Depression has an especially cruel season called relapse. It always happens after the worst seems to be over; hope like sunlight is restored; life without depression is in full bloom. Then suddenly it’s winter again. The more often it happened to me, the more impossible the goal of recovery seemed to become. I was surprised […]
Mindfulness
The Alchemy of Turning Depression into Vitality
After reading about the experiences of Tom Wootton and Will, the author of the great blog, WillSpirit, I’ve been exploring whether I could find a way, as they have, of turning depression into vitality or even bliss, something positive and fulfilling. It’s been a stretch. I’ve usually thought of depression as a force that turns […]
Is There a Link Between Mindfulness and Hypnosis?
In looking for ideas about the power of the mind in healing, I’ve never thought about a possible link between mindfulness and hypnosis. Until now. Michael Yapko claims there is a close connection between the two in his latest book, Mindfulness and Hypnosis. I’ve learned a lot from his well-known self-help books on depression (Breaking […]
Mind Over Pit Bull and Depression
After a family-rich Thanksgiving week, I was hard at work Sunday morning writing a post on the placebo effect when my wife and I decided to take a refreshing walk with our two dogs. We didn’t know it, but we were on our way this foggy morning to a head-to-head confrontation with a stray pit […]
Delay, Fear and Perfectionism Out – Recover Life Unlocked
As you may have figured out by now, I’ve had a hard time launching Recover Life from Depression, but I’ve finally opened it up. “Unlocking” seems like a better word since I’ve struggled for months to break through a hard resistance to getting it done. I was slow to grasp what was going on, but […]
Why Therapy Can Work: Ideas from Brain Research
Brain research is one of those many scientific fields that I’ll never know much about, but I find it important to get even a limited understanding of the direction of recent findings. It helps me to know, for example, that emotions are generated unconsciously through multiple brain systems before anything gets to awareness. As I […]
