,

You see a Big Dipper.

This happens with depression and anxiety.

We feel these certain constellation of stars,

And then we go,

That's depression.

And that constellation of stars with depression is usually some kind of negative thinking.

It's low energy,

And it's some kind of self-criticism.

And with anxiety,

Similarly,

Usually it's thoughts about the future,

Kind of a high energy,

And fear.

And you just get these combinations of things,

And then they create anxiety like fuel and oxygen create fire.

And I'm teaching you this so the more you can label the independent things,

Oh,

Here's low energy combined with negative thinking,

Ah,

Depression.

Then you don't have to take it personally.

You can unhook from it,

And you can unpack it,

Because it seems so solid.

It's not solid.

It's just a constellation of thoughts and emotions.

The more you can see the unsolidity that is on its way up,

Starting to move out.

You know,

One thing I did,

I think the mistake I made,

Was I fought this entity called depression for 20 years,

And there wasn't really anything there.

And the Buddha talks about fighting the armies of Mara in his mind,

And then one day he just went,

Wait a minute.

The one night he was fighting them,

And he said,

This is just an illusion.

And then it was just gone.

Everything was gone.

So if you can see these constellations of emotion that represent these negative emotions,

They lose their power.

Depression loses its power.

Anxiety loses its power.

It's like Mara,

I see you.

And then it just slithers away.

And it's not always that easy,

But there are times when you can do this.

So the handout I gave you just gives you kind of a key into some of these distorted thinking patterns,

Too,

That represent the constellation of depression.

I'm not going to go over every word on here,

But I'll just say some of them.

So the all-or-nothing thinking,

These are just useful to recognize,

Are you in these looking at things in absolute black-and-white categories?

Overgeneralization is the second one,

Viewing a single event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

Personalizing and blaming,

Overblaming yourself or others in ways that aren't reasonable.

Catastrophizing,

Blowing things out of proportion,

Shrinking your importance.

And also this is important for those of you with trauma,

Projecting the trauma of your past onto the future.

That's a common thing trauma people do.

Jumping to conclusions is the fifth one.

Mind-reading,

Assuming you know what someone else is thinking or feeling.

Fortune-telling,

Imagining you can predict the future and things will turn out badly.

Looping,

Repetitive negative thoughts or feelings that go from one to another without pausing or examination.

Perfectionism,

Difficulty forgiving yourself or others.

Excessive reviewing of the past and or rehearsing the future.

And the last is stacking,

Putting unrelated situations together and building a case against yourself or the world to the point of overwhelm or giving up.

So I just wanted you to have these so you can just be able to label these and go,

Oh,

I'm in one of this all-or-nothing thinking,

Right?

Or catastrophicizing or looping.

Or,

You know,

Give this to my clients or we'll just pull out the sheet or I'll pull out the sheet and go,

Okay,

Which one am I in right now?

And then you can label it and again it gives you space and it gives you empathy for these thinking patterns that aren't really you.

It gives you the ability to have hands-off.

Why?

Because all these thinking patterns are optical illusions.

They're optical illusions of the mind.

And you really want to catch this if you want to end the belief in identification with self and depression and anxiety in any mind states.

You've got to start seeing through these tricks of mind,

These optical illusions.

There's some other ones,

Some of the bigger tricks of mind.

The biggest trick of mind of all is it lies.

The mind lies all the time.

How many times today did it say,

I can't stand another minute of this?

And then you did.

It doesn't really,

You know,

I like this,

I don't like this.

It doesn't know what it wants,

The mind.

I had a psychiatrist who I worked with for many years and he used to joke with people.

We'd say,

So are you getting a PhD in MSU?

Making shit up university.

The mind also likes to really exaggerate things.

It's part of the lie.

So really think of depression and anxiety as like one person in an empty stadium with a microphone.

Just one little voice.

But it makes it sound so big because it has this microphone.

And it has this pressuring nature to it.

Depression and anxiety is pressuring in a big booming voice like the voice of God.

So if you can just be like,

Wait a minute.

Take the microphone away.

Tone it down,

Take away the pressure.

It's just this tiny little part of you.

It doesn't have to be a bully,

Depression or anxiety or any mind state.

And the truth is whatever it's saying,

This is a real fun truth,

It just sounds A-E-I-O-U.

Wah,

Wah,

Wah,

Wah,

Wah.

If you didn't make all the words into something,

There'd be nothing there.

It's hard to do,

But it's true.

Just sounds.

Another optical illusion the mind does is it creates two of you.

It splits off into the problem you and then the good you.

It creates a civil war inside.

But in reality,

There's only one mind.

The mind that's criticizing you is the same mind that is criticizing and being criticized.

There's only one mind.

So really try to call this,

You're not a house divided.

There's not two of you.

There's not a you that you have to fix with a,

Quote,

Different you.

Okay,

Get that out of your head.

Then it'll just be fine.

You'll be like,

There's only one of me.

What are you talking about?

That Amita that has to change.

Who are you talking to?

The last optical illusion of mind,

And this is something that Deepama's teacher said to her,

Mandindra,

He said,

The thought of your mother is not your mother.

The thoughts are not real.

They just represent concepts.

And the more you can see,

The thought of your mother is not your mother.

The thoughts are just sounds,

Again,

And concepts.

One way to really utilize a tool to work with these optical illusions of mind is inquiry and investigation.

And a lady named Byron Katie,

Some of you might have heard of her.

She's a spiritual teacher,

And I don't know what she is,

But she has a lot of tools about working with mind and unhooking from mind.

And two of my favorites,

The ones I use a lot are,

The first one is when you have a thought like,

I'm a piece of crap,

Can you absolutely know it's true?

Can you absolutely 100% know it's true?

If you can't say 100%,

You have no business in that thought.

Just unhook.

The world's going to end next week.

Can you absolutely know that's true?

No.

Unhook.

And then her second question,

Which is really brilliant,

Is,

Who would you be without that thought?

I'm a terrible person.

I can't absolutely know it's true.

Okay,

Who would I be without that thought?

I'd be fine.

The world's going to end next week.

Who would you be without that thought,

Because you can't know it's true?

You'd be fine.

So generally,

When you try your inquiry,

You end up fine.

Another investigation tool that I got from a colleague recently,

Which is really helpful for imposter syndrome,

And feeling like that you're a bad person,

She says that when you're having a negative thought about yourself or evaluating yourself,

Just think about,

How would somebody who really admires you,

What would they say?

You generally wouldn't say that,

Right?

You're an imposter.

Or what would the Buddha say about you?

So you notice generally what you would think and what they would say would be different.

And then she says,

Now,

Who are you going to believe?

Are you going to believe your thoughts over the Buddha?

Are you going to believe your thoughts over someone that you love and admire?

And it really gives you this choice of realizing the insanity of your own perspective and choosing that over the Buddha or someone you admire.

And this same colleague says,

What we should do in each situation when we're faced with a negative thought,

She says,

The person or thing you should believe is the one with the most capacity to love.

The person or thing you should believe is the one with the most capacity to love.

And we should do that.

We should do that in election year.

So labeling of depressed and anxious mind and constellations of thought,

Labeling these optical illusions using investigation and inquiry,

You can also check and adjust things on a physical and somatic level.

When you're in a depressed or anxious mind state,

You want to check your environmental triggers.

And anybody who's in 12-step programs,

I know some of you guys are in here,

They have that acronym called HALT,

Hungry,

Angry,

Lonely,

Tired.

If you're depressed,

Anxious,

Or you want to use your substance,

You're generally hungry,

Angry,

Lonely,

Tired,

HALT.

So it's really good to check that,

Because sometimes just taking care of eating or sleeping can really affect depression and anxiety.

Simple stuff.

Another environmental thing to check is 3 a.

M.

Mind states.

You should never be evaluating yourself at 3 a.

M.

You have no business in your mind at all at 3 a.

M.

And this simple thing helps so many of my clients.

I mean,

It's just so ridiculous how easy it is.

I have a moratorium.

I say between 10 o'clock at night and 5 in the morning,

No evaluating myself and no deciding how messed up the world is.

I can write it down and look at it later,

Like one quick write-down,

But then I need to stay out of it until the light of day.

That helps a lot of mishaps right there.

Another somatic tool that I mentioned earlier is the open hand of thought.

So when you're really stuck,

Just open your hand.

Because generally we're gripping,

And we're kind of doing it in our body too.

So just the simple opening your hand when you're stuck can really move things out.

One of my dear friends on Maui is a hospice worker,

And he's also a meditator.

He's helped Steve and Kamala,

Who've come here a lot.

And he was working with a 90-year-old woman at home,

And she really wanted to die,

But she couldn't die.

She just couldn't let go.

And so he was sitting in her bedroom,

And he was saying,

Well,

Just let go.

And she goes,

I don't know how.

And she said,

Do you know how?

And my friend Brian,

He's just so honest,

He just thought to himself,

God,

I don't know how.

But he just sat there with her for a minute,

And all of a sudden he just grabbed her hand,

And he goes,

Well,

It's like this.

He squeezed her hand,

And then he let go,

And then he opened his hand,

And he squeezed it,

And he let go.

And he goes,

It's kind of like this.

And he did that open hand,

Closed hand.

And the whole rest of the time they were just talking about medications and other things,

And the whole time she was squeezing his hand and letting it go,

And squeezing and practicing.

And the next day she died.

So you never know when this could come in handy.

So what I've noticed in teaching for many years is we kind of went from a depression culture to an anxiety culture,

And now I would say we're in a fear and overwhelm culture.

I mean,

It's like really ramped up.

So we need stronger tools in situations like that where we're going to get more of our parts are going to be in this high stress overwhelm.

I mean,

Think about one of these small kids on a five-hour airplane from Hawaii to here,

And they're just over the top upset,

Inconsolable.

And more and more I think people,

Adults,

Are in this state,

Our own parts.

So we really need to move to that higher ground,

That bigger presence,

Where you're almost like holding this screaming baby for hours,

All night long if you have to.

And the state of mind that takes that calm,

I'll do whatever it takes.

That's what we need.

So another image,

If that screaming child thing doesn't work,

Is the outside of the storm.

A lot of us get in these kind of shit storms of mind,

Right?

Fear,

Whatever it is,

Anxiety.

And try to remember no matter how bad the storm is,

There's always an outside of the storm.

Always.

So even when I'm in it,

I used to have to lay on the ground for hours because the negative voices of depression would just scream at me and I would just lay there for hours.

It was like a hurricane going over.

But you can always pendulate to the blue sky that's beyond the storm.

There's always something bigger than the storm of your mind.

No matter how bad it is.

If even like right now you can think to the outside of the storm,

If it retreats your storm,

Think to the outside of the retreat.

The storm is always going to pass.

And then awareness,

Blue sky.

The calm will return.

The true nature is the calm,

Not the storm.

Try to remember that.

Another somatic tool is really come back to the now.

Fear needs a future.

Fear needs a future.

Come back to the now.

Sadness generally needs a past.

Come back to the now.

The body in the now.

Some of the Zen folks,

Their whole Dharma talk is just like wrapping the stick.

Now,

Now,

Now.

They don't even talk,

They just wrap the stick for the now moment.

You're lucky I don't do that.

So even if there's a lot going on in our busy lives,

It's almost like we have a sink full of dishes,

Like hundreds of dishes.

But you can only do the dish on top of the pile.

Just do the dish on top of the pile.

Just do the first one dish,

Whether it's your taxes or brushing your teeth,

Then do the next dish.

Don't think a whole pile full of dishes.

Just think one dish.

Since the fire in Maui Sundays,

I'll see like seven people with trauma back to back.

Sometimes eight even.

And my colleagues will be like,

Do you get tired?

And I just was like,

I only see one person.

I only see one person.

And then I see another.

And then I see another.

I don't get tired.

And you can do that too.

Come back to your body in the now.

Don't create the idea of time.

It's another concept.

One moment at a time.

You only have one moment in the now.

You don't have a whole day or a whole lifetime.

Don't think lifetime.

There's just this.

So when you're overwhelmed,

Here,

Just come back here.

Am I okay now?

You know,

A big trick of the mind,

A big optical illusion,

Is we can think our way to safety.

In the 44 years I've been in mental health,

I've never seen anyone think their way to safety.

Or be able to keep their way to safety via thinking.

Now you can have scopeful means through thinking,

But your mind will never keep you ultimately safe.

Teacher Shanti Deva says,

If there is a solution,

What's the use of worry?

If there isn't a solution,

What's the use of worry?

There's not much use of worry there.

I have another tool that relates to worry.

It's called my Once Around the Track Rule.

So if you're going to plan for something,

Or you're going to review or rehearse what you've done or going to do,

Just do it once or twice around the track.

Not ten times,

Not a hundred times.

Why did you do this?

Why did you do this?

Why did you do this?

You would never do this to a child.

Are you sure you know how to do that?

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

Why are you depressed?

So just watch,

How many times around the track did you go with this self-hatred or this worry?

If it's more than twice,

Again it's like 3 a.

M.

Mind,

No.

It's abusive,

It is abusive to go around the track more than a couple times around anything that you've done or you're about to do.

And you know,

Deciding to do these tools,

They really work.

I mean,

I used to just for hours beat up on myself on the smallest,

Stupidest thing.

You know that voice.

I had a dad that did that,

So of course I did that.

And then about a year ago,

I did something,

Just by accident,

I really let a whole group of my friends down and inconvenienced them.

I mean,

You know how that is,

Like,

Oh no.

And normally,

So I was driving back in the car after I did this thing,

It was a very disappointing mistake.

And it would have been like hours of just like,

Oh,

Oh.

And I drove home from this incident,

And it was just completely silent.

It was like,

I made a mistake,

It's over,

And I don't need to say anything.

I couldn't believe it.

I was like,

Wow,

There's no need to talk.

And it just stunned me that there was silence.

And that's all because of the practice.

It always surprises me when it kicks in like that.

So one last somatic tool to disidentify with mind and depression and anxiety is to remember this.

Everything is all going to go.

All of it is going to go.

Everything you can see in this room,

Every person,

You,

The forest,

Olive Cod Mountain,

The earth,

The galaxy.

Everything is going to go.

So how stressed out do you need to be given the factor of impermanence is going to take care of everything?

There doesn't need to be a you in it.

Sometimes when I'm judging and I'm talking to my teacher,

He'll just laugh and laugh,

He'll go,

Amita,

It's all impermanent,

So why are you judging anything?

It's all going to go.

And you know,

That might sound like an odd thing,

And you might think,

Oh,

That's just going to make me depressed.

But actually,

Try it on.

It actually leads to more connection.

And interestingly enough,

I teach a man in Hawaii meditation,

And he's the CEO of a really large medical organization in Hawaii.

And he started drawing on his charts for his employees,

This whole diagram,

And he goes,

Look,

See this company?

It's all going to go.

It's all on its way out,

He says to his hundreds of employees.

He said,

Don't worry,

Do your best.

It's all on its way out.

Most people just thought he was nuts.

But you know what?

This year,

His organization did better on their medical audit than they've ever seen any medical agency do in the history of Hawaii.

A hundred percent.

They've never seen that on a medical audit.

So it worked.

Permanence brings freedom,

And everyone's so happy working for them because it's all going to go.

And they do incredible work.

It's like a big sand mandala,

You know,

Every day.

You get up,

It's like a sand mandala,

And it's all gone at the end of the day.

So those Tibetan monks that do those sand mandalas,

They're so happy.

You don't have to keep it.

Ajah Shanti,

Teacher Ajah Shanti says,

All our anxieties are fears.

They are just substitutes for a totally open heart.

So that's your true nature when the anxiety and fear have worn away,

And they will wear away,

Is just a completely open heart.

So there's mindfulness and labeling depression and anxiety,

The constellations of mind,

Looking at the lies and tricks that the mind plays,

Using those investigation and inquiry questions,

Using somatic tools like the open hand,

Coming back to now,

Once around the track,

Seeing it's all going to go.

These are all tools you can use to disidentify.

And I'd like to close with a poem.

It's a bit long poem,

But bear with me,

By a meditator poet named Dorothy Hunt,

And it's called The Altar of This Moment.

The Altar of This Moment.

Place everything you can perceive,

Everything you can see,

Hear,

Smell,

Taste,

Or touch on the altar of this moment,

And give thanks.

It is over so soon,

This expression,

This single moment of your precious life,

This one heart pounding itself open with fear or wild joy,

This one breath rising in the cold winter air,

Smoothly and gently,

Or coughing and sputtering.

Bow while you can before this one taste of afternoon tea,

Warming its way to your belly,

Or the fragrant orange exploding its sweet juice in your grateful mouth.

You have to love the antics of your mind,

Imagining life should be only sweet.

The bitter makes the sweet,

And life is both.

Like you,

Before you think yourself into pieces.

Place this moment's pain and confusion on the altar too,

And give special thanks for such grace that wakes you up from sleeping through your life.

Pain is greatly underrated as a pointer to unknowing,

Yet greatly overrated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,

Your eyes meet mine,

And there is a single looking.

What is peering from behind our masks?

Can it touch itself across the room?

Place your palms together,

Touch your holy skin.

In another moment,

It will shed itself.

What will you be then?

What were you before you had two hands?

What are you now?

You cannot capture that and place it on the altar of this moment.

It is the altar,

And this moment's infinite expressions,

And the seeing,

And its own devotion to itself.

You are that.

You are that.

Reviews

Beautiful.
Impermanence, as you said, is a very good reason to not look back with pain, or forward with fear. I am trying.
I'm someone who has pushed people and opportunities away out of past trauma and fear (from childhood abandonment issues) - that I am unable to get back. Those losses work against me because I can't get that precious love back, that is itself impermanent - and the very reason why it is cherished, nourished, nurtured, and even fought for.
So the only thing I can do is learn from my regrets, and really really try to stay in the now.

Thank you! So many circumstances came together this week, my depression pretty much cratered. I came onto IT looking for help and found it in your talk. I’ve bookmarked it for easy retrieval 🙏🏻

Thank you that was so very helpful 🙏💕