All that stuff, it is like telling an alcoholic he just needs to stop drinking. It just doesn't work that way.

When I was 13-14 or so, I used to say: "Suicidal thoughts? Stop thinking about them or just do it already." It's a stronger form, that I no longer agree with, of the "Get busy living, or get busy dying" sentiment I do still agree with. I stopped believing the stronger statement after I had a lot of suicidal thoughts that wouldn't go away.

I am not an expert in this and these are my armchair theories, but they are based on personal experiences and the medical knowledge that I do have. I am only sharing them because I feel that the "experts" do not have enough evidence in their field to make what they say too much more authoritative. Please take it with a grain of salt.

Obsessive thoughts are associated with OCD just as much as with depression. A lot of them happen because of pathways in the brain get strengthened over time so that a trigger will cause a particular thought pattern to occur. The triggers can be many different things, or a combination, from diet related, to amount of sleep, to words you heard and your subconscious brain started thinking about, to concepts you were exposed to. For example almost all of us have obsessive sexual fantasies which get triggered by exposure to porn. We have been conditioned by our society and advertising to have various cravings, etc.

Now, if you want control over these -- it will be a LONG TERM process because your brain gets wired like "hardware", some pathways get stronger over time and you can't re-wire it instantly. (Unless of course you are Phineas Gage, which you don't want.)

There is no 100% solution that works for everyone obviously. Sometimes you can't get from here to there. But if you use the model above, you can almost always make a number of serious changes in what you think about.

Try to identify your triggers by paying attention to specific things that happen before you get the obsessive thoughts. Try to isolate the parts of your mind that are engaged by these things. What commonality do these have? Learning more about your triggers helps you avoid them while you re-condition your brain.

Look at your expectations, which are internal pressures you put on yourself. You set yourself up for disappointment when something doesn't happen, when you find yourself in a certain state where the thing you expected didn't happen. This is a massive trigger, because it is set by yourself, and you self-identify with it. The worst triggers are the ones that you identify with having caused yourself.

Work on breaking bad associations. When I you to complete this two word phrase: "peanut-" do you think "-butter"? If this is negative to you, then try to introduce a competing association that doesn't give you negative triggers, and doesn't cause obsessive thoughts. For example, "peanut-taste". It certainly is a silly example (think of whatever is in your ACTUAL situation, it may not involve just two words but entire thoughts). But the point is, rather than saying "don't think about the pink elephant" and hoping it'll work, you try to associate one or more competing pathways with your triggers, and eventually, through the competition, you may remove the pathway that leads to suicidal thoughts or other obsessive thoughts.

Also you can set up competing pathways that lead OUT of your obsessive thoughts. These may be things you feel strongly about, such as your kids, pleasant associations from your childhood, or things you really want to accomplish in your life. Once you find yourself already thinking about suicidal thoughts, find ways out that worked for you, and write them down. They may lose their power over time, so it is important to find good reasons to believe in them. Notice this matches exactly what you did with the "Get busy living, or get busy dying." You used to say, "Suicidal thoughts? Stop thinking about them or just do it already." And it used to snap you out, but in the long term it just lost its authority just like anything else that fails to deliver on its promise for a long period of time. The best way is to have this combination of

competing pathways that AVOID leading into obsessive / depressing thoughts

and

competing pathways that lead OUT of obsessive / depressing thoughts

work together. Because, if you find that your episodes of having obsessive / depressing thoughts get more and more rare, you will find that you can TRUST the competing pathways to get you out, and unlike "stopping believing" (as you described above), you and your unconscious mind will trust them and follow them, and eventually you will minimize the problem.

Also, people are motivated by contrasts. When you have too much of X, or you get tired / bored of it, you start wanting an alternative to X, or perhaps even "not X". This is what can cause, for example, people who have everything to go and try something completely wacky, that would leave others saying, "what were they thinking?" This is only somewhat related, but if you want to motivate yourself to do something, artificially hold yourself back from the thing you want to do. You will feel the absence and the space and will be glad when given the chance to start doing it.

Finally, HABITS in the real world affects how often triggers come up. The ultimate prevention is by instilling better habits. As one example, some people with chronic joint pain avoid wheat products and find that their chronic joint pain goes away. In general, I would say getting lots of sleep and physical exercise -- especially assuming you are on the computer a lot, since you are here -- will effect positive PHYSICAL changes and can once again be something you can come to trust as a method to have a better life. This trust is important, and if you break your "good habit" out of laziness, your results won't be as pronounced and your trust won't be as strong. You have to let the habit earn its trust. Over time you will be able to take liberties with it, but not in the beginning.

Again these are just my own impressions on the topic, and I fully recognize that it's hard or impossible to do when you are actually EXPERIENCING the obsessive thoughts or depression, so I would recommend to do all your thinking during your "lucid" phase and then work with your "compromised" self -- i.e. the one present during the episodes -- to replace this depression with something better.

I invite any criticism of what I say, like I said I'm just sharing a model that seems to make sense to me.

No, it is intended to be specific advice on how to temporarily treat symptoms of a condition. It could be incorporated into a larger therapy. For example, aspirin or acetamenophen products are used to quickly relieve a fever. Do you snap at people who offer these, because they don't treat the underlying problem (a viral infection)?

My point is that depression is a real thing, that you need proper treatment for. All your theories are great, but it is about as valid as my butcher telling me how I should code my next project because he just got finished watching the Social Network.

I am sure you mean well, but the reality is that unless you an actual therapist, offering up advice does more harm than good.

I am trying to understand why.

Why do you have such high respect for the knowledge these therapists have? Isn't it a bit like cargo cult science?

If this sounds provocative, it is because I am trying to get a response and more info. Why is it that the various psychology schools are SO respected that any layman's advice or armchair theory is instantly considered "harmful" even though it is HELPFUL to people I know who aren't clinically depressed? I am just trying to understand why someone offering normal and rational advice is told that they are causing harm. There's some unsaid extra assumption here about the depressed people, and I would like to know what it is, and where is the evidence for it.

> I realize I haven't been in their shoes,

Oh.

> but I want to offer advice that I've figured out in my own experience, that lets you feel happy whenever you want to

Fun fact: Depression Does Not Work Like That.

Depression is insidious because it removes the will to get better. You don't lie around thinking "gee, I'm sad, I wish I was happy", whereupon your church newsletter list makes its entrance.

No: a depressed person simply is depressed. The idea that you could get better is both unimaginable and exhausting just to think about.

Depression progressively shuts all the doors until suicide seems, if you can be bothered to try it, the only sane thing left to do.

People with depression don't need to be cheered up. They need medical attention. Right now.

I don't mean to seem like I'm ragging on you personally, but you need to understand that variations on "snap out of it" and "put a smile on that dial!" don't work for a depressed person.

I've had bad online forum responses from people who were depressed before, when I posted this advice on how to fel happier, so I actually appreciate the feedback.

Still, I find it interesting that -- even though this advice would help many people to feel happier at will -- I get so much defensiveness in response. What is wrong with proposing a natural means to treat the symptoms of something, even if it does have a deeper cause? Is anything other than recognizing the need for a dose of drugs to correct a hormonal imbalance wrong? I'm just trying to understand the reaction, and I have no doubt that it's a genuine one. It goes far beyond the "drug industry + FDA vs natural remedies" thing. I mean, I find it fascinating: advice like that would be very useful to me and a lot of people who were not clinically depressed, like a psychological toolset to feel better, and which could, over the long term, actually bring about measurable changes in habits and confidence to feel better, and thus MAY, or at least has potential to, actually improve a long term condition.

I am just writing this to try to understand. Why do you intend to denigrate what I said by calling it a "Church Newsletter List". What does this have to do with religion? Am I not supposed to share my methods of feeling happier with someone who is Depressed (with a capital D, which was Diagnosed in the DSM-IV)? Am I not supposed to share ways I help motivate myself psychologically, with a person who is for example an alcoholic? I should just keep quiet about tools and technology that I have found useful to effect positive changes in myself, because someone is a Depressed, an Alcoholic, a Cripple, or whatever suddenly makes them "different"? Should I be scared of the moral "wrongness" to treat them with camaraderie, like other people I believe to be capable of understanding things? The only right thing to do is to refer them to a medical professional who will prescribe them drugs, and get the hell out of the way -- certainly never share any advice?

I listed 8 thing that you can try in your own life which will make you feel happier. It won't cure depression. I never claimed it cures depression. If you don't have the will to get better, you may not want to do them. But if you DO have the will to feel HAPPY in 10 mins, then doing them may help you, even if temporarily. What is wrong with that?

I just want to understand the reasons behind the reaction.

> I just want to understand the reasons behind the reaction.

Did you read what I wrote? Let me put it in the simplest possible terms.

You haven't been depressed.

You don't know what it's actually like.

Your list of exercises would not work for a depressed person and by thinking that it will you perpetuate the impression that depressed people are just 'putting it on' to garner sympathy and attention.

Depression is a serious condition that ought to be given medical attention.

Your list would appeal to non-sufferers, who might try to foist it on sufferers. What non-sufferers should be doing is dragging sufferers to see a doctor.

Insofar as advice like yours prevents people seeking help for themselves or others, it is actively harmful.

I guess I intend this list to be used as a set of tools. Just like recommending aspirin or mucinex to relieve symptoms does not mean people shouldn't see a doctor to see if they can't be prescribed antibiotics. What is the reason to treat depressed people specially so that this reasoning doesn't apply there too?

As a side question -- and I am really just trying to find out more -- you are extremely confident that depression must be given medical attention and only medical attention. Can you elaborate on that? What specifically do you mean by this? Is it a well known condition that can be treated in all cases? Or is it a cargo-cult-science type thing where some things are treated but over half the cases are just handwaving? When a psychologist says "you should see me again, how about next week" how do you know they are actually helping? etc. When a psychiatrist prescribes a drug, how do you know people wouldn't be cured without it? I am just asking how do you know, because I really want to have more information about it. And since you seem confident I want to ask what you know about this condition. Is it one specific disease or is it just a general guessing game by the experts, kind of like the drugs in these studies: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_...