The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

by J. Mark G. Williams

It turns out that every time a person gets depressed, the connections in the brain between mood, thoughts, the body, and behavior get stronger, making it easier for depression to be triggered again.

The practice of mindfulness can prevent the normal unhappiness we all experience from spiraling down into depression.

One of the most critical facts we learned was that there is a difference between those of us who have experienced an episode of depression and those who have not: depression forges a connection in the brain between sad mood and negative thoughts, so that even normal sadness can reawaken major negative thoughts.

Unhappiness itself is not the problem—it is an inherent and unavoidable part of being alive. Rather, it’s the harshly negative views of ourselves that can be switched on by unhappy moods that entangle us. It is these views that transform passing sadness into persistent unhappiness and depression. Once these harsh, negative views of ourselves are activated, not only do they affect our mind, they also have profound effects on our body—and then the body in turn has profound effects on the mind and emotions.

If the changes in the body wind up activating old themes of how inadequate and worthless we are, then even minor and temporary changes in the body can make our low mood deepen and persist.

When a negative thought or image arises in the mind, there will be a sense of contraction, tightening, or bracing in the body somewhere. It may be a frown, a stomach churning, a pallor in the skin, or a tension in the lower back—all part of a preparation to freeze, fight, or run.

Once the body reacts in this way to negative thoughts and images, it feeds back to the mind the information that we are threatened or upset.

Our reactions to unhappiness can transform what might otherwise be a brief, passing sadness into persistent dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

The problem is not the sadness itself, but how our minds react to the sadness.

None of us can run fast enough to escape our own inner experience. Nor can we eliminate unpleasant, oppressive, and threatening thoughts and feelings by fighting with them and trying to annihilate them.

When we react to our own negative thoughts and feelings with aversion, the brain circuitry involved in physical avoidance, submission, or defensive attack (the “avoidance system” of the brain) is activated. Once this mechanism is switched on, the body tenses as if it were either getting ready to run or bracing itself for an assault. We can also sense the effects of aversion in our minds.

When we are preoccupied, dwelling on how to get rid of our feelings of sadness or disconnection, our whole experience is one of contraction. The mind, driven to focus on the compelling yet futile task of getting rid of these feelings, closes ...

When we react negatively—with aversion—to our own negative emotions, treating them as enemies to be overcome, eradicated, and defeated, we get into trouble.

into that particular stretch of water. When we return to that mood, thoughts and memories related to whatever was going on in our mind or world to make us unhappy will come back quite automatically, whether we want it to happen or not.

But what if our previous moods of unhappiness or depression were evoked by situations that somehow led to our thinking and feeling that we were not good enough, that we were worthless, or frauds? What if in childhood or adolescence, at a time when we did not have the life skills we now have, we experienced overwhelming feelings of being abandoned, abused, lonely, or just plain no good? Sadly, we now know that many people who become depressed as adults have had such experiences. If for us they were a significant part of childhood, the thinking patterns that made us depressed then, the sense that we are not good enough in some way, are highly likely to be reactivated in the present by even a passing feeling of depression.

This is why we can react so negatively to unhappiness: our experience is not one simply of sadness, but is colored powerfully by reawakened feelings of deficiency or inadequacy. What may make these reactivated thinking patterns most damaging is that we often don’t realize they are memories at all. We feel not good enough now without being aware that it is a thinking pattern from the past that is evoking the feeling.

This mode of careful analysis, problem solving, judgment, and comparison is aimed at closing the gap between the waythings are and the way we think they should be—at solving perceived problems.

Doing mode is mobilized because it usually works very well in helping us to achieve our goals in everyday situations and in solving work-related technical problems.

It is quite natural, then, that the same mental strategies should get recruited when we want to transform our interior world—to change ourselves so that we can attain happiness, for example, or get rid of unhappiness. Unfortunately, this is where things can start to go horribly wrong.

Let that thought sink in: I should be feeling happy. How do you feel now? If you feel worse, you’re not alone. Virtually everyone reports the same response. Why? Because, in the case of our moods, the very act of focusing on the gap, comparing how we are feeling with how we want to feel (or how we think we should feel) makes us feel unhappy, taking us even further away from how we want to be. Focusing on the gap in this way is actually a reflection of the mind’s habitual strategy for trying to sort out situations in which things aren’t as we want them to be.

The mind will naturally bring up (and then hold in consciousness) the relevant ideas it is working on—for instance, an idea of the kind of person I am right now (sad and lonely), an idea of the kind of person I want to be (peaceful and happy), and an idea of the kind of person I fear I might become if the sadness persists and I sink into depression (pathetic and weak). The doing mode then focuses on the mismatch between these ideas, the ways in which we are not the people we want to be.

Focusing on the mismatch between our idea of the people we want to be and our idea of the people we see ourselves as makes us feel worse than we did in the first place,

These patterns of feeling worthless or lonely feel familiar, but instead of seeing the feeling of familiarity as a sign that the mind is going down an old mental groove, we take the feeling of familiarity to mean that it must all be true. That’s why we can’t snap out of it, as our family and friends may have been urging. We cannot let go, because the doing mode of mind insists that our highest priority is to sort ourselves out by identifying and solving this “problem.”

Why, then, do we ruminate? Why, like Carole, do we continue to dwell on thoughts about our unhappiness when it just seems to make things worse? When researchers ask people who ruminate a lot why they do it, a simple answer emerges: They do it because they believe it will help them overcome their unhappiness and depression.

We ruminate when we feel low because we believe that it will reveal a way to solve our problems. But research shows that rumination does exactly the opposite: our ability to solve problems actually deteriorates markedly during rumination. All the evidence seems to point to the stark truth that rumination is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Stop trying to force life to be a certain way because we’re uncomfortable right now. We’ll be able to see that wanting things to be different from how they are right now is where rumination begins.

Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to things as they are.

First, mindfulness is intentional. When we are cultivating mindfulness, we can be more aware of present reality and the choices available to us.

Second, mindfulness is experiential, and it focuses directly on present-moment experience.

Third, mindfulness is non-judgmental. Its virtue is that it allows us to see things as they actually are in the present moment and to allow them to be as they already are.

The habit of judging ourselves severely disguises itself as an attempt to help us to live better lives and to be better people, but in actuality the habit of judging winds up functioning as an irrational tyrant that can never be satisfied.

Being mindful means intentionally turning off the autopilot mode in which we operate so much of the time– brooding about the past, for instance, or worrying about the future—and instead tuning in to things as they are in the present with full awareness. It means knowing that our thoughts are passing mental events, not reality itself, and that we are more in touch with life as it is when we allow ourselves to experience things through the body and our senses rather than mostly through our unexamined and habitual thoughts.

Eventually we may reach the point where every moment of sadness is no longer experienced as a whole life that’s going badly—but just as a moment that feels sad. This shift in and of itself will not necessarily make us feel better. But it may very well send us down a different path, one that doesn’t lead so inexorably to depression.

Ideas about our own self-worth are no more real than thoughts about an imaginary chair.

In being mode, we discover we can suspend evaluating our experience in terms of how it “should” be or “ought” to be, of whether it is “correct” or “incorrect,” of whether it is “good enough” or “not good enough,” or of whether we are “succeeding” or “failing,” even whether we are “feeling good” or “feeling bad.”

When we shift from the doing mode to the being mode, the attendant shift in our awareness can at a stroke cut through the source of much of the additional unhappiness we experience when we are “making extra” by becoming unhappy about our unhappiness, fearful of our fear, angry with our anger, or frustrated with the failure of our attempts to think our way out of our suffering.

But mindfulness is hardly passive resignation. It is a stance by which we intentionally welcome and turn toward whatever arises—including inner experiences that we’d normally fight or try to escape.

The quality of mindfulness is not a neutral or blank presence. True mindfulness is imbued with warmth, compassion, and interest. In the light of this engaged attention, we discover it is impossible to hate or fear anything or anyone we truly understand. The nature of mindfulness is engagement: where there is interest, a natural, unforced attention follows.

You cannot force the mind. And if you try to, you won’t like what comes of it.

To pay attention to the here and now, we need intention, not force.

As best you can, bring a quality of kindness to your awareness, perhaps seeing the repeated wanderings of the mind as opportunities to cultivate greater patience and acceptance within yourself and some compassion toward your experience.

Mindfulness meditation allows us to respond creatively to the present moment, freeing us from the knee-jerk reactions that start the cycle of rumination.

Each moment in which the mind takes off gives us one more opportunity to become more aware of when we are slipping (or have already slipped) out of the being mode and back into the doing mode. It allows us to become more aware of the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations that carry us away in those moments. Happily, such occasions happen so often that we will have countless opportunities to witness the seething pressure of the doing mind, perhaps perceiving it with greater clarity than ever before, uncomfortable as that may sometimes be. These occasions also provide us, crucially, with valuable opportunities to cultivate the skills of releasing ourselves from the doing mode and returning to the more mindful being mode.

this point, we may find ourselves judging our experience quite harshly because we may feel so frustrated or thwarted in our efforts. Why can’t I do this better? we may say to ourselves. In such moments, it helps if we can remember to bring a quality of kindness even to this awareness, seeing that these self-critical and judgmental thoughts and feelings are just more thoughts and feelings, like any others, just old and ingrained weather patterns in the mind and of no particular import or significance.

Being harsh with ourselves because we don’t like how it is is adding something extra and is unnecessary. Our judging, if not held in awareness in this way, may be exactly what is preventing us from seeing clearly in this moment and from being okay with things as they are.

gyrations of the judging mind are truly endless, and so off-base from simply accepting things as they are. We may even wind up thinking that experienced meditators never feel irritated, as we generate endless fantasies and idealizations about meditation.

Clarity and steadiness of the mind may follow as by-products of such awareness and from allowing things to be as they are, but if we take momentary calmness as a sign of how much progress we are making and momentary restlessness as a sign of lack of progress, we are merely sowing the seeds of further frustration and despair, for we are letting the doing mind compare our “achievement” with some desired “outcome.” As long as we are trying to get rid of unpleasant thoughts or feelings or trying to achieve peace of mind, we will continue to be frustrated.

Moment by moment, we can become aware of body sensations but now in a new way, a way that does not keep us so stuck obsessing in our thoughts about how we are feeling in the body.

Remind yourself as well that the idea here is to be aware of your experience as it is unfolding, however it is. It is not to change the way you are feeling or to become more relaxed or calmer. The intention of this practice is to bring awareness to any and all sensations you are able to be aware of (or lack of sensation) as you focus your attention systematically on each part of the body in turn.

It is the basis of a profound insight: when we stop trying to attain pleasant feelings, such feelings are more likely to emerge by themselves.