Stop depression 90 percent or more.....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 1-31-2017

The drugs now given for depression don't work or barely work; they are as addictive as hard drugs; and they have recently found to help cause Alzheimer's disease.  Most doctors still know little else to try.  Some even think these drugs work; but they don’t.

But depression is a hardware and software problem of the brain.  

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software; 

2. We now know how to fix the hardware;

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

b) We know things that repair or replace nerves and brain cells and their connections. Successful talk therapy changes the part of the brain used and has this effect!  And, when people do the things that grow new brain cells enough to show on a brain scan, most cases of depression and many cases of PTSD ALSO show dramatic improvement

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

So, most people get harmed by treatment when at the same time, we do know safe and effective ways that cure depression for over 90% of the people who use all the parts." 

This post and very likely the post next Tuesday and even the one after that have the details.

In his book, "The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs," author Stephen Ilardi PhD found that over 75%^ of the people who were depressed who followed each of those 6 steps properly were able to stop their depression.

Because the parts here ensure you do his steps well and turn off the causes of the remaining 25%, doing each of them we believe can stop over 90 percent of depression and even approach 100%.

That said, here’s the first one:

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software in your brain to lift depression.

Martin Seligman, PhD found that if you see bad things as permanent and out of your control and you see good things as rare and unlikely to last, you will reliably be depressed.  Worse the more often you think this, the worse your depression gets.

The first cure for this is to combine the skills of a defense lawyer with the logic of Star Trek’s Spock.

“This ruins everything and it will be permanent.”  “Really.  What about the things in your life that are still going well?  Is this actually happening or just something that might happen?  Have you actually checked?!  If it did happen what caused it this time?  Did that happen before?  Will it happen in the future?  What evidence do you have that shows this?  Have you checked?

If it is happening and is harmful, have you looked for ways to turn it off or minimize the damage?

It also helps if you catch yourself thinking these inaccurate thoughts and feeling bad to force yourself to stop doing it.  Mentally yelling STOP! – has helped people.  The other way to stop this is to go into aggressive trial lawyer mode and attack it!  “Wait a minute!  Is this something that already happened or is it something that might happen?  Have you checked if it actually is happening yet?  If it is happening, is this temporary and the cause has already stopped? 

Most people survive most problems even if they are nasty.  They usually minimize the damage and go on to make repairs or do something else that does work out.

Have you reminded yourself of this?  It makes dealing with the real problems far less scary.

Educated and logical people often have these skills or find them learnable.

This skill is literally forcing yourself to pay attention to what is actually happening and not happening. 

It makes your model of reality much more accurate.

[End of part I.  Part two resumes next Tuesday with the second, very different skill Dr Seligman found that stops depression.]