Practicing With Depression

This talk is on the topic of depression. So many people have had some experience with depression or have someone close that has suffered with depression and our exploration is into seeing how this deeply afflictive mind state can be a portal on our spiritual path.
So there are millions of people that experience depression, it’s one of the leading causes of disability. It’s characterized as a loss of interest in life, a loss of engagement with others. The mind state is that we are alone.

Transcript

So we've been working with afflictive emotions and the way that afflictive emotions are defined are those emotions that cause harm to ourselves and to others,

Mainly to ourselves but also to others.

And this week I'm wanting to explore with you an area that I have never covered before in these years of teaching and that's the topic of depression.

So there are millions of people that experience depression.

It's one of the leading causes of disability and if not in ourselves,

I imagine that we all know someone very close to us that suffers from depression.

And so as I was doing research on this topic that is very close to my heart in so many ways,

I heard one way that it was described,

Depression was described,

Is like a log jam.

So that visual really worked for me because I can imagine how logs,

You know how they historically have been floating logs down rivers and when a river snakes around a bend,

All it takes is one log to get stuck and then there's a whole pile up happening.

And if we can just target that one log,

We could get things moving again.

And so in a way this analogy really works with the log jam of depression.

And just to say there are many,

Many ways of working with this afflictive experience in the body and the mind,

Cognitive behavioral therapies work well.

Sometimes physical exercise can support the movement of depression out of the body.

Many people use drug therapies,

Antidepressants have been helpful for some people.

But for me,

I want to talk about the medicine of meditation.

That's been my way.

The medicine of meditation has supported the movement of depression for me.

And so it's pretty potent I was turned on to this great quote about Eeyore.

Does everyone know Eeyore?

He's one of the characters from the story of Winnie the Pooh and he's always kind of blue,

Eeyore is.

And so this quote is,

It says,

One awesome thing about Eeyore is that even though he's basically clinically depressed,

He still gets invited to participate in adventures and shenanigans with his friends.

They never expect him to pretend to feel happy.

They never leave him behind or ask him to change.

And I really relate to this character.

So I wanted to bring that into our awareness.

Always invited,

Never asked to change.

I think this really speaks to the importance of relationship.

Eeyore is accepted as having a cloud over his head.

And it doesn't make us wrong if we're caught in a log jam,

If we have depression.

So in my experience,

Meditation practice for depression has been essential,

But it's not in and of itself sufficient.

I think that's important to understand.

It's essential working with depression,

But I also had a therapist for 20 years and nature out my back door,

Which is also very helpful.

And meditation has been so empowering because we can start to direct our attention to heal and to free ourselves.

It's that shifting the logs to get to that one log that's jammed the whole thing up.

And meditation also supports understanding that we are not our depression.

I am not my depression.

It's just something that I carry.

So to start out this inquiry,

I think it's useful to sort of define what depression is.

It can be experienced as just feeling low,

Or it can be experienced as just like a sense of unpleasantness,

Painful.

Generally,

There's a loss of interest in life,

Like a loss of engagement.

Like what's the point comes to mind for me,

The mind state that we're alone,

That there is hopelessness,

Feeling numb,

Empty.

And there's some shame that can come along with that,

Because we're isolated.

There's often a message that comes with depression,

Not only like,

What's the point,

They would be better off without me.

But also it's my fault,

And I'm bad.

Something's wrong with me.

Something's really wrong.

So these are some of the characteristics of depression.

And just to say that sadness and sorrow,

Like grieving,

Grieving is different than depression.

Grieving and sadness are entirely natural.

In this culture,

We just haven't put into place like sufficient rituals to meet our losses.

You know,

I think companies give you a couple of weeks of bereavement if you've lost somebody,

Like,

Like,

Okay,

You've got two weeks,

And then you're gonna get over it,

Right?

So when there's loss,

And we don't,

We don't feel it,

We don't grieve it,

We hurry through it,

It converts into depression.

So ungrieving,

Ungrieved losses can turn into depression.

So it's important that we grieve our losses and that we create the space to grieve our losses.

Sadness and being sad moves us towards accepting loss.

And it moves us towards restoring connection.

So when my mother died,

That restored a connection with my brother,

Who I didn't have a relationship with.

When she was alive,

We did not have a relationship.

And now we talk every week.

We play guitar together on Zoom.

It's really kind of amazing.

And I miss when I miss my mom and dad,

In the middle of that sadness of missing them.

There is love that carries me forward,

The gift of relationship I have now with my brother,

The gift that that loss provided,

Like that carries me forward.

So again,

Sadness and sorrow,

Grieving is different than depression.

When we're in depression,

The brain no longer regulates our mood.

And our life gets really small,

Really limited.

There's depressive thoughts going on.

And those thoughts,

They reinforce the biochemistry.

So what happens is we start looping,

Those thoughts start looping.

And there's a stuckness with depression.

And that grows,

Because more thoughts come.

And then the behavior and the story is,

What's the point?

Why should I even get out of bed?

So all of us experience some spectrum of depression in our lives.

Sometimes it's through grief and loss.

And some people get locked into major depression.

So how does that happen?

Well,

Depression runs in families.

So if you had a parent or have a parent who was depressed,

And they were depressed,

And they had a parent or have a parent who's depressed,

Then you're about 50% more likely to have depression.

So genetics is a big factor.

And if there was trauma in your childhood,

Coupled with depression,

That percentage goes way up.

So this really speaks to what I often talk about what was taught to me by one of my teachers,

We are not our fault.

Like,

Really,

We're not.

And some form of trauma or stress can throw us off and put us into a depressive episode.

Chronic pain can bring us into depression,

Or our basic needs are not being met.

These are also conditions that incline us more towards depression.

The teacher Tara Brock is,

I think,

The only teacher that I've discovered that talks about depression in her teachings.

And I really appreciate that.

And she coined this term,

I believe she coined it called severed belonging.

And what that means is that something happens in our lives,

And we're cut off from feeling that who we are is okay.

Like through our family,

In our community,

Our culture,

The message that we're getting from the from the world that's surrounding us,

Is there's something wrong with us?

That's severed belonging.

And so depression is about this severed belonging.

It's about being disconnected to other people.

And in some way,

When we can start to work with depression,

What we're really working about working with is that reconnecting.

That's where the healing lies,

A core teaching that the Buddha has offered,

That has always landed with me,

That keeps me on this path,

Is that if it were not possible to free the heart and mind from these unhealthy states of mind,

If it were not possible,

I would not teach you to do so.

So it is possible.

And what's so astonishing,

And what really is like confirmed faith for me is when I see it happening within myself,

I see it happening within our community,

This change of heart,

This disentanglement.

So seeing and experiencing the transformation in depression that I have carried has been so has been so incredibly liberating.

And just taking ownership that I'm the carrier of the family for the depression.

I'm the holder.

And I keep holding it up to the light.

And you know what light does?

It disperses it,

It thins it out.

So mindfulness practice has been my access to seeing the arising of depression.

It arises as a thought.

It arises as a thought,

A thought of unworthiness,

A thought of what's the point?

They're better off without me,

Just a thought.

And when I see that thought arising,

I have a choice in that moment.

I can say to my husband or my dear friends,

I'm going in the dark.

Ah,

The darkness has come.

Hello,

Darkness,

My old friend,

I can acknowledge the pull of the habit.

And what that habit is,

Is really disconnection.

So the tools of reconnecting.

This is the important part.

The first is to reconnect to what matters to us to tune into what thoughts you're having,

Like to start to really pay attention to your thoughts.

Is your coming out?

What's happening in the body?

When we get into the body and recognize the thoughts that we're having,

It can short circuit the pattern,

Even if it's really brief.

And it just brings us here and now.

So intention really opens the door to connection.

Often depression,

When it comes,

The thought,

The thought comes close to like four,

Four or five o'clock in the morning,

The thought comes in.

It's like,

Oh,

There's that thought.

So but but my intention is to reconnect is to not believe that thought.

When we get when we feel stuck,

There's no way out of the downward spiral.

There's no way out of going into the dark.

You know,

If that thought doesn't come like,

Oh,

Look at that.

There's the thought and I see it.

What happens is the spiral begins and I go into the darkness without even knowing it.

I can tell when depression is part of my being because color outside looking around,

It's almost muted.

Beauty is harder to see.

And that downward,

That like downward spiral.

There is something within us that wishes to stop that spiral down.

And that wish that wish is our is really the beginning of intention.

And we can't hope that the wish will come true.

It can't be artificial.

But what we can start to feel is the longing to move in another direction,

Like that movement,

Just follow that movement in another direction.

When that thought comes,

Question it.

I don't have to believe this.

It's in us,

Our full potential to move in another direction is there.

So when we dedicate our energy with reconnecting to our life,

Our aliveness,

That reconnection is an antidote to depression,

Among other things,

Not just the intention.

There's work to be done,

Right?

So we'll continue tomorrow with this topic.

And we'll do some practices in our group in our in person group.

And Thursday,

We'll continue as well.

So I'm just going to pause here and take some questions on this topic,

Or some comments.

Reviews

Thank you. Thank you Thank you

To know that I am not alone...changes everything! Thank you! 💝🙏