“So, how did you stop being depressed?”

or: How I Stopped Being Depressed (And Started Living)

I was at Kevin Delaney’s Deep Dive Dream Center in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh for his Saturday night Journey Into Love meditation when another meditator asked me this question.

It caught me off guard - not because of the question itself, but because it had been so long since I’d felt actively depressed.

That’s not to say I don’t get sad. I experience the full spectrum of emotions (sometimes several spectrums per hour). But if you’ve been depressed, too, you know it’s not just sadness. Depression is like a weighted blanket that covers your soul, dulling everything and suffocating you under an endless loop of bleak thoughts and lifeless sensations.

It’s a blast. /sarcasm

For most of my life, depression (and his BFF anxiety) followed me like a shadow. It hit its lowest point - meaning I hit my lowest point - back in the mid-2010s.

The Spiral

Not to be confused with spiral ham.

2015 was rough. I was recovering from my second car accident in three years. The first was totally my fault and resulted in a DUI, but the second one happened despite me doing everything “right.” Biking home, wearing a helmet, following traffic laws, bright clothes, lights on - yet a driver still plowed into me, sending me flying over the hood of her SUV.

The pain in my hip (which turned out to be a torn labrum) kept me awake all night, and my thoughts kept me spiraling:

I did everything “right”. And a “bad” thing still happened.

I could rationalize, even excuse, the bad things that happened as a result of the DUI accident. But this? It shook something deeper. My mind started whispering a slow, seductive solution: If I weren’t alive, I wouldn’t have to think these thoughts anymore.

Therapy and the Choice to Stay

Skip arm day for lay-down-your-arms day.

Despite how convincing that voice sounded, something in me wasn’t ready to un-alive myself. I knew I hadn’t tried everything (and I knew Shakira would be disappointed if I didn’t try everything).

So I sought out a therapist - on my own terms, for the first time in my life.

I wasn’t unfamiliar with therapy. I had gone to a few family counseling sessions as a child, but those were under my mom’s orders. We’d go until she disagreed with the counselor, then therapy became a “waste of time”. Plus, being a Highly Sensitive man in a toxic patriarchal society that tells us to “man up,” I wasn’t exactly raised or encouraged to talk about my feelings. To whit, the only time I remember my dad talking about his depression was to end an argument with my mom.

But I wanted to live. So I decided to eschew patriarchal programming, found the nearest therapist, and booked an appointment.

And that decision changed everything.

Writing, Awareness, and Thought Tallies

Protip: You don’t need a trilby to be a writer.

I spent two wonderful years working with my therapist before he retired (JUST as we were cracking open my abandonment issues - great timing). In that time, I’d quit my job to play at being a writer (to quote Bukowski) and discovered a new way to engage with my thoughts.

One of the most valuable books my therapist recommended was Embracing Your Inner Critic by Hal and Sidra Stone.

Not only did this book help me meet, work with, and appreciate my Inner Critic, but it also introduced me to my Inner Child and parts work - a concept I would have found far too woo before I started therapy.

Turns out, getting to know your own mind makes a difference.

Other books that helped me:

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lammott

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

• Learned Optimism by Martin E. P. Seligman

I used to think that if I could just get my mind in order, I would be a great writer. It wouldn’t be until 2021 - after I had, in fact, gotten my mind into much more of an orderly and healthy place - that I would come to have the awareness to understand (nay, inner-stand) that “writer” was just another egoic attachment, just another thought pattern I’d come to identify with.

There is something to be said about a mindset shift into awareness that helps immensely with depression. I became more and more aware of my mental landscape and started noticing the kinds of thoughts I was repeatedly having.

In a move that would have impressed Victor Zsasz, I decided to use a marker to make tallies on my left hand each time I had a thought I didn’t want.

By the end of that November day, I had 80-90 tallies covering my hand.

The next day, it was down to 50-60.

That awareness shifted everything.

I was so blown away by how the simple act of becoming aware of my unwanted thoughts had reduced them that I texted my brother a picture of my hands to show the difference. I kept this tallying practice up into the new year. By then, the tallies were down into the single digits, and I was much more in control of my life.

And it made me curious. If I could change my thoughts, what else I could change?

Embracing the Woo (Without Losing My Mind)

I can smell this picture.

By the time the pandemic hit, I had already been meditating. But lockdown gave me the space to go deeper. I started trusting in a force greater than myself. Back then, I called it the Universe. It took years (and some untangling of religious trauma) before I was comfortable using the word God.

Meditation. Presence. Surrender. These weren’t just abstract concepts anymore. They were survival tools. And the more I leaned in, the lighter I felt.

Yes, it’s a slippery slope from meditation to beginning to understand your own Divinity.

So, How Did I Stop Being Depressed?

...is that arrow leading folks right into traffic??

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and I wouldn’t be so flippant as to say “just think happy thoughts” (after all, I’m not Edgar Albert Guest). But here’s what worked for me:

• Therapy. Professional support is invaluable.

• Writing. Engaging with my thoughts helped me reclaim them.

• Awareness. Simply noticing my thoughts changed everything.

• Meditation. Learning to sit with myself, rather than fight myself.

• Surrender. Trusting that life is bigger than my current persepctive.

I still feel things deeply. I still have rough days. But depression no longer feels like my default setting. And if it ever tries to creep back in, I know I have tools to meet it.

I’ll leave you with some words from Your Soul’s Gift by Robert Schwartz.

“If one could look at depression, anxiety, fear, or any other negative emotion as just one part of the self that is confused, then there would be another part of the self that could look at this emotional part with an understanding and a gentleness that would reassure it. But, people tend to identify completely with their depression, anxiety, or fear, and then they feel unbalanced. They cannot find their core, their true self, anymore. The first thing to realize is that you are not your fear. You could see the fear, for instance, as a child who comes to you for help. By seeing it that way, you will feel that you are much bigger than the fear. You can get in touch with the child, speak with it, and understand it. Sometimes a therapist can play the role of this parent or guide. The key always is to find a place in your awareness from which to look at the fear and not be the fear.”

So, if you’re struggling: You don’t have to battle your mind. You can work with it.

And, I promise, there is a way through.