MiracleMan

Hey friend, this is a good sign that you are going into deep relaxation. I had this problem too, at least I thought it was a problem but in reality you've gotten better at your practice my friend. I was reading this book "Mindfulness in Plain English" and he mentions that eventually you become so relaxed that you can hardly notice your breath at all. One technique he mentioned that helped me out was instead of trying to feel your breath, notice how the air tickles your nose a tiny bit as flows into your esophagus. You can also notice the heightening and lower of your chest, the rolling of your belly in and out. Notice the brief pause in between the breaths, that tiny little interval between breathing in and out.

My depression normally happens in such a subtle way I have no idea what is really going on. Every morning I wake up to a cacophony of music in my brain, an annoying loop that is playing right now as I type these words. This started in early childhood. It's like a jukebox I can't switch off, sometimes the song changes but there is literally a solid 16 hours of noise per day, I'm sure this is some sort of diatraction. I was also a victim of childhood trauma: sexual abuse by an older cousin, physical and mental abuse by father and mother, and I grew up in a time where my escape and rapture was video games, internet, pornography, masturbation and drugs. My lifestyle became very hedonistic. I was moved into a basement room at age 12 to make room for a baby brother up stairs. That basement was cold, pitch black and always frightened me and I was forced to live in that windowless hell below the earth, it became my prison. It soon became a sanctuary though, and once I got comfortable here I didn't want to leave. Today I'm 30, I'm still an addict. I'm a professional, and I have a good job. But everyday I feel closer to madness, the endless loops in my brain, the constant stream of negative thoughts. I've been lifting and meditating for months, but I can't get rid of the monkey mind. This morning I managed to have 3 or 4 arguments with myself, called myself the biggest piece of shit in the world, told myself my job will crumble and I'll lose everything, prayed for cancer, thought of the peace of death, and underneath all of that I know it is all a LIE but the greater part of me that is in control buys into this and believes it likely true. I have tension myosiditis, which is stress induced pain in the body, in my lower back and in my left arm and hand. My lower back always feels hard as stone and causes me great pain, all distractions. I feel a great deal of rage and I constantly want to fight people, both physically and verbally. I think I need serious help, my therapist is more or less just someone to vent on, they are not providing me the help I need. I'm afraid of disclosing my thoughts to a serious psychotherapist because I'm afraid of being locked away in an institution, I'm afraid that any information I disclose will be used against me, to hurt me. All My life I've directed this negative, hateful, evil energy back into myself, I can only take so much and I feel like now at 30 years old my mind is reaching its limit. This is spilling out of me into the world, I'm losing friends, I insulting and verbally abusing people I love, alienating them and myself. I'm slowly destroying my life and pushing away everyone I cared about love. I have almost no friends and I feel like I'm pushing away my very last best friend. Scary times.

Guys, this has been a hell of a couple weeks for me but I've been listening to the love revolution audio by Matt Kahn a couple times a day as well as his video on pain. Thank you Zenrick, this is exactly what I was looking for. I've been going at the mantras and it felt very awkward and almost sickening to say "I love you" to myself but it's actually starting to give me comfort in those dark times, I just repeat it over and over and it seems to get me through whatever is bothering me at the moment. I've been reaching outward to look for external solutions to my problems (new job, new location, new hobbies, new people) but I was always missing something that I knew was fundamentally internal but I never knew what my problem actually was. If only I could quit porn I said, or drugs, or stop this behavior. I noticed even through shear will power I was able to kick habits, but I was always (and still am at this moment) vulnerable to getting addicted again. I believed if I could just stop the behavior I would change. No. That is an external solution, yes I need to kick bad habits but I also need this change to come from within, that is the next step I think. I'm learning not to engage with depression or pain, I'm starting welcome them with open arms because the more I resist the worse my symptoms get. If I deny or resist the symptoms it does me no good because the pattern is already formed, I have to accept it and find a new pattern to supersede the prior. It feels strange and counterintuitive but I'm saying yes to pain, bring it on. And above all else I learned this week that despite what my current patterns are, despite my situation or anything "bad" my brain guilts me into believing, I can still love myself.

I'm seeing a therapist but I know this isn't enough. Honestly I have lost so much faith in our medical system when it comes to mental health. I've so many bad experiences I hardly trust doctors anymore, where I've been mistreated or lead on into treatments I haven't needed. The medical system in place now gave me a death sentence when I was I 12 years old. I was told I had depression/anxiety disorder and it was incurable and that the symptoms could be controlled through medication and therapy. That was truly devastating news but it was also a lie. Depression is very curable despite what nearly every doctor has told me. I believed this lie until about 6 months ago and I've been doing better but still having these self defeating episodes. I don't think the entire medical system is like this, but in my area it's definitely lacking in quality mental health services. Wishing for an End to suffering is part of my problem. I confuse death with peace, I don't want death I want piece of mind. The more I want the depression and anxiety to end I think the more it can hold its grip on me. I'm essentially holding on to my depression, gripping it and not letting go, I'm encouraging it's growth by acknowledging it's power to frighten and scare me. Wishing it will go away makes it stronger I think? I used to have bad panic attacks in my mid 20s, I read about a technique for fighting back against panic attacks, and that was to not fight resist and not fight back. The harder I tried to fight the panic, strong arm it, push it away, it came back more intensely. When I said, "okay, give me all you got, let's go, let's HAVE a massive panic attack, I don't give a fuck, I'm not afraid of you" and in the back of my mind I was truly frightened and my fear was about passing out, not breathing, and dying, but the more i screamed inside my head "come on! I'm right here!" the panic went away. I hardly have panic attacks today but if I do, this technique works. It's like a bully, a dark thing that wants to fight and control you, and if you resist, ignore, or allow the fear to overwhelm it will win. During a depressive episode I feel a similar bullying, a similar fear, an anxious tightness, but it's much more subtle and sneaky than a panic attack. A panic attack is like a fast agile enemy in your face, here and now, its a quick event. The depressive state I might not even be aware of until it's too late, and even then it might be hard to convince myself that I'm actually there. I think this is an internal journey here, yes I need some outside guidance, but no one knows me better than me. The reason I'm not better isn't because I haven't been to the doctor, its because I have a problem being honest and true with myself, I have a problem loving and helping myself. I'm so wrapped up in my own mythology and legend, I fear I just entertain my ego and the rest of me is just worthless to me.

Wow thank you guys for the advice, I was having a bad episode this morning. I felt an overwhelming amount of emotions this morning, its all akin to self sabatoge. I've been looking into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and reading Feeling Good by David Burns, which after really looking into it, CBT is a westernized version of mindfulness. CBT isn't super mainstream, I cannot find a counselor here in my area. There are a few Buddhist temples and meditation groups in the area however. I feel like when it comes to depression, when we say the things that trouble us out loud it sounds silly and I could even laugh about it, but inside my skull it's like those troublesome thoughts are amplified and seemingly dangerous. This is why I find recovery so difficult, because the magnitude of the feeling associated with those thoughts are astronomical, but when they are spoken out loud, it just sounds silly that this is what is troubling me, and it's easy to thus dismiss the plan all together as futile. Others find comfort that their worries are silly, I think I find it more humiliating because I validate those negative thoughts constantly and believe them. On another note, I am 5 months clean from porn, I had a couple of relapses but I have managed to get myself back on track. I would like to have this approach to depressive episodes. While the episodes suck, I could reassure myself that it's okay to relapse and have these depressive episodes, and that they may happen again but it's how I react in these situations that counts. If I relapse on porn I'm not going to throw away all my progress and binge and run away from my commitment and go back to the way things were. The hardest part of all of this is what to do when the episode hits, sometimes I'm not even aware I'm having one until it's too late. It's also hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, an escape route. The mind becomes so dark and clouded that nothing rational makes sense.