Just try to enjoy the peculiarity of shapes and sounds

I have spent much of my life in depression. From the time I was very young up until around when I turned 30.

For me it manifested as a kind of restless frustration. A sense of wanting to do something but not having anything that satisfies. It always lead to extreme anger and self-destructive thoughts.

Well I don’t suffer from these thoughts on a regular basis anymore, I do feel then sneaking up from time to time. Even earlier this year I found myself slipping back into this kind of pattern.

Now I have plenty of tools to slow or stop the downward spiral before it accelerates and come back to peace.

One of my favorite is to focus on the five senses. Nothing else. It’s not exactly the same as most meditation, but it’s not that different either. The main differences, instead of trying to detach from all thoughts, I detach only from thoughts about past and future. This is what’s called “being in the now”. It might be similar to what others call “mindfulness”.

I read Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” over 15 years ago. There are many layers to that book and that way of thinking, but even on the most surface level, it can be incredibly useful.

If you want to get into the nature of reality and how time works, there’s a whole deep philosophy of non-duality that you can explore. Those kind of thought experiments can totally break open your reality. They’re not the most practical for dealing with depression when it hits though.

There are times that I like to go down that existential rabbit hole, but when I start to slip into depression, I just want to be able to come back to the present moment.

I focus on sight first. The complexity of skin and dirt and concrete and artificially produced good. I look for natural phenomena and other organisms to study and contemplate their appearance and contemplate their existence.

Sometimes I let my self travel down those thoughts and really contemplate the processes of life and of artificial production of this and that. Sometimes I consider who and and what makes these things and all the steps involved whether it’s a natural process or something manufactured by humans or machines.

Other times I really stay strictly in the now, and as soon as I start having those thoughts I bring myself back.

I focus on sound, and listen to whatever hits my ears as if it’s a musical art performance. Even unpleasant sounds can be interesting. They can bring you into a trance, or make you high.

Smells and tastes work too although they are easiest to enjoy when eating or when in nature.

Touch is another powerful sense. It snaps me out of the hypnosis of sight which tends to be the most distracting sense.

There are all kinds of ways to experiment with this. If you want to call them meditations, that’d be fair. I like to think of them more as little excavations into pockets of reality.

When you step back and experience things just as an observer, nothing has any power over you. All things we deem negative lose their charge. This is where we find our greatest power.

We are born into this world to experience a life however, and so once we find our power, we can come back and look at things with fresh eyes.

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎

My music:

My lazy vlogs:

my mini-novella series:

Confessions of the Damaged - Out Now!

Confessions_of_the_Damaged_1.1_cover_final.png

🎬Self Help For Trolls

🎸I + Everything

📕 Confessions of the Damaged OUT NOW :-)

F4CD1B1ECCD442A1B52D9F956DCA8A5B.gif

Come join Hive Cross Culture and Join our discord

Please consider delegating to @crossculture or following our trail 🙂

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

Sort:  

Wow! This was a nice read. It's so true that when something bad happend to us, it's much harder to process and seem like such a giant obstacle to overcome. When that is viewed as an observer and not something that directly occurred to you, then it's easier to process. What helped me once is to view or imagine everything, even pain experienced on or in my body to be a third person, was that i imagined it wasn't me. Difficult situations, be it financial or even just peer pressure can at times feel so difficult to overcome for us. But when it happens to someone else it seems so easy to encourage them and give them good advice. I think picturing that, makes everything much easier when it comes to being objective and taking steps towards getting out of sticky situations in life.

I play that game too. Slip in and slip out. Sometimes I let different versions of me from different time periods talk to me or different parts of my personality. You could get really systematic with this with something like Internal Family Systems but I kind of just play with it casually when it helps.

Sounds like trial and error has led you to a method that works for you. Everybody is unique, and sometimes dealing with issues like depression requires a different solution for each individual. I think in cases like this, it's so much better and sustainable if you find ways to deal with it yourself than through mainstream and expensive therapy.

Managing it yourself gives you a bit of empowerment and control over this feeling too. It also makes me wonder how dealing with this in a country like Japan is for you, because I know they still have many issues with mental health that they have yet to approach as a culture.

I have complicated feelings about therapy. I'm sure there are talented and caring therapists out there and if someone gains a lot from their therapist I wouldn't tell them to stop, but I certainly didn't have a good experience with it.

I don't want to treat thought patterns as something solid and fixed and the word "mental ILLNESS" while not entirely inaccurate creates a disempowered relationship with the situation. So yeah I agree totally.

Very inspiring, At least you've got something to focus on,something that brings inner joy. Bob marley once said;

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain"

Bob Marley was not just a musician but a true shaman. He was a master of good vibes.

I've felt pain from music. The music can let it flow out of me though, like a detox.

At times when you are depressed, you don't need to go deep to the thoughts. All what you do, is for you to sing.
There was a day I was depressed, a song dropped into my mind and I began to sing. That was the end of my depression.

I wish it was always that easy for me. Some of us end up with thought patterns where we feel the whole world is against us. We need to restructure our whole thinking to get over it. I used to wish I was more simple sometimes.

But you are right. Singing can definitely help. It's a way to let emotions flow better!

focus on the five senses.

Is this a thingy? Hahah

I know about music and how it makes a difference to people passing through depressive times, but I never imagined that taste and other senses can also help. Thanks for that clarity.

I have a friend that literally lives through depression 24/7. Sometimes I tend to laugh it off, but inwardly, I know that she is passing through it and she can't help the situation.

I wonder if this idea of "focusing on the five senses" can have a long term impact.

It sure helped me...and I hope it can help her too. Feel free to share this article with her...and you might want to check out "The Power of Now". For some people it's common sense and for some people it's life changing, but either way it's a good reminder that most of our problems and pain are in the past and the future.

It needs to shared with everyone, it is really a nice piece!

I appreciate that :-)

yeah, it really is about being in the now as much as possible, instead of regretting the past or stressing out over the future. The now is where we can make changes and in a way it's always now ;^)

P.S. I read The Power of Now too ( in 2017, when I felt pretty depressed ) and it was among a bunch of life changing books that I read.

Yeah. It was so crazy cause I don't think I learned anything new from it but it helped me so much anyway. It was like training my faith in life and myself.

Same here, although it's mainly about rereading these kind of books over and over again and finding this kind of advice. The more I get reminded of these kind of 'tricks', the easier it becomes to fish them out of my repertoire/ muscle memory when needed ;<)

How about 7 senses?

That is most definitely a form of meditation -- mindfulness meditation. Staying in the present moment is extremely healthy and also very difficult to master, so kudos to you! I still struggle, both with depression and mindfulness although my depression is much more manageable in recent times.

There is also the 54321 anxiety relief method where you focus on five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. It helps with anxiety, and also can help with depression.

I really enjoyed your post. Thanks!

:-) I've actually never directly studied anything about mindfulness. I think it overlaps with a bunch of other things I have read about though, and its come quite natural to me since I was a kid. Treat it like working out. Eventually it's just easy. You will get there!

When you step back and experience things just as an observer

In You Are a Bad Ass, the writer wrote that you should imagine yourself as an alien that took host of your body. Then try an think about all the abilities this new body possess.

These days I am dealing with anxiety...

Its makes me rush and I run out of energy that way.

I constantly have to remind myself to calm down.

Especially being a doctor and all...it has a tendency to make me think of every case as an emergency...running never walking...reacting never thinking...☹️☹️

That's a really interesting way to put it! I've done that before although I didn't put it into such clear concepts of alien and host.

Wow, I don't think I've ever considered just how stressful being a doctor can be even though I have doctors in my family. They don't talk about it, but I'm sure it's really stressful. It's awesome work though!

And I need to check out that book

Ohhh...you do?

That's awesome. I'm currently a general practitioner...I'm planning on specialising in psychiatry. What fields are they into?

I typically talk about it because of Nigeria's peculiar situation...you know?

And yeah its a very nice book...the audio version is on YouTube

ER doctor (he passed away) and plastic surgeon. My cousin is a physical therapist. I studied psychology but I thought my ideas were too controversial in the medical and science mainstream, I'd probably have a lot of headache trying to defend myself, so I pivoted towards education and arts. I think it's probably an important field there that can benefit a lot of people.

I don't know the situation exactly. I'm learning a lot about Nigeria but it's a really complex place, much more to learn than most countries I think. Haven't heard much about medicine there although I know one other doctor with good posts at hive from Nigeria....blanking on his name though...

Wow...lots of doctors in the family and my condolences for your loss.

is the doctor you know bhoa?

Medicine is also complex here...The doctor to patient ratio is 1:5000

I wish there was a community for doctors on Hive

wooowww that's a lot of patients. I think 2 hours with a patient is not enough but usually we get 10 minutes...sounds like over there people get 10 seconds. you must be swamped.

If you want a doctors community, best thing to do is create it :-) I'm sure lots of people will support it, and feel free to share any posts in cross culture too, it's fun to see how different work fields differ around the world.

I'll work on that

Most of the time we have to learn to live in the moment, but, Reality brings us back to what caused our depression in the first place.

What do we do in such scenarios?

The situation usually exists in the past or future. Usually it's not something we have right in front of us. In those times, I think we need to focus on the present first and once we feel ok we can focus on the problem and come up with a better solution.

There is also a method that I learned indirectly from Alcoholics Anonymous. Focus on what you can change. Ignore what you can't.

Your content has been voted as a part of Encouragement program. Keep up the good work!

Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform!

Support Ecency
Vote for Proposal
Delegate HP and earn more

That's an interesting way of beating depression :) I'll have to suggest it to those who struggle!

!PIZZA !ALIVE

Send them my article! Get them on Hive! Give them a hug! Ahhhhh!!!!

Sounds like a plan :) Thanks for sharing what helped you!

!PIZZA !ALIVE

You Are Alive and have been rewarded with 0.1 ALIVE tokens from the We Are Alive Tribe, and it's paid for by the earnings on @alive.chat, swing by our daily chat any time you want.

You Are Alive and have been rewarded with 0.1 ALIVE tokens from the We Are Alive Tribe, and it's paid for by the earnings on @alive.chat, swing by our daily chat any time you want.