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  • AlanLa
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Psychiatrists are medical doctors, and thus typically not all that great with talk therapy. They can be great for psychotropic medication management, however. So, in tandem with a psychologist or licensed counselor would be my recommendation. And also exercise, which brings me to my next comment...

    True, medication and exercise do work wonders, and there is no substitute for them. But sometimes they may just be masking deeper issues that need resolving. As such, there is also no substitute for some good old fashioned talk therapy for the stuff that exercise and psychotropics can't reach.

    Leave a comment:


  • disastermouse
    Guest replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by Alberto
    With all due respect for therapists (which tend to have a statistically significant presence in zen gatherings), I can make a humble suggestion: start with a board certified psychiatrist, preferably one with recommendations. A good old Serotonin reuptake inhibitor (or some other modern pharmaceutical) and some exercise have no parallel in improving depression and anxiety associated to depression. Not an opinion: scientific fact. Another scientific fact is that antidepressants don't work for everyone, but the sad stories of one or two or ten persons do not contradict the fact that most people do benefit. Furthermore, if one medicine fails, a different one or a different dose of the same may help.

    Therapy may help, but it is not the first line of defense against depression. Again, my respects for the professionals that provide this line of treatment.

    Now, beyond the hard scientific facts, and with a lot of fear of sounding sentencious or zennish, let me point something you know
    I do feel this need to have a meaning for what I'm doing that transcends what I make up as I go along. Is this a displaced psychological need, or something "more"? Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.
    I point at your need for meaning and transcendence like I tell somebody : "Hey dude, you're smoking". Useless attempt to help from a nosy guy, but please consider that my intentions are the best.
    My experience with psychiatrists is vastly different. Misdiagnosis and attempts at medicating the problem were the order of the day. For Sidd's sake, it was OBVIOUS I was cutting myself (teenage years) and one of them STILL tried to diagnose me with a subset of Bipolar Disorder (cyclothymia, I believe). Kudos to the one P-doc (my ADHD specialist) who recommended me to a psychologist - but even then, she recommended me to a behavioral shrink. She (psychologist, not P-doc) made the Borderline diagnosis but didn't want to tell me about it (WTF??).

    Years later, it was an old-fashioned Jungian talker who helped the most. As a matter of fact, if you're in the LA area, I can't recommend him highly enough.

    In short, if you have childhood trauma, a psychiatrist will probably only help in tandem with a psychologist.

    Also, I probably don't have to say this, but Stephanie - keep your attitude of skepticism if you dip into the world of psychiatrists and psychologists. I've seen several (about 6) and exactly 3 have actually been helpful at all and only 1 (one) has been truly worthwhile. Them's pretty sketchy numbers.

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  • Aswini
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Shit! You guys are deep. Real too. (haha, with zen being the nature of reality and all that).

    A deep gassho to u all.

    Mettha.

    Aswini.

    Leave a comment:


  • Shindo
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Hi Stephanie - I am sorry to hear about your continued struggle.

    My two cents - I think Alberto's advice is sound. A psychiatrist will also check out to see if there are some other medical disorders which may becausing you dip in mood. A couple of years ago, just before I was diagnosed with cancer, I went through an extremely dark period in my life - I attribute that to my anaemia caused by the bleeding tumor (my heamaglobin was 7 on admission, and it should have been 14 - 16). So you might want a full blood work out just to rule out any other conditions

    Take care
    Jools

    ps - thanks for the advice you gave Stephanie Jundo - I also found it equally pertinent

    Leave a comment:


  • Alberto
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    With all due respect for therapists (which tend to have a statistically significant presence in zen gatherings), I can make a humble suggestion: start with a board certified psychiatrist, preferably one with recommendations. A good old Serotonin reuptake inhibitor (or some other modern pharmaceutical) and some exercise have no parallel in improving depression and anxiety associated to depression. Not an opinion: scientific fact. Another scientific fact is that antidepressants don't work for everyone, but the sad stories of one or two or ten persons do not contradict the fact that most people do benefit. Furthermore, if one medicine fails, a different one or a different dose of the same may help.

    Therapy may help, but it is not the first line of defense against depression. Again, my respects for the professionals that provide this line of treatment.

    Now, beyond the hard scientific facts, and with a lot of fear of sounding sentencious or zennish, let me point something you know
    I do feel this need to have a meaning for what I'm doing that transcends what I make up as I go along. Is this a displaced psychological need, or something "more"? Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.
    I point at your need for meaning and transcendence like I tell somebody : "Hey dude, you're smoking". Useless attempt to help from a nosy guy, but please consider that my intentions are the best.

    Leave a comment:


  • AlanLa
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Ditto what Jundo says, but let me emphasize that prescriptions alone are NOT the answer. What's going on with you MAY be chemical in your brain, but it is also Outside your brain. Let me emphasize that the best way to go is BOTH prescriptions (if an expert says to take some) and talk therapy. I repeat, DO NOT do drugs without talk. And by all means, find a therapist you can talk to honestly and completely. It's sort of like Jundo describes zazen, if that person don't feel right, then he/she ain't right. This is not to say it won't be uncomfortable, because it will be. That's part of the process. But it needs to be a person you can share that discomfort with.

    Good effort to you!!!

    Leave a comment:


  • Jundo
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by Stephanie
    Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.
    Steph,

    I can only speak as someone who had depression for many years in my teens and twenties ... don't put seeing the therapist off. Do it this week. Why wait? There are always a million reasons and excuses to not do so. And if it does have a chemical or other physical component, as your family history seems to point to, be open to some anti-depressants or the like if the doctor advices (make sure it is a therapist who also offers that option in addition to talk therapy and the like). Pharmaceuticals are over-prescribed in this country, but on the other hand, very often they are truly helpful.

    My depression lifted about 22 years ago. Same world, now seen in very different ways from the (it seemed at the time) hopeless, black hole I was in. Now its not rose colored glasses for sure, but neither is it seeing the world through shattered glass. More now like seeing the world just through good eye glasses.

    Your Zazen and Zen practice can only help with all this, I think. But if there is a physiological or bio-chemical element in your family, that needs to be looked at too. Don't wait. Give it a try.

    Gassho, Jundo

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  • Stephanie
    Guest replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Chet,

    No doubt that some, if not much, of this is coming from psychological issues. Now whether it is from pure neurobiology, purely a "chemical" thing, or whether it comes out of my childhood conditioning (emotionally unreliable / unavailable parents = an internal "object world" devoid of reliable objects; me being the emotional caretaker instead of caretakee = difficulty believing others can or will meet my needs, etc.), I don't know. But as people advised me here a while back, I certainly believe at the very least I need to see a therapist and hash this out, sort out how deeply rooted my spiritual / philosophical questions are rooted in personal psych issues.

    But yes, as to the chemical / physical side: things that run in my family include depression, bipolar, eccentric and socially non-normative behavior, suicide, alcoholism, and violence. Superficially I come across as a pretty cheery person--people find me warm and approachable on average--but even when I'm feeling cheerful, there's always some sort of darkness there. I grew up in a house where depressive and angry behavior was common and tend to be more on the depressive side--low energy, etc. It's just how my mind is, and I don't mind. I don't need to be "fitter happier" etc., but I do feel this need to have a meaning for what I'm doing that transcends what I make up as I go along. Is this a displaced psychological need, or something "more"? Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.

    I appreciate your helping me think through this.

    Stephanie

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  • disastermouse
    Guest replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by Stephanie
    Originally posted by disastermouse
    How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?
    No cutting, suicidal threats or attempts, not really even any mildly self-destructive behavior (I told you I was too boring to be borderline). It's not a rapid shift but a slow descent and it's only when I'm in the dark place that I realize it's happened. People who don't know me well might not even know it's going on. One relative told me she knows when I'm in a darker mood because I simply "disappear" for a while. Don't call as much, if at all. I seek out solitude to the extent I can. Not because I feel there's something bad in me I must keep away from other people, but because I don't want to bother with people and their drama and bullshit and need, I want them to leave me alone.

    There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.

    I still feel compassion for people who are suffering--I can still feel some things--but I know that ultimately there's nothing beyond human sentiment that gives meaning to their suffering. God doesn't care about them, and even if I do, there is only so much I can do for them, if anything. My suffering is like this too. Except I take pains not to let people see it (everywhere but here, that is), as I know that so many people who try to reach out to you are doing it in an ego-centered way in which they're doing it to try to illustrate some point to you or to themselves. I find this nasty and it provokes a sadistic response in me.

    I don't do things to provoke a rescuing response in others. For me to do so would be cruel because I do not believe I, or anyone else, can be "rescued" from certain things. Sure, you can be rescued from a knife-wielding attacker, or certain messes you get yourself into. But you can't be rescued from the absurd. I find gestures of kindness endearing, but there is also a tragedy to them in that they are swallowed up by the nothingness of the universe. Someone being nice to me makes me smile, but it doesn't alleviate the despair. Sometimes it intensifies it.

    I certainly have self-loathing issues but I do not find them to be the cause or main concern of the despair. At times, I may not feel that I am very good, but then most people aren't either. My main issue is that life seems not to be very good. Not in the sense of "not good" relative to some imaginable "good" life could be if only x, y, and z. But in the sense that it's just a whole lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

    But I take pains to tell you that seeing this futility of life does not make me feel suicidal. The act of suicide would be as absurd as the act of living.
    What you described sounds like it's probably chemical....just based on the way that you describe it. Do you get tired during these times as well?

    *I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist*

    Chet

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  • robert
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by Stephanie
    There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.
    I've had similar thoughts...particularly after putting all my energy and committment into something, then realizing that even if accomplished it will mean nothing in the long run...everything just gone and forgotten. Imagine some people in science...spending fifty years working on a theory, only to have it undone overnight by some up-and-coming grad student. Or reading cosmology...the thought of rocks and space matter and non-sentient processes, all just happening without any reason or ultimate origin, and once we're gone no one to observe it. Frightening!

    Consciousness itself is a form of "bad faith" in a sense, a huge consensual illusion playing out in our brains. But then again, what's bad about that? It's just the way we've evolved; values (good, bad) are part of meaning systems generated by us, so therefore a part of the same farce we are attempting to critique. For better or worse, humans rely on fictions of sorts -- religious, poetic, ideological -- for needs that cannot be addressed through logic and reason. Sometimes I think that the Shin Buddhists are the smartest -- they acknowledge, basicially, that their whole narrative is just an "expedient". In the end, what isn't?

    When I get drawn into existential angst I think a little bit about how the rest of the globe gets through the day...people who work terrible grueling jobs for a living, who barely have time for a cigarette break, let alone time to worry about the Big Picture. Am I wiser than them? Nah. Just more privileged.

    Best regards,
    Rob

    Leave a comment:


  • Stephanie
    Guest replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by disastermouse
    How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?
    No cutting, suicidal threats or attempts, not really even any mildly self-destructive behavior (I told you I was too boring to be borderline). It's not a rapid shift but a slow descent and it's only when I'm in the dark place that I realize it's happened. People who don't know me well might not even know it's going on. One relative told me she knows when I'm in a darker mood because I simply "disappear" for a while. Don't call as much, if at all. I seek out solitude to the extent I can. Not because I feel there's something bad in me I must keep away from other people, but because I don't want to bother with people and their drama and bullshit and need, I want them to leave me alone.

    There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.

    I still feel compassion for people who are suffering--I can still feel some things--but I know that ultimately there's nothing beyond human sentiment that gives meaning to their suffering. God doesn't care about them, and even if I do, there is only so much I can do for them, if anything. My suffering is like this too. Except I take pains not to let people see it (everywhere but here, that is), as I know that so many people who try to reach out to you are doing it in an ego-centered way in which they're doing it to try to illustrate some point to you or to themselves. I find this nasty and it provokes a sadistic response in me.

    I don't do things to provoke a rescuing response in others. For me to do so would be cruel because I do not believe I, or anyone else, can be "rescued" from certain things. Sure, you can be rescued from a knife-wielding attacker, or certain messes you get yourself into. But you can't be rescued from the absurd. I find gestures of kindness endearing, but there is also a tragedy to them in that they are swallowed up by the nothingness of the universe. Someone being nice to me makes me smile, but it doesn't alleviate the despair. Sometimes it intensifies it.

    I certainly have self-loathing issues but I do not find them to be the cause or main concern of the despair. At times, I may not feel that I am very good, but then most people aren't either. My main issue is that life seems not to be very good. Not in the sense of "not good" relative to some imaginable "good" life could be if only x, y, and z. But in the sense that it's just a whole lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

    But I take pains to tell you that seeing this futility of life does not make me feel suicidal. The act of suicide would be as absurd as the act of living.

    Leave a comment:


  • John
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Originally posted by roky
    john, do you know his book, "anam cara-- a book of celtic wisdom"? -- a beautiful book, from a great writer
    Yes Bob, I ordered the book after I came back from retreat last week, after hearing a talk in which one of his poems were mentioned, one that I liked very much. John O'Donoghue died earlier this year, unfortunately. http://www.jodonohue.com/

    You might find this strange, but I would have found it very difficult to read poetry written by a Catholic priest until recently. My Protestant Belfast upbringing left me with an antipathy to anything Celtic that has taken a few years to overcome. Practising meditation in a Catholic retreat centre with Catholics has helped to remove most of my Protestant bigotry, though,

    gassho,
    John

    Leave a comment:


  • Jarkko
    replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    Hi will!

    i dont know what was your original posting but take care in there. Trust with your heart fully on practice, Metta!

    this is nothing new in here but..

    As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
    As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
    The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.
    Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.

    Gassho

    Jarkko

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  • disastermouse
    Guest replied
    Telll me more about the black hole...

    How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?

    Leave a comment:


  • Stephanie
    Guest replied
    Re: Deleted by Will

    You guys rock. And I'm not just saying that to be nice. A lot of useful things you've posted here.

    Chet--you're dead on the money with the therapy recommendation. I've been wanting to see a therapist for months now, and hopefully will be able to make it happen within the next few months. I know I need it. To sort some things out and clarify some things, at the very least. It was partly what I discovered in the social work program I'm in and partly the encouragement of folks here at Treeleaf that convinced me that this is something I need to do.

    And believe it or not, I've had the very experience you describe, and multiple times at that. But somehow it doesn't seem to stick. That wonderfully liberating feeling of fullness, of totality, that nothing more is needed, eventually gives way to the dead opposite, a kind of shadow of that experience, of bone-crushing emptiness (and I don't mean the word in the "Zen sense," but the "black hole" sort of sense). Has anyone here read any Emil Cioran? He absolutely does the best job of nailing down that experience in writing of any writer I know. Anyway... I read what I write now and I see that subtext of "bipolar" there. My whole spiritual life has been like that--really high highs and really low lows, ad nauseum.

    And yes, I think the best tool practice has given me, at least of late, is the ability to have moments where I'm recognizing that I'm adding something extra by fighting or resisting whatever is going on. When I can stop doing that, when I can listen to the demons instead of fight them, most of the psychic distress of the experience actually drains away. It becomes interesting, instead of terrible. And then the humor can come in too.

    John--thank you for that beautiful poem. Very apt.

    Bob--thank you for that eloquent distillation of the inner geography of my current location. It's encouraging to think of it as the "middle place." I think part of my difficulty has been adding onto the dark moods with the depressive attitude that this is it, this is the ultimate, this is how it really is and is always going to be. When I know from my past experience how many times I've thought such things and haven't had the faintest clue how far from "it" I actually was.

    You're dead on with the pointer that all this rejection points to a rejection of myself on some level. The self-loathing thing can run really deep, and when I can catch it, when I can see that one of the fundamental things is an inability to let myself enjoy what I enjoy, and that this is coming from within me rather than being some cosmic truth, it's a huge relief. Metta certainly helps.

    Alan--more excellent advice. In the moment, it's so easy to forget that fighting isn't the only option. Your way is much more expansive and interesting.

    Gassho--

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