I will do my best to communicate it. Imagine your mind is like a tree, and your thoughts are like branches. The more time you dedicate towards a certain thought, the stronger that branch will become.
I had terrible depression for seven years. It didn't start bad, but it grew steadily worse and worse. It worsened because each of my thoughts would merge with the "depression branch" and make it stronger and after six years my "tree" was warped and bent under the weight of the depression. All of my perceptions were tied to it, and I had very few branches independent of it.
This was until I learned about Cognitive Therapy. This is the process of monitoring your inner-dialogue and restructuring it. For example: If I did poorly on a test the event would be associated with school, which would be associated with my shame that it was taking me so long to graduate, which then attached itself to the depression branch. Cognitive Therapy taught me to prevent the event from attaching to that branch by stopping the thought-chain of "test failure - school - shame - depression" and instead trying something else like "test failure - shit happens" or "test failure - lesson to learn - don't stay up late."
All of this occurred while I began taking Adderall. After a year of atrophy, the depression branch withered and died because I wasn't supplying it food by linking my thoughts to it. Not only did it die, but entire negative thought-trains are lost to me because they existed solely within that branch.
So nowadays I lay down and wander around my thoughts. If I find a thought that has caused me considerable troubled in the past I will follow it to see where it leads. If it goes nowhere positive then I return to the initial starting point and "snap it." So every time I think of that inciting thought I imagine a twig breaking off, and I remind myself not to journey down that thought. After some time, I forget the thought is even there, and it dies.
Your brain is a plant. Plants need to be trimmed every so often because a branch will become infected, or leaves will rot, or it will grow a limb that hurts its growth. You cut this branch by disassociating from the thought and forbidding yourself from following it.
from
I had terrible depression for seven years. It didn't start bad, but it grew steadily worse and worse. It worsened because each of my thoughts would merge with the "depression branch" and make it stronger and after six years my "tree" was warped and bent under the weight of the depression. All of my perceptions were tied to it, and I had very few branches independent of it.
This was until I learned about Cognitive Therapy. This is the process of monitoring your inner-dialogue and restructuring it. For example: If I did poorly on a test the event would be associated with school, which would be associated with my shame that it was taking me so long to graduate, which then attached itself to the depression branch. Cognitive Therapy taught me to prevent the event from attaching to that branch by stopping the thought-chain of "test failure - school - shame - depression" and instead trying something else like "test failure - shit happens" or "test failure - lesson to learn - don't stay up late."
All of this occurred while I began taking Adderall. After a year of atrophy, the depression branch withered and died because I wasn't supplying it food by linking my thoughts to it. Not only did it die, but entire negative thought-trains are lost to me because they existed solely within that branch.
So nowadays I lay down and wander around my thoughts. If I find a thought that has caused me considerable troubled in the past I will follow it to see where it leads. If it goes nowhere positive then I return to the initial starting point and "snap it." So every time I think of that inciting thought I imagine a twig breaking off, and I remind myself not to journey down that thought. After some time, I forget the thought is even there, and it dies.
Your brain is a plant. Plants need to be trimmed every so often because a branch will become infected, or leaves will rot, or it will grow a limb that hurts its growth. You cut this branch by disassociating from the thought and forbidding yourself from following it.
from
No comments:
Post a Comment