…” rather than to constantly try to meditate them away or release them in the zen fashion that I would like. At this point, I’m better off imagining them as physical symptoms of an illness and say, “Here they are again. He reminded me that when they reach a certain intensity - when they are making me hyperventilate over the phone to a friend as I was doing, or they totally disable me - mindfulness doesn’t work. One of my friends recently yelled at me over the phone, “THEY ARE NOT YOUR FAULT!!” when I told him that all the mindfulness exercises I had been doing were making me feel even worse - as though I were creating the ruminations by not being able to let go or detach in the right way. Yet I feel totally at fault for my stuck thoughts, as if they are a weakness of my character, which further pushes me down the rabbit hole of despair. If my fever spiked or I developed a bad case of hiccups, I wouldn’t berate myself for those symptoms. Ruminations are symptoms of depression just as nausea or fatigue are symptoms of the flu. But just asking myself the first question, “Is this true?”, can sometimes forge a little distance between the rumination and my symptoms of anxiety or be a reminder that I’m caught in a story that isn’t accurate. As I mentioned in my other piece, sometimes it’s better not to analyze the thought. If my ruminations are severe, this strategy doesn’t always work. If you said, “I am a failure,” your turnaround might be, “I am a success.” And you find three genuine, specific examples of how the turnaround is true in your life. You rewrite your statement as the opposite. How do I react when I think that thought?.You’re living in a story that isn’t true for you.'” In her book, she explains what she calls The Work, a way of inquiring or investigating your thought with four simple questions: “Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, ‘Sweetheart, take a look at what you’re thinking right now. “I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn’t caused by attaching to an untrue thought,” writes Katie. I try to trust them because I know I can’t trust my own brain. I have a journal filled with the reasonable logic of my friends, and sometimes (not always) accessing their truth calms me down as if I’m talking to them again. When I'm on the phone with them, I write down everything they say like a newspaper reporter, because I will need that information handy for when the thoughts come - and I can’t afford to bother them again. They remind me of why I made certain decisions, why they were the right ones, and why that decision has absolutely nothing to do with the panic that is raging through my body. I get hooked on one thought and use it to beat myself to the ground until I feel absolutely worthless. They know it’s what I do when I get depressed. Fortunately, I have a handful of friends who know the insanity of ruminations and have walked with me through this in the past. You need to rely on other brains to help you sort out the stuck thought and tease it apart until you arrive at the truth. You can’t rely on your logic or any of the content that's streaming through your neurons, because it's all inaccurate. You have to fully admit that - it's the first step of most 12-step programs. In the state of severe ruminations, your brain is toast. But since I’ve been imprisoned by this insanity as of late, I thought I’d share more of them with you that have helped me escape, if only for a few minutes, to a place of peace. In my post 9 Ways to Let Go of Stuck Thoughts, I offer some tools to deal with obsessions. More than any other symptom of my depression - more so even than unrestrained tears and bawling my eyes out in public - the stuck thoughts make me feel truly insane, scared to be living inside my body and mind. One seemingly benign thought - often a rumination about a decision I have made in the past, a regret of one form or another, or sometimes something that makes no sense at all - is packed with panic and plays over and over again in my mind, keeping me awake at night and besieging me with anxiety during the day. Sometimes they can outright debilitate me. “It can be just as frightening when you’re lost inside the mind’s chaos.” I can usually gauge the severity of my depression based on the intensity and frequency of my stuck thoughts. “When a child gets lost, he may feel sheer terror,” explains Byron Katie in her bestseller Loving What Is. They are the curse of depression - among the most excruciating symptoms, in my opinion.
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