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We all have our own version of stress. When I share with someone that I help people with stress reduction, it is not unusual for them to respond, “I could use some of that.” Stress is something that we all experience; the word has become a term we use for the various struggles and pressures and challenges that we face in life.
In their book, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Move Through Depression and Create a Life Worth Living, Kirk D. Strosahl and Patricia J. Robinson describe these two parts of our thinking as the reactive mind and the wise mind. Most likely, the reactive mind is the way of thinking that you are most familiar with. The reactive mind helps to make sense of the world around you.
It is easy for people who suffer from depression to get caught up in thoughts and feelings that allow the depression to become entrenched. It can reach a place where these depressive thoughts and feelings become a lens through which you look at and interpret the world. The depression shapes and forms how you see yourself and how you see others; it begins to give direction to the actions and choices you make.
If you have experienced trauma, control might be a big issue for you. By definition, trauma is an event that creates a high level of stress or fear, but you do not have the chance to escape or get away from it. When thoughts or feelings about the trauma show up later, it makes sense that you would want to avoid these negative internal experiences. So, you exert control, and you can do this in lots of ways.
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and suddenly realize that you have heard little of what they were saying? Have you been talking among a group of friends and suddenly realized that your mind has wandered? Perhaps you have had someone complain that you aren’t listening. It is not unusual to respond to that complaint with something like, “I’m sorry; my mind was somewhere else.” So where, exactly, is that somewhere else, and how do you get back to here?
You may not realize it, but there is a lot going on when you breathe. For example, when you breathe in, you activate what is called your stress response; it is also call your fight or flight response. When this response is activated, your heart rate increases, and your pupils dilate. You become more alert and the tension in your body increases.
One of the signs of depression is the tendency of your mind to produce negative thoughts about yourself and your life. Your mind is always generating thoughts. It is always looking at qualities and characteristics about who you are and how you are in life and judging if you have been right or wrong, good or bad. With depression, it seems like the only evaluations and judgments that get through are the negative ones.
