August 2020 – Experimentation: The Whats and Hows (Depression Primer #2)

This is the second in a series of articles concerning the basic principles for healing depression. Last month (link) concerned the practice and purpose of gratitude, and this month will look at the importance of working with depression from an experimental mode. This means that, when trying to influence depression (changing negative thinking, being active rather than de-motivated, etc.), we set up those attempts in our own minds as experiments. Basically, “What happens when I do X?”, which itself acts as an antidote to the dogmatic assertions of depression.

May you all be safe, supported, related, and striving towards wisdom in these amazing times.

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Getting the “Penthouse”: Experimentation vs. Success

As I’ve been preparing for the next series of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (MBCT) classes (see below), my thoughts have gone to the subject of “taking action” within the context of a class which stresses heavily acceptance and non-resistance of the experience of depression. It’s an important issues, especially for a therapist like myself who stresses the aspect of mindfulness as a general principle of effective therapy (not the sole cause, maybe not even the most important, but pretty useful at least…).

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