Uncovering Happiness
Bouts of depression range from the
mild and infrequent to the severe and chronic. For serious depression,
you should seek qualified help. But for any level of depression, it
helps to know that underlying the darkness is happiness—and our brain is
equipped with the means to uncover it.
By
Elisha Goldstein
Illustrations by Mindful, with files from Andromina/Dollar Photo Club and Tets/Dollar Photo Club
When I was living in
San Francisco during my twenties, I built a successful career in sales.
At night, I lived fast and partied recklessly, abusing drugs and alcohol
with a like-minded group of drifting souls. Eventually my despair and
shame grew so deep that I isolated myself from my family and friends and
lost myself in my addictive behaviors.
Occasionally, in some of the seedier bars I frequented, I
would come across a mess of a man who was so strung out that he repulsed
me. I remember saying to my friends, “God help me if I ever turn out
like him.” I thought, since I was managing to succeed at work, I was in
control of my self-abusive behavior. But one night, after many hours of
partying, I saw the truth of who I had become. When I found myself
slumped beside that man and his equally dazed companion in the back of a
broken-down limousine, I saw my own reflection in his wasted face and
realized I was throwing away my life. I jumped out of the limousine,
determined to transform myself.
As for so many others, it was mindfulness practice that
turned things around for me. My family urged me to spend a month away at
a retreat center. During that time, I questioned everything I did and
all that I believed. Answers began to come to me: I wanted to stop
abusing my body. I wanted to find the purpose and meaning of my life. I
wanted to be happy.
I wanted to heal myself, and eventually, I realized, I
wanted to help heal others who faced some of the same challenges that
had nearly broken me. I trained as a clinical psychologist and began
running Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based
Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programs focusing on helping people relate to
stress better and not relapse into depression. Now having worked with my
own depressive tendencies and with hundreds of clients, I know that
uncovering happiness is not about simply being drunk on life but is
found in a profound and enduring experience of learning how to lean into
loving ourselves and others in good times and in bad. It’s a happiness
based on a sense of common humanity, connectedness, and purpose. While I
still get hooked by self-judgments and negative thoughts, I have
learned to be grateful for the good moments and a bit more graceful
during the difficult ones, knowing that all things in life come and go.
I’ve come to believe that I’m benefitting from natural antidepressants
that are present in the human brain.
When you hear the word antidepressant, you probably think
of a pill: a medication used to treat your illness. Medications are one
kind of antidepressant. But they’re not the only kind.
Science is now showing that we also have natural
antidepressants within our brains: mindsets (thoughts and behaviors)
that build us up instead of tear us down and allow us to help ourselves
improve our own moods.
These natural antidepressants can be gathered into five
main categories: mindfulness (the one I focus on in this piece),
self-compassion, purpose, play, and mastery. By developing these natural
antidepressants, you can strengthen your brain’s ability to act as its
own antidepressant that can be as powerful as—or even more powerful
than—the antidepressant medications.
I recognize the value of antidepressant medications, and I
believe they can play an important role in the treatment of clinical
depression. I’ve seen pharmaceuticals be lifesavers for some depressed
patients, giving them the help they need to engage in necessary
psychological treatment.
However, I also believe these drugs are heavily
overprescribed and overused. For many patients, antidepressants cause
more harm than good. They can create a cascade of mental health problems
that go far beyond the depression they were prescribed to treat. Too
many people get caught in the trap of jumping from one drug to the next
or taking multiple prescriptions in order to offset serious side effects
caused by individual drugs.
Whether you are on antidepressants and they’re working for
you, you’re on them and want to get off of them, or you are not on
antidepressants at all, cultivating natural antidepressants can support
your ability to get better at overcoming the depressive cycles. Whatever
your experience with depression has been—whether you just have the
blues, you have chronic low-grade unhappiness, or you’ve experienced one
or more major depressive episodes—you have the power to change the way
you feel. By getting help in understanding how depression works and
making the choice to nurture your natural antidepressants, you can
become stronger and more resilient.
Science shows that we have natural antidepressants within our brains and, with some work, they can be as powerful as—or even more powerful than—medication.
The Depression Loop
I’ve found during my work with depression that it’s
helpful to envision it as a kind of circular process: an automatic loop
rather than a linear set of events. Clients find it useful to think of
it as a cycle, a spiral, or even a traffic circle. If you live someplace
where there are lots of traffic circles or if you have ever driven on
one, you know how confusing and maddening they can be.
You’re driving on a straight road, minding your own
business, maybe humming along with a song on the radio, and suddenly a
traffic circle looms ahead. It just kind of appears on the street ahead
of you. Your mind instantly starts anticipating entering the circle, how
the cars may stream in, and how you’re going to exit. A feeling of fear
or anxiety arises; your hands start to sweat and grip the steering
wheel. As you enter, you search for a sign for a way out, and halfway
through the circle you realize that you have to switch lanes to jockey
for a position so you’re ready for your exit. Meanwhile, you drive by
other entrance points that each admit streams of new cars into the
circle. You see your exit, but you realize that you either have to speed
up or slow down. If you miss your exit—which is so easy to do—you have
no choice but to loop around again hoping that next time you’ll make
your way out.
Falling into the depression loop is a lot like entering a
traffic circle. You’re living your life, feeling fine, minding your own
business, and all of a sudden you find depression looming. Maybe it’s
just a feeling you wake up with, a moment when you suddenly fall prey to
a shaming inner critic that says something like “there’s something
wrong with me/ you,” or a response to hearing some negative news. Once
you’re in it, you try valiantly to get out. But it’s so easy to get
stuck.
Just as various roads lead you into a traffic circle, the
depression loop has four entrance points: thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and behaviors. Any one of these can lead you into the
depression loop. Once you’re caught inside the loop, your mind goes
around and around, struggling to get out. Streams of thoughts enter the
loop as your brain struggles to figure out “What’s wrong with me?” As
one of my students says, “The bloodhound is sniffing around for the
villain (and much analysis is required).” The brain anxiously defaults
to reaching back into the past, referencing and rehashing negative
events to try to figure it out. Simultaneously, the brain jumps into the
future, planning, rehearsing, and anticipating some upcoming hopeless
catastrophe. As all this happens, the brain pours stress into an already
stressful situation.
You may see an exit, but as you try to leave the loop, you
find yourself blocked by more depressive thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and behaviors. Before you know it, the traffic gets even
heavier with the addition of streams of fear and anxiety when you begin
to perceive that you’re becoming trapped in the self-perpetuating
depression loop. You’re desperate for escape, but, sideswiped by fear
and negativity, you become so overwhelmed that you just keep going
around and around and around. Soon a sense of learned helplessness sets
in: you can no longer even see the exit, so you stop trying to break
free and begin to believe you may never escape.
This was a common occurrence for one of my patients,
30-year-old Sandy, who had experienced bouts of depression her whole
life. Typically she would feel fine for a while, but then at times,
seemingly out of nowhere, she would become depressed. Sandy would lose
interest in activities she usually enjoyed and have trouble finding the
motivation she needed for everyday tasks. Feelings such as unworthiness
and guilt would begin to flood her mind, and in response, she tended to
isolate herself from her family and friends and make choices that fueled
her depression rather than pull her out of it.
Sandy experienced depression as a persistently reinforcing
loop that dragged her down. Negative thoughts would trigger troubling
feelings (or vice versa) that in short time would turn into an
ever-present depressed mood state. This would make it tough for Sandy to
get out of bed in the morning. Doing the activities she usually enjoyed
felt nearly impossible, and instead of partaking in life, Sandy would
often end up sitting in her apartment feeling terrible about herself,
eating too much, drinking too much, and sinking deeper and deeper into a
morass of gloom.
Sandy didn’t know this, but each time she experienced a
bout of depression and got lost in the depression loop, her brain
actually changed. When we practice anything in life over and over again,
it starts to become automatic; in psychology, we call that a
conditioned habitual reaction, and in neuroscience, it’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.
Right now 80 billion to 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, are
interacting with what some have said are one trillion connections,
called synapses, in an unimaginably fast and dynamic network. When we do
something over and over—whether it’s something we’re trying to learn,
such as improving our tennis stroke; or something we’d rather not learn,
like an anxiety response to dogs after being bitten by one — neurons in
our brains fire together. As we repeat these actions, they eventually
wire together, making the process an unconscious habit.
One day Sandy came to see me looking particularly
distressed, and she told me that she’d received an email that a client
of hers was angry with her work. In exploring it together, we realized
that this kind of cue triggered worries about losing that client,
increasing her anxiety, and making her heart race and her breathing
become shallow. Her mind spiraled with negative hopeless thoughts about
the future of her business, and she began to avoid doing her work. Sandy
knew she was getting depressed, and this spiraled into more fear. Her
response prevented her from dealing with the client’s email in a
logical, objective way.
Sandy was ready to start breaking this cycle when she
finally recognized her depressive loop for what it really was: a deeply
conditioned habit (or trauma reaction). In fact, just understanding the
concept of the depression loop was enough for Sandy to start effecting a
change in her relationship to depression. She was able to see it in
action in her daily life and name it. The moment she saw it occurring,
she was able to stand apart from it in a space of awareness that was
separate from the loop itself and gain perspective. She no longer felt
she was the loop—rather, she was the aware person viewing the loop. In
this space, she found a sense of freedom and a “choice point,” a moment
in time when she was aware enough to choose a healthier response.
The first step in uncovering happiness and experiencing
freedom from the depression loop, then, is learning how to objectively
see this loop in action instead of getting lost in it. The moment we
notice the depression loop in action is a moment we’ve stepped outside
of it, into a space of perspective and choice.
From there, we have more work to do. The brain habits we
have can be deep-seated. The helplessness we’ve learned can stick with
us. The beauty is, though, that science is now showing us that through
intentional repetition and action, we can change our brains for the
better.
And one of the most helpful ways to do that is to
counteract our tendency to want to believe we are a problem to be fixed.
Instead we can be present for what comes up in our lives and make
choices in the small space that opens up between a stimulus and our
response. That’s where mindfulness comes in.
Once we notice the depression loop in action we’ve already stepped outside of it, into a space of perspective and choice. From there, we have more work to do.
Being Versus Doing
We are hardwired to solve problems. When a problem arises,
we want “to do” something about it. That’s how we’ve evolved and have
made the wheel, our first tools, the chairs we sit on, the houses we
live in, and even how to read and understand these words. Problem
solving is an essential part of life. But contrary to the brain’s
belief, life itself is not a problem to be solved; it’s a constantly
evolving experience to be lived.
Here’s how problem solving gets us trapped deeper in the depressive loop:
The moment we experience an uncomfortable emotion, the
brain sees it as a threat because of its potential to lead to
depression. We’re supposed to feel well, and when we don’t, there is a
discrepancy between where we are and where we “should be.” This mind
thinks, “There is something wrong with me.” It perceives a defect, a
deficiency, an unworthiness. The brain sees this as something “to fix”
and uses self-judgment to tell us that something is wrong with us or
maybe conjures up doomsday scenarios to prepare us for possible
catastrophes. Then, because of these potential threats, the brain
remains on high alert to see if any more signs of relapse arise. The
voice inside the mind inquires anxiously, “Is it gone yet? How about
now?” This only adds pressure to an already stressful state of being.
The more the brain focuses on this gap, the more it highlights it in our
minds and strengthens the belief that “something is wrong with me.”
This only sinks us deeper into the depression loop, which
spurs the brain “to do” something more, continuing to add more fuel to
the fire.
But when we’re doing this, where are we? We’re not in the
present—and that’s exactly where we need to be to take charge of our
brains and see the choices to make a change by using mindfulness.
Mindfulness is about balancing the brain’s implicit agenda
by training it “to be” with what’s there instead of needing “to do”
something about it. In using mindfulness to learn how to be with our
feelings, we send a message internally that we’re worthy enough to pay
attention to. This closes the gap between where we are and where we
think we should be (which makes us feel unworthy), and that disrupts the
depression loop.
Right now you can choose to stop what you’re “doing” for
30 seconds and practice this state of “being.” Just take a breath and
acknowledge how you are. Is your mind racing, or is it calm? Is your
body tense anywhere, or is it relaxed? Are you feeling anxious, bored,
restless, excited, tired, or any number of other emotions?
Breathe in, breathe out. You have arrived.
Here’s an opportunity to stop reading and begin working on
developing mindfulness. It’s a short exercise that you can immediately
start using to help move away from the conditioned loop of depression
and into a space of hope and possibility.
Learning how to be is a one-minute practice that can be
done anywhere and anytime as a barometer of how you’re doing. As best
you can, treat this as an experiment in your life. Try it out at first
in the moments when you aren’t sinking and see what you notice. Like any
habit, the more you integrate this into your day, the stronger it
becomes in your short-term memory, and the more likely it is to be
retrieved during the difficult moments.
Note: First, see if you can set aside any judgments of
whether this practice will or will not work for you. Engage this just
with the goal of being aware of your experience.
Breathe: Take a few deep breaths. Notice your breath as
you breathe in and out. You might even want to say the word “in” as you
inhale and “out” as you exhale. This is meant to pop you out of
autopilot and steady your mind.
Expand: This is the process of expanding your attention
throughout the body and just feeling your body as it is. You can start
by noticing the positioning of your body. Then you can move to being
curious about how your body is feeling. Imagine that this is the very
first time you’ve ever felt your body. You may feel warmth or coolness,
achiness, itchiness, tension, tightness, heaviness, lightness, or a
whole host of sensations. Or perhaps you notice no sensation at all in
other areas. When you’re here, also be aware of how emotions are being
expressed in the body. Calm may be experienced as looseness in the back
or face. You might also notice painful feelings. Maybe this comes up as
tension in the chest or shoulders. If there is physical pain, see what
happens if you get curious about the sensation of it and allow it to be
as it is. If it gets too intense, use this as a choice point to become
aware of what matters in the moment or what you need. Maybe you need to
get up, move around, and roll your shoulders. Awareness is the
springboard to getting in touch with what matters.
That’s it! It may sound too simple to be impactful, but,
again, set aside your judgments and let your experience be your teacher.
Just practice being, breathing, and expanding into the
body in mini moments throughout the day to train your brain to be in
that space of awareness and choice that will lead you to a more balanced
and mindful life.
To help you remember, you might consider posting signs in
your environment that say “Just Be.” Just as signs on the road remind us
to slow down or watch for children crossing, signs around the house or
office can remind us to be how we want to BE. Or maybe put a note in
your digital calendar to pop up a couple times per day as a reminder. Or
the best way to remember may be to share the idea with a friend to
remind each other from time to time.
The benefits are enormous—it just takes intention and practice.
Like any habit, the more you integrate mindfulness into your day, the stronger it becomes in your short-term memory, and the more likely it is to be retrieved in difficult moments.
Natural Antidepressants
Mindfulness
A flexible and unbiased state of mind where you are open
and curious about what is present, have perspective, and are aware of
choices.
Self-compassion
You understand your own suffering and use mindfulness,
kindness, and openness to hold it nonjudgmentally and consider it part
of the human condition.
Purpose
You are actively engaged in living alongside your values,
are inclined toward compassion for others, and possess an understanding
of how your existence contributes value to the world.
Play
A flexible state of mind where you are engaged in some
freely chosen and potentially purposeless activity that you find
interesting, enjoyable, and satisfying.
Mastery
You feel a sense of personal control and confidence and
are engaged in learning to get better and better at something that
matters.
Five Major Mind Traps
These voices keep us stuck in the depression loop. One of
the keys to cultivating an antidepressant brain is realizing you are not
these thoughts or the stories they tell. Here are some ways to avoid
falling into these traps.
Doubt
Whenever you hear advice about how to work with challenges
you have, you might notice the voice of doubt: “This might work for
some people, but it’s probably not going to work for me.” The motive of
this voice is to keep us safe from failure or disappointment, but
ultimately it keeps us away from new experiences that can be supportive.
Emptiness
Longing to be elsewhere, our minds settle on the belief
that the current moment is never enough, we’re not enough, or we can’t
do enough, it’s all so empty. The problem with this kind of thinking:
When the awaited event does occur, happiness may not come with it. This
motive of trying to fix the current moment leaves you in a perpetual
cycle of dissatisfaction.
By focusing on the idea that you’re not where you “should
be,” your brain is constantly reinforcing the message that something is
wrong with you, which then highlights a gap of deficiency that only
grows wider as it tries harder. The root problem is not what you don’t
have, but the fact that you really don’t feel whole or complete.
Irritation
Someone might be walking down the hallway at work humming
his favorite tune, and thoughts come up: “Does he think everyone wants
to hear him? Uh, what is he so happy about anyway?”
Meanwhile, who’s suffering? We’re the ones in pain, but
our brains think if we project our irritation onto another person, we’ll
find relief from the pain. If these voices continue to come up in our
relationships and aren’t discussed, the feelings turn into resentment
that inevitably eats away at the relationship like a cancer. But voices
of irritation can alert us that something isn’t right and, with
awareness, we can use this information to be constructive.
Sluggishness
Have you ever had the idea to do something that’s good for
you—hang out with friends, exercise, meditate—but you hear this voice:
“I want to do it, but I’m too tired. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
If we’re actually tired—maybe we haven’t slept enough or
had an exceptionally taxing day—we need to listen to our bodies and
rest. At other times, these sluggish voices are just another sign we’re
avoiding being with ourselves because we fear that it will be
uncomfortable. If we can recognize it, we can face it and when we can
face it, we can work with it and break free.
Restlessness
These days our brains are being trained to be noisier,
busier, and more distracted. You’re sitting alone waiting for a drink.
Your eye catches your phone: “I wonder if I received any new messages.
Nope, not one since a minute ago. What about Facebook, anything there?
Some new updates, not that interesting. Twitter? Ah, that’s an
interesting tweet. I wonder when the drink is going to come?”
When there’s a space empty of doing, restless voices rise
up. We feel compelled to fill the spaces, but we don’t realize that in
these empty spaces, we have a choice between doing and being; it’s where
possibility and opportunity emerge, and where there is a chance to make
changes for the better.
Take a Self-Compassion Inventory
Here are a few questions to help you gauge the strength of
your self-compassion muscle. (Note: if you find it’s low, don’t worry,
just like a muscle, it can be strengthened.)
1. Where does the inner critic pop up? At work? When you walk past the mirror? In relationships? In relation to parenting?
2. What are the repercussions of being so hard on yourself? Does it add to the depression loop?
3. When something difficult arises in life and you fall
under stress, where do you rank on the priority list of people to take
care of? Do you apply caring to your suffering or try to avoid it?
4. When things are tough, do you tend to compare yourself
with others, thinking that they have it together? Or do you have a
balanced perspective, knowing that all humans struggle?
5. What would the days, weeks, and months ahead be like if
your stress and inner struggles were met with more understanding and
caring?
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