The place we are brought into, without our own consensus, is full of depressive events. If you love animals, it will be difficult to tolerate the fact that many cats and dogs are being abused, tortured, and killed knowingly or unknowingly, as you are reading these sentences. For the intelligent who respects nature, it is dramatic to know many trees and numerous living creatures within them are being perished at every single second. Many children are dying from hunger, women are being killed by men, men by other men… Many are attempting or planning to take their own lives, exactly now. These happen whatever you do, whether you are suffering from a physical or emotional problem with a greater focus on yourself or comfortably sitting in an armchair and sipping a great cup of coffee thinking about daily issues. We wish these unfortunate events were far, very far away from us. But no; there is exactly 0 possibility to make you exempt from the responsibility and duty of suffering. You will witness a variety of sicknesses, debts, and deaths of loved ones; in fact, a well-designed personal bouquet of unfortunate events, including small and large ones, until you, yourself, die.
But, shouldn’t I, who offer a cure for your depression, make you think more positively? Shouldn’t I provide examples to prove that the world is full of beautiful events that you must just look at? Shouldn’t I take you out of depressive thoughts? On the contrary, I will describe why you, the intelligent, should feel depressive whenever needed, to avoid from depression permanently.
As I promised earlier, each part of this writing will be devoted to a step to take the intelligent out of depression and anxiety. So, this very first step will focus on depression. But, anxiety sufferers should not skip the part and take a rest, as if they could, since they are also in depression even if they do not know. Once thought opposite phenomena, you might have heard that psychologists now consider them, depression and anxiety, as sisters. Being a very experienced sufferer of both, I will go one more step and claim that anxiety is a result of depression, and vice versa, forming a closed loop. So, if you had a full panic attack, otherwise known as a cheerful person, you were in a super-depression that you somehow managed to hide even from yourself. The attack was your enormously powerful, and let me describe it beautiful, response to your awesome depression.
Each step, which corresponds to a mistake that we will eliminate, involves one, and only one, paradox. This is a very well-established logic, which you have constructed brick by brick in years - congratulations. Each paradox can be interpreted as and translated into an infinite loop that represents a sequence of reasoning. This is what you regularly practice (I am sure, more than you do in other activities, like sports) subconsciously and what make you stay in depression for sure. And, astonishingly, there is always one or two weak links in the loop. Since my Aha! moment, these weak links have revealed themselves one by one before me.
Now, if you are ready, here is the paradox for this part: You are in depression, because you do not allow yourself to have depressive feelings, rejecting the idea that the world itself is a depressing place.
Disappointed? I already said that the steps will be straightforward, and you are now given the very first paradox, which already seems to explain itself. What now? Perhaps, as your problems are too complicated, their solutions should be complicated too. But no. As you read the sentence, your beautiful subconscious mind has started to deal with the idea, and its first and most natural response is rejecting or, at least, not readily accepting it, as the paradox is too simple to tolerate at the first glance. Stay calm and be patient.
The infinite loop related to the paradox above can be given as a list of items. This is an infinite loop, so it does not matter where you start.
1. You are in depression.
2. You look at the world with depression glasses.
3. You reject the fact that the world has depressive components.
4. You consolidate the idea that you are the one who sees the world deformed.
5. You try to change yourself but gain more depressive thoughts.
6. You strengthen your depression.
7. So, you are in depression.
But, isn’t depressive nature of the world described to you continuously by others? Aren’t those messages reaching to you full of sadness? On the contrary, you are literally bombarded by the media, as well as fictional, nonfictional, and even scientific books, to believe otherwise. As a great addict of feature films, having a greater confidence in their content, I find only a few movies that do not share the main stream of the ultimate plot depicting the beautiful world. Even in a very depressing movie that you can barely tolerate, the main idea is that the person who suffers is supposed to suffer, since either s/he does not realize the beauty of the world or her/his actions bring the suffering, as it should be. According to them, the world, if you look carefully, is full of miracles; then, it is your stupidity and ignorance that makes you think otherwise. Consequently, even though they should simply bring fun, both the saddest and the happiest moments in the movies and news, not to mention social media, strengthen the depression of the intelligent.
Unfortunately, the situation is the same in the popular practice of psychology. There is no clear cut between formal applications of the science and self-improvement sources; so, it is blurred who says what. But, experienced sufferers will recognize, so called positive thinking, imposed on themselves either formally via real-time practices or informally as dull advises. At some point in her/his journey, the intelligent might find herself/himself writing and listing positive things and trying to appreciate them, as their advisors to do so. The whole CBT is constructed over this idea; by actively practicing, you may change your view and become a cheerful and healthy person - this is the mind power. Does it work?
I will not blame the whole CBT, which is seen as one of the greatest developments in the recent psychology. I also think it should work sufficiently for the non-intelligent (to be careful, I will refer to my Introduction part for the definition of the intelligent), who have never discovered multi-dimensionality of the self. For them, trying to think positive can really be a reinforcement that provides an accumulation of joy and happiness. For the intelligent, however, it is a full-time punishment. First, as the intelligent collects positive components, s/he creates another personality, initially like a bud of a hydra, attached to the self, since there is no space to internalize the positive thoughts. S/he then carries this person with herself/himself, often checking what this little self, who is full of happiness, would react to events and situations. The intelligent even finds some of these new thoughts interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately, following a temporary relief, the little self becomes more and more strange – an alien at some point, when the intelligent finds it unbearable and cuts it off.
At this point, we approach to the description (but not inscription) of what to do, which is based on the acceptance of the world’s depressive components. But, I must clearly distinguish this acceptance from other forms. Some experienced sufferers may remember that they have already practiced various types of acceptances and ended with no solid result. These acceptances might again be triggered by professional advisors, who consumed all means to cure you and desperately needed the B plan: “accept your depression”, “accept that you are depressed”, and even “love your depression”. Why should I love something that I suffer from?
The idea there, explained to you or not, is to establish your integration to move forward. However, the ill-construction of what to accept puts the intelligent in a more difficult situation. If you practiced, remember what you accepted. It was, more or less, your very own situation that you were depressed since you were depressive. I find this very paradoxical and dangerous for the intelligent. If your deformed view was the source of the problem, then how accepting would make it go away? Specifically, forcing the intelligent to love her/his deformed view of the world creates a closed loop, as the intelligent will see the forced love itself as a deformed action such that it will never de-deform (or simply form) the deformed. All these practices come from very poor attempts of the Gestalt therapy, on which my own view is in fact based. You should really accept something if you wish to recover, but it is not your depression; it is the fact that the world has depressive components and you are supposed to feel depressed more than others when interacting with them, while, at the same time, you do not have to maintain a constant suffering of depression. From this perspective, vague statements like, “world is full of good and bad”, are equally useless; you must identify what is depressing so that you can enjoy the depressive feeling as well as non-depressing ones.
But, why the world has depressive components to create all these issues? This is the boundary of my writing, as it represents a fundamental question of philosophy. You can safely assume that there is no answer; indeed, there is no need for an answer. Religions attempt to provide answers within their own consistencies, as they fell that they must do. The issue often arises when elaborating a depressive component, something potentially bad, like killing, dying, and destroying, or simply a bad luck of a spilling coffee on the laptop, in conjunction with the control of the God or Gods. Some religions, like schools of Buddhism, are more on the safe side, describing a whole life as a suffering period before afterlife gifts if you are good enough to break the recycling of reincarnation. Or, some attribute other meanings to such depressive components; everything is created by the God, so they should have inherent properties and reasons beyond your understanding. Of course, all, at least most, religions are constructed on perfectly consistent rules and axioms, and there is no meaning to test untestable ideas or question any belief. The main point we should extract from this position is that the nature of the depressive components of the world is out of the scope of your recovery. You practically have no control on them - you in fact have no ability to be depressed by the things that you can control - and this a part of the acceptance. Supporting your acceptance with your beliefs, whatever they are, makes your story unique.
If the world has well-defined depressive components, why the intelligent reaches a depression but many others do not? Or why the depression of the intelligent becomes more complicated and persistent to be cured via common approaches? Well; this property is included in the package that defines you, that makes you the intelligent. Knowingly or unknowingly, but often with great awareness, when the intelligent faces the depressive components, as everybody does, s/he makes them more meaningful by connecting nodes to each other and building solid networks. This is a perfect road to the depression and anxiety, arrived earlier or later, at some point until the network fills the whole mind. So, from one perspective, you - the intelligent - is blissed and simultaneously cursed; you realize the ugly sides of the world so much and in ultimate clarity that other thoughts become less and less pronounced until you are really paralyzed.
On the other side, you - the intelligent - should not see yourself as a victim of an unknown or uncontrollable process. With ironically great support of others, it was you, who constructed the network leading to the paradox. And, it is now your responsibility to break the infinite loop. Yet, this will not by practicing positive thinking or loving your depression. It is neither rejecting nor accepting of your depressive status. It will be very much being yourself, perhaps more than you have been before. Before reconsidering the loop, always remember that the world is depressive but not the life.
Now, take a look at the infinite loop that we wish to break. Perhaps you have noticed, the weakest step is the third one; you reject the fact that the world has depressive components although it has many. So how to break it, if you have practiced this loop for many years? This is a critical part of my writing. Be prepared.
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You will do absolutely nothing. This is where the paradox of change comes into play. You already read this writing. Absorb the idea and live with it. Never try to change yourself that will create smaller copies and buds; your self will find the self of you without needing your own parasitic efforts that may potentially disturb yourself.
Yet, people that I spoke to often keep asking for something to do. Some solid action, as we are customized to do in daily works. I understand this; particularly since experienced sufferers have been exposed to the idea that it must be a difficult process to recover; so difficult that one may even need a physical effort. For the cure I promise, there is absolutely nothing to do other than living with the idea. But, perhaps if you wish to accelerate your enlightenment, you can try the following activities: walking, making art, listening to music, reading, and meditating in any form you wish, without needing to be good in any of these. No need to mention, but many experts also suggest these activities and explain their benefits in various complex ways, including generation of neurotransmitters, etc.
But, I will suggest them, particularly since they are the activities when your conscious and unconscious minds come together and freely talk to each other.
Perhaps they also enjoy some coffee.