On Depression
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico discusses depression.
Depression is being scared that you are unhappy or will make yourself unhappy for no reason. If you would make yourself unhappy for no reason whatsoever, then you can conclude that you are the “kind of person” who is “damned” to unhappiness, because you choose to be unhappy for no reason.
Depression is deducing that you are unhappy based on how you physically feel or how you act. For example, feeling tired or sick or with low energy, and concluding that must mean you are unhappy, because being unhappy often feels similar to being tired or sick or with low energy. Another example: concluding that your lack of enthusiasm about something must mean you are unhappy. Even though unhappiness often causes these bodily signs, they can also occur for reasons that have nothing to do with unhappiness.
Depression is not being okay to be unhappy. Paradoxically, if you were never unhappy about being angry, sad, fearful, etcetera, these could transform into natural expressions of force, connection, avoidance, etcetera. Unhappiness is ineffective when used to motivate ourselves to stop being unhappy.
You can know that you would never choose to be unhappy without a reason. This reason can be traced to a mistaken belief that being unhappy is the only way to do something you want to do. By exploring the reason to the root, as the Option Method does, you can get in touch with the desires underneath the unhappiness, and have the bodily epiphany that your wanting is sufficient; no unhappiness is necessary.
Option Method – On Depression