10 Ways to Treat Depression Without Antidepressants Sarah Landrum, ContributorWaking Times You’ve probably been told that antidepressants correct the chemical imbalance in your brain. As it turns out, that’s not quite true. In fact, antidepressants might be doing you more harm than good. Even if antidepressants do work, the fact remains that they’re insanely expensive. It’s better to view antidepressants as a last resort, and try some – or all – of these alternative treatments first. 1. When you’re depressed, negative thoughts pour into your mind like water from a broken dam. Nothing – except meditation. “In the group work that I’ve done with sufferers of anxiety or depression, I’ve found (mindfulness meditation) very beneficial because it calms the mind,” says psychologist Katie Sparks. 2. Then again, maybe being an almost-Buddhist isn’t your thing. In that case, try exposing yourself to funny TV shows/movies/books/what-have-yous. 3. Depression is a manipulative and malicious little monster. Don’t listen to it. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 1. 2.
Trigger Positive Emotions People who see the glass half-full are certainly happier than the pessimists of the world, and learning to think positively is worthwhile. However, changing the way you think can be surprisingly tricky, especially when the going gets tough. What if there were a way—a shortcut or hack—that positively affected how you feel when you just can’t seem to shake the blues? A few years ago, I came across a simple idea that has been validated in hundreds of experiments and has given rise to quick and effective exercises that can help you feel happier, avoid anxiety, increase your willpower, deepen relationships and boost confidence. Perhaps most surprising of all, it does not involve trying to change how you think. The idea dates back to the turn of the 20th century and to the work of Victorian philosopher William James. According to James’s theory, forcing your face into a smile should make you feel happy, and frowning should make you feel sad. Here are 10 positive-action exercises to try: 1. 2.
Yoga and Meditation Protect Cancer Survivors at Cellular Level Meditation and yoga are renowned for their ability to help cancer survivors alleviate mental and emotional distress. But now a significant new study has revealed that their benefits go even further into the cellular level: the findings show that yoga, meditation and social support protect the health of breast cancer survivors by helping to maintain telomere length. Telomeres are protective caps of DNA found at the ends of a chromosome. Since they keep the ends of the chromosome from fraying and deteriorating, they are often compared to a plastic tip on a shoelace. For the study, published in the journal Cancer, Alberta researchers discovered that telomere length was strongly preserved in breast cancer survivors who practice meditation and yoga or who participated in social support groups. “It’s important for people dealing with difficult emotions to find a way of processing them in a healthy way. The results are startling.
The Search for Basic Emotions Table of Contents Before reading this you might want to explore your own emotions. One way to help a person do this is to study this web page: Understand, Identify Release Your Emotions. In a very simple way the left brain is very logical and linear and is always trying to figure out how the right brain sees the big picture and has more insight into emotions. Later in this web page, I describe seven basic emotions that seem to cover all the many presented on this web page. Language Confusing Before we start, a word of warning. Emotions have all sorts of words used to describe them. If we are to investigate emotions we have to include the observer. Emotions and feelings stem from two great sources, namely the body (sickness, tired, etc) and other people (love, hate, anger, etc). The Plutchik Model of Emotions Before we continue, it would be best to consider Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. There are other lists of emotions, some of which are listed below. Hunter B. 1.
How to Free Yourself From Repressed Emotions Ryan Brown, ContributorWaking Times A common way in which we deal with unpleasant emotions is to suppress or ignore them. These are normal coping mechanisms our minds uses to handle situations we don’t particularly want to deal with in the present moment. When strong emotions come into our consciousness, there is often something inside of us which says, “This is going to ruin my happiness right now and I don’t like that, so I’ll just deal with it later.” The problem with this approach is that ‘later’ never comes and these emotions get pushed further down, out of our conscious awareness. It is a basic law of the universe that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. This ‘dust’ is actually emotional energy that resonates with the repressed emotion. This internal pressure of repressed emotions is what many of us are afraid to look at. When an emotional trauma occurs, there is the choice to either deal with it effectively or to turn away from it. The Good News
15 Things That Emotionally Strong People Don't Do There is a particular aspect of mental strength that is the deciding factor of whether or not you will have a good life. There are many levels to mental strength and all are needed to be successful and happy. The one particular area of mental strength that has the greatest impact is that of emotional strength. Emotions are, of course, a part of our psyche, yet nevertheless, can be distinguished from the remainder of mental qualities because they most directly influence our physical body. They affect the way our body functions and they drive every single one of our actions. Without emotion, we would have no reason to act, to do anything with ourselves. Emotions are our greatest motivators. 1. Needing attention is directly linked to emotion. 2. Emotional strength requires resilience. 3. If you’re holding a grudge, then you already care more about a situation than you should. 4. Emotionally strong individuals do what they do because they love doing it. 5. 6. People are mean. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Can Ayahuasca Cure PTSD? April M. Short, Reset.meWaking Times Donald “Donnie” Bumanglag spoke with Reset just months after sipping the psychedelic, sacred, traditional healing brew ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon. Unlike many of his fellow participants in the week long retreat program, Donnie is a 33-year-old veteran military combat medic and father of four. And, like many veterans, he was on the verge of suicide due to severe PTSD symptoms prior to his visit to the jungle (22 veterans take their own lives in the U.S. each day according to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs). For years, Donnie’s life felt like a trap he couldn’t escape. He grappled with the duality of “not just being the guy that was there to kill everybody, but also being the guy that was there to help people.” “It became very convoluted many, many times,” he said. Today, thanks in great part to stumbling upon a TED Talk about ayahuasca, he is living symptom-free and full of a hopefulness that seeps out in his voice when he speaks. War
Recognize these emotions The Passion and Reason 15 The book Passion and Reason provides clear definitions and descriptions of 15 separate emotions. These are: Anger — Conspecific threat, trespass, loss attributed to an agent, unjust insult, thwarted goals, plea for justice Envy — Desiring other's stature objects Jealousy — Threat to sexual access. The Rationalized 22 The book The Cognitive Structure of Emotions describes these 22 distinct emotions in an organized structure: Appraisal of an event: Joy — (contented, cheerful, delighted, ecstatic, elated, euphoric, feeling good, glad, happy, joyful, jubilant, pleasantly surprised, pleased) — Pleased by the appraisal of an event Distress — (depressed, distressed, displeased, dissatisfied, distraught, feeling bad, feeling uncomfortable, grief, homesick, lonely, lovesick, miserable, regret, sad, shock, uneasy, unhappy, upset) — displeased by the appraisal of an event Fortune of others: Appraisal of an agent's action: Appraisal of an Object: Compound Emotions: And Also:
11 Ways Our Society Treats Us Like Caged Rats: Do Our Addictions Stem from that Trapped Feeling? Charles Eisenstein, The FixWaking Times Instead of a moral failing or physiological malfunction, is addiction an adaptive response to circumstances? You’ve probably heard about those addiction studies with caged lab rats, in which the rats compulsively press the heroin dispensing lever again and again, even to the point of choosing it over food and starving themselves to death. These studies seemed to imply some pretty disheartening things about human nature. The rat addiction studies also seem to validate the main features of the War on Drugs. The implication is that drug addiction is not a moral failing or physiological malfunction, but an adaptive response to circumstances. Are we like rats in cages? Here are some ways to put a human being in a cage: —Remove as much as possible all opportunities for meaningful self-expression and service. —Cut people off from nature and from place. —Move life – especially children’s lives – indoors. The cages suffer no easy escape.
List of Emotions - Human Emotional Chart This list of human emotions plots the descending spiral of life from full vitality of the energy of life and high consciousness through half-vitality and half-consciousness down to death. This list of emotions chart also enables to both predict and understand human behavior in all manifestations, making possible to predict the behavior of a potential spouse, a business partner, employee or friend - before you commit to a relationship. Numbers assigned to this list of emotions chart are arbitrary to show a relative degree or intensity of perceived emotion of happiness in accordance to available creative power or life's energy to the individual. Happiness encompasses a whole range of emotions from certain energy frequency level (4.0 enthusiasm level in our chart below) and up. - What we call the Happiness Domain. Neuroscientist Richard J. Human Emotions Frequency Scale Of course, there are no "holes" in the emotional scale. The Law of Attraction Emotional Energy - Visible Light Energy
My Mantis ET Encounter Part 3 - SOULSALIGHT | SOULSALIGHT My Mantis ET Encounter Part Three: Mantis Name Revealed By Luther Birdmaker, Soulsalight Member If you are living in a dream state, Your identity is fixed for specific reasons And questioning that identity has no purpose Since to play that game - to fulfill; that story - Just is to follow those rules, adopt that identity. But to a being who is awakening, No question is more exciting than, Who am I? Read My Mantis ET Encounter Part 1 & Part 2 By the time the next medicine circle rolled around again in late spring of 2014, I felt ready for it even though I always feel nervous going in. The first appearance of the mantis had corresponded to my kundalini awakening experience six months earlier, when I had come to understand that this being was helping to facilitate this process. I began to feel the most exquisite forces even in my daily life, without the help of powerful plant medicines. On the third day, alone and broken open by the medicine, I went even deeper.
Human Emotions Chart - Free, Comprehensive Chart Of Emotions New Research Reveals the Real Causes of Depression Dr. MercolaWaking Times Depression is thought to affect about one in 10 Americans.1 In 2010, antidepressants were the second most commonly prescribed type of medication in the US,2 hinting at the severity of the problem. Contrary to popular belief, depression is not likely caused by unbalanced brain chemicals; however there are a number of other biological factors that appear to be highly significant. Chronic inflammation is one. As noted in the featured article:3 “George Slavich, a clinical psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent years studying depression, and has come to the conclusion that it has as much to do with the body as the mind. Scientists have also found that your mental health can be adversely impacted by factors such as vitamin D deficiency and/or unbalanced gut flora—both of which, incidentally, play a role in keeping inflammation in check, which is really what the remedy to depression is all about. Inflammation and Depression Dr.
Real talk: I've suffered from depression. Have you? This can help. Ready for some reality? In a place where the “pursuit of happiness” is one of our most inalienable rights, it often feels out of reach to me. This past winter, I had an entire month where I didn't want to do anything. I blamed it on "needing a break," but now that the sun's been out more I've realized the truth. I was depressed. (You may have noticed the lack of emails from me.) More specifically, I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder. At the time, I didn't want to admit anything was wrong with me. In truth, it was my body craving some rather basic nutrients -- primarily vitamin D. I know I'm not alone. The statistics are both alarming and heartbreaking… Depression in its myriad forms has swiftly become the leading cause of disability worldwide. In the United States alone, 1 in 4 adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. But not all is well with our pharmacological approach to mood disorders. Granted, when appropriate, prescription drugs have their place in medicine.