reconnecting

Here’s an article that is an extrapolation of what I wrote about philosophy back in December, an attempt to explain some of the deeper ways in which the mind constructs depression…without telling you. It uses the image of an old power plant control room to talk about the “Wall of Knobs”, the settings of the body-mind that define our experience, and our potential for experience.

As I said in that article, although this can seem a bit academic compared with what on the surface seems more practical—what I address in the Tools of the Month—having a better understanding of how the mind works to build depression is essential to actually both managing, and ultimately deconstructing it. Depression is not simple, despite what the popular presentation of it is, and having an appropriately complex understanding will give the possibility of having a robustly balanced life.

The tool-of-the-month for this month is a simple one that is often not easy to execute on. The way depression works is primarily to pull the levers and knobs of the imagination, to convince you that the world, well, just is grey and bleak. But, the solution to depression is often described by the 180 degree opposite from what it’s doing: if it’s imagining greyness for you, then you can imagine color for yourself.

So, this is a description of the process of imagining out from where you are, in concentric circles of the world around you, in order to remind (“re-mind”) yourself that there is a world of possibility and potential out there, and that depression was just forgetting it for you.