Can depression be reversed by doing the opposite of what initially might have caused it?

In this short video, I would like to explore depression, with a particular focus on bipolar depression, and discuss actions we might take for ourselves beyond medication, regardless of any genetic or chemical predisposition to depression we may experience.

A more common-sense way of stating this might be: “What can I do for myself (beyond medication) to retrain my brain’s thoughts and my body’s emotions towards better responses that I might consciously desire to have, rather than what my sub-conscious mind and body currently give me?”

I do wish to emphasise this information is based on my personal experience, and is NOT intended to provide medical or psychological advice — just some common-sense new perspectives.

This information is for (potentially) high-functioning individuals who experience periods of emotional exhaustion and depression and get stuck in debilitating negative thought patterns despite knowing they are capable and intelligent, and who are open-minded and prepared to try new techniques to test if they work, rather than shooting down new ideas without even trying!

I’ve discovered that, although challenging, it is possible to influence your brain to think differently, your body to release more agreeable chemicals, and for it to become more energised. It’s clear to me that our bodies function like a complex chemistry set, and because we have the ability to learn how to influence it more effectively, it would be unwise not to do so.

And what mainly stops us from making substantial changes to our lives are usually self-limiting beliefs, fear, and low self-esteem — all of which are learned traits from our childhood domestication and can be unlearned to some positive degree.

So, if you are interested, I’d like to (simplistically) share my theories about depression and bipolar depression based on my recovery from both.

The condition we call depression develops after prolonged periods of stress, illness, frustration, excessive worry, working too hard, poor sleep, putting up with things you don’t agree with, loss, grief, boredom, or not living the life you might desire.

And bipolar is a subset of depression seen in some personalities, characterised by extreme shifts in mood, energy, and activity levels, swinging from intense lows to manic highs.

In my work over the last two decades, I’ve observed a potential correlation between bipolar depression and individuals whose creative, extroverted, and non-conformist tendencies were suppressed in childhood and who currently lack an appropriate creative outlet for their powerful imagination and uniqueness of character.

These days, during childhood, we might have labelled those individuals as having ADHD or ADD, but years ago they might have been labelled as extroverted, disruptive or challenging. I believe that many adults who were like this as children were forced to suppress their spontaneous reactions and unique independence in order to fit in and avoid being reprimanded. Therefore, they may have an inner conflict between who they feel they should be and who they think they should be.

This can cause a lot of confusion, doubt, and emotional exhaustion.

Another way of metaphorically looking at this is to imagine we humans have a six-month buffer of emotional energy (like an emotional battery inside of us) providing us with enough energy and resilience to respond to (and get through) life’s transient challenges.

Then, as we resolve those challenges or remove ourselves from those people, jobs, or environmental conditions that caused us excessive worry and discomfort, that emotional battery slowly recharges, ready for our next set of life experiences and challenges.

I often ask my clients, “What happened to you in the six to eight months before your depression started?”

Usually, they can give me an emotionally draining life event that preceded their depression, even if it was ten years ago, yet might still be in their thoughts.

So, perhaps, depression is our natural biological state when we become exhausted and are not engaging with life in ways that suit our true personality and allow for our basic animal needs of love, connection, meaning, security and creativity to largely be met. Very few people who are living in these ways have depression except if they are working too hard, therefore exhausting themselves biologically.

Can you see that when depression is observed from a more nature-based, biological and animal perspective, it makes some sense?

In more confident individuals, if their work, relationships or living environment are making them unhappy and exhausted, thus beginning to affect their emotional wellness, they quickly act and take responsibility for changing those conditions into more favourable outcomes, which lessens stress and thus allows them to emotionally recharge back to wellness.

Other individuals who were raised to prioritise being kind, avoid letting others down, and to not put their own needs first might find making career changes, leaving unhealthy relationships, or asserting themselves to pursue their desires quite challenging, thus “put up with” this discomfort, further distressing their inner chemistry and developing even more emotional exhaustion and developing negative thinking loops.

Although not covered in this video, it’s important to understand that prolonged periods of depression cause our cells to develop more receptors for stress chemicals and fewer ones for happy ones, thus skewing our ability to feel nice emotions, even when good things happen.

Once this is understood, it is important to recognise that it takes four to six months to reverse this cellular configuration using epigenetic techniques and the adoption of more positive and optimistic belief systems to trick our body into releasing happy (rather than fearful) chemicals. This is discussed in video seven of my course and is one of the most effective ways to reverse depression.

Now, if we jump back to emotional exhaustion, when our emotional battery becomes flat, or if we are unable to resolve, escape, or accept what caused our emotional agitation in the first place, the subconscious part of our brain may be forced to sabotage the more intelligent thinking aspect of our brain away from its logical and reasoning type thinking and into an unconscious automated and simplistic (life preservation) safety mode.

This subconscious “closing down and retreating from life” may unconsciously sabotage work, relationships, mental health or whatever story will scare your conscious mind into causing you to doubt and immobilise yourself to conserve energy.

Of course, all your unconscious brain (and body) want is for you to stop worrying, fix your life and recharge your batteries, but this message is often consciously misconstrued as “What’s wrong with me?”

This natural conservation of energy can be noticed when the depressed person experiences a good event: the body doesn’t give them the expected nice emotional sensations.

It’s the same when things don’t go well.

You might say that good experiences don’t feel good and bad ones don’t feel bad either, and we might call this numb, apathetic, indecisive and emotionally exhausted state depression.

Now, for the group of humans which we might call “normal” (assuming they possess effective life skills), if they can rectify the consequences that caused them to emotionally deteriorate into the animal safety mode, they will slowly come back online over a four to six-month period.

At this point, their emotions begin to function normally again. Good things begin to feel good again, so they do more of them, and bad things feel bad, so they either change the bad things, accept them, or move away from them.

The truth is that we humans are emotional beings who have learned to think.

However, depression causes us to become thinking beings attempting to control our emotions, which is backwards and leaves us indecisive.

Any good salesperson will tell you that humans make decisions with their emotions and justify with logic and reason, but this only works if your emotional battery is charged!

Now, for the group of more repressed extroverted characters that I am alluding to (with the set of symptoms the medical world labels as bipolar depression), the underlying battery pattern still plays out, though it manifests in a slightly different manner.

These more creative, extroverted, and spontaneous individuals are that way because their brains and bodies respond very immediately to external stimuli or their internal creative imagination.

You might say they are biologically (and emotionally) very responsive. Often, alcohol, medications, or recreational drugs affect them much more than in a normal person, and because of this, their sensitivity to hangovers (or come-downs) is often more considerable, too. Also, due to their very creative imaginations, they are able to catastrophise (or excite) themselves to the nth degree, thus exhausting themselves even further and slowing their recovery back to emotional health.

Now, here’s the point I need you to understand: whereas in normal people it takes four to six months to recharge and emotionally come back online, in those more extroverted, imaginative and sensitive individuals, their biology begins to respond to this energetic recharge after just a few weeks.

They come online again and swing from a depressed state to a more positive one and immediately respond to this new energetic state by diving straight back into life, going out, socialising and taking action.

This quickly uses up what little energy they have in store, thus flipping them back into a depressive state and thus yo-yoing between the bipolar states of depression and expression.

Once the person can acknowledge this is what’s happening, they must recognise that they too need four to six months to recharge their emotional battery. Even though they feel better quite quickly, they should try to moderate their use of energy during this phase.

If they do use up this energy quickly, it seems to me that their unconscious brain tries to sabotage them to pull back from life by introducing manic Pure OCD-type scary thoughts and ruminations, which is an expression of their rich imagination.

Finally, this group with bipolar very often know what they need to do but fail to take action, even if they are not feeling depressed. This behaviour is more aligned with their ADD brain configuration, so they will need strategies put in place to make them more accountable.

So, if this information resonates with you, it would be my advice that for the first group with depression, you work on self-esteem, defining intentions for your life, addressing the things that need to be changed in your life, recharging your battery by learning how to worry less and epigenetically restructuring your inner chemistry and cell configurations.

In the second group with bipolar depression, it would be my advice to recharge more slowly, so as you feel a little better, you conserve that energy and use it wisely to get your life in order, tidy up your life and orientate your attention into more creative endeavours rather than wasting it socialising, playing computer games or distracting yourself with hedonistic pleasures.

Of course, both parties will need to reprogram themselves from the starting point of despair, exhaustion and fear. However, if not now, then when?

There is much we can do to affect our emotional states. However, they all begin by recharging our emotional batteries for four to six months, then everything begins to change!

It’s just how biology operates. Sadly, we are not told this, and the world we are forced to live in is not the one we were biologically designed for, so we need common sense strategies to compensate for this.

If you’d like to learn how I ended my depression, my Calmness in Mind Course takes you step by step through the process.

Perhaps take a look…