Warning: I am not a psychiatrist. This is not a professional essay for the medical profession. You are merely jumping into one man’s opinion of how things work in the human mind and body. It may not be accurate, but it makes for interesting reading. Proceed at your own risk.

Life operates on a system of cycles. The electrical circuits of your brain race madly at times of peak performance and slowly simmer down into an almost dormant state. The chemical secretions of your body ebb and flow like the tides. Our emotions are subject to inevitable mood swings. Your body pumps energy juices into your system and makes you feel like you could work or play forever. Those energy chemicals get depleted and you feel like you want to die. Every day life is like a Wall Street stock chart - full of peaks and valleys.

These valley times we call ‘the blues’ - ‘the blahs’ - or ‘bad hair days’. We all have our down times. No one is totally exempt from being ‘under the weather’ once in a while. We can’t eliminate tiredness and discouragement completely, but these words might help minimize the strength and intensity of the ‘basement moods’ we get into sometimes.

Some people are prone to sink into deep valleys of depression. They tend to stay in the valley longer than an average person. Eventually they sink into long-term clinical depression. Occasionally, someone ends up in a box-canyon of despair and never comes out. The pain and hopelessness of their situation causes them to take their own lives. I’m hoping that with a few simple words we might be able to help avert such a catastrophe in the future.

Part of the solution to any problem is ‘a greater understanding of the problem’. Here’s a layman’s understanding of what’s involved in some forms of depression.

Thoughts Trigger Emotions

Emotions activate chemicals

Chemicals create reactions.

One man begins his work with a noticeable lack of energy. He worries that his wife might someday be unfaithful to him. He wonders if this is the day. He sees an imaginary picture of what might be taking place. He feels an intense jealousy. He jumps up and leaves the job without saying why. On the way home, he is pumped full of rage, hate and pure adrenaline energy. Bursting through the doorway, he sees his wife at the sink doing the morning dishes. The man should be relieved, but instead he is disappointed. He wanted to bust heads. He was ready to kill. It takes him over two hours to wind down from that energy ‘high’ which was produced by a chain reaction of thoughts and feelings.

Another man thought he had won the 12 million dollar lottery. That thought triggered an exceptional emotional reaction. His body went into tailspins of ecstasy. He became a whirling dervish. (Whatever that is.) Nobody could keep him down. Well, nobody except the brother-in-law who took time to read the numbers again. The man had mis-read one number. He did not have the winning ticket!

In one split second - his thoughts triggered an immense let-down. We can understand that, but for three days the man went around in a state of despair. If he would have read the numbers right the first time, he would have experienced a very slight let-down, an expected let-down. But, because he felt what it was like to win 12 million dollars, he reacted just as though someone had robbed him of that which was rightfully his. His thoughts kept his disappointment alive and his brain kept pumping out the wrong kind of juices. In one moment’s time, a man’s thoughts had catapulted him to the highest peak of emotional fervor that he had ever known - and a few moments later, his thoughts put him in a basement of depression and despair. Don’t tell me that thoughts don’t trigger emotions.

Emotions Activate Chemicals

Answer one question for me. Is blood a chemical? Why does a man’s face get red when he is angry? A thought triggers anger and anger activates a series of physical reactions.

Ask someone an embarrassing question. Watch their face turn beet red; not from anger, but from embarrassment. A thought triggered an emotion; the emotion activated a chemical; the chemical produced a reaction.

Practical jokers delight in projecting fear thoughts into their victims. The sound of a bear in the bushes triggered fear in one man’s mind. His body flew into automatic response mode and he peppered the bushes with high velocity bullets. One of the two practical jokers lay dead, while the other was scared out of his mind, unable to say a word. Fear made one man go into action. Shock and fear together paralyzed the other man. Thoughts trigger emotions and emotions have a powerful effect on the body.

Severe clinical depression is often caused by the depletion of a necessary chemical in the brain. Strong drugs can replace the missing chemical and bring some relief. If those drugs are taken over a long period of time the chemical balance can be restored. That person can return to normal and live a depression-free life.

The reasons for the chemical imbalance varies. One person may have a genetic pre-disposition toward such a chemical imbalance. In other words, he was born with his problem. He inherited his problem like people inherit other diseases. Medical science can now prevent some inherited diseases from occurring if they can detect their presence soon enough. They can sometimes modify the intensity of the disease through treatment or even cure it completely. The same is true concerning an inherited tendency toward depression.

One interesting thing is: Psychiatrists will admit that counseling and group therapy can often restore the chemical balance just as drug therapy does, but over a longer period of time. How can talking and listening restore brain chemicals? Well, I believe it is simply due to the domino effect. Plant new thoughts into a patient’s brain and you will begin to alter his emotions on a small scale. Good emotions produce good chemicals. Repeat that process over and over again for a year and a half and ‘there it is!’ - the chemical structure of a person’s mind and body has changed also. The doctors will admit that the combination of drug therapy and verbal therapy will often speed up the recovery time for those who suffer from clinical depression. Why? Because, both elements have the power to reverse chemical imbalances that cause depression.

Leave a negative man to himself and his thoughts will spiral him downward into a mood of hopelessness and despair. Every time he re-thinks a situation his mood cycle gets darker and gloomier. He has no capacity to ‘think himself happy’ or to ‘think himself high’. He cannot create the chemical changes he needs to feel good. Once he activates the negative chemicals into his system, he feels worse and that triggers darker thoughts and those thoughts trigger deeper despair and that activates more negative chemical problems.

People who pull away from others while depressed, tend to feed on their own thinking processes. If those thoughts are diseased thoughts, the disease only gets worse and not better. But, if you can send a ‘blue-mood person’ to the store - that mood is often broken before they get home. Why? They were forced into polite chit-chat. Such conversation pulls their mind out of the negative mood they were in. There are times when I wanted to stay angry at my wife, but company came. When they left I couldn’t go back to being angry again.

Take a depressed person fishing or to the opera or into any activity which they enjoy and you will help break the spell they are under. At first they won’t even want to do the things they normally enjoy. That’s because the record player of their mind is stuck in a negative groove. You have to shake the record player to make it jump track and get into a normal playing pattern. Like a broken record, some people will always regress toward depression at the memory of certain events or situations.

I had a friend who was a perfect guinea pig for this illustration. He could be having a happy time until I brought up a certain topic. I have never in all of my life seen a face change so quickly and so drastically. One minute he looked like he was at a picnic and the next moment he looked like he’d been to a funeral. It wasn’t just one topic which would have this effect on him. He would react the same way anytime he was reminded of various elements relating to his past.

If I would have been a manipulative enemy I could have driven that kid to suicide. Instead, I looked at his countenance and fed him good thoughts, uplifting thoughts, positive thoughts and before long he was out of that negative groove. Sometimes he would call me on the phone and his first sentence would tell me if he was up or down. Time after time, I would use words and good thoughts to pull him back up where he needed to be. I was teaching him to think differently about life’s circumstances.

Eventually all those seeds took root. He would often call and tell me how he had successfully faced certain situations. My words from the past had now become a part of his own way of thinking. He would tell me how he had helped others by repeating those positive statements and by explaining the positive principles behind the words. Little by little he was minimizing his tendency to create a chemical imbalance in his brain.

Medical science has proven that bitter, hateful thoughts trigger a tiny excess secretion of certain chemicals into the body. A few episodes of ‘feeling hate’ do not have the power to physically harm a person. However, over a long period of time, the accumulation of those chemicals in the body will produce physical infirmities and affliction. That’s a proven fact. Check it out for yourself.

I say that to let you know that negative thinking does not automatically put you in a mental ward of the state hospital, but it can and does have it’s long-term effects on your being. Negative thoughts alone do not create depression. It’s the negative emotions which do the most damage.

Sunlight and Mood Changes

People in depression tend to stay indoors and to themselves. That’s the last thing on the earth they need. If they get out into the sunlight, a chemical reaction automatically takes place without anyone else being around.

One town in Alaska has the highest rate of suicides of any town in our nation. Why? People there are afflicted by S.A.D. - Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is caused by the long, dark days with very little sunlight. Another reason is the cold. Severe cold makes people want to stay indoors even in daylight hours. They now sell a special light to counteract that aspect of deep depression. Train yourself to become an early morning riser and you will probably help yourself immensely.

Don’t forget diet!

Food that you eat is broken down and passed into the bloodstream as chemicals. Diet alone can have it’s effect on your moods. I’m not a dietician. I don’t have any facts to give you or any herbs to sell you. I just know that in the past few months I’ve been experimenting with different nutritional supplements. Many of them have a definite effect on my system. Some of them give me more energy. Energy affects our mental state of being. Some of them improve circulation and improved circulation speeds extra oxygen to the brain. Exercise does the same thing. That’s why depressed people are often urged to get out and do something. Increased activity, increases circulation. More blood to the brain means faster delivery of chemicals to the brain.

Shall I say it again? I’m not a medical expert. I’m merely a motivator. But, I really believe that someone with a tendency toward depression can keep from sinking into clinical depression later in life by paying attention to some of the things I’ve said today.

I believe I could feed someone a verbal diet of positive words, thoughts and concepts over a period of time and radically affect their future. I believe someone else could feed them a daily diet of negative words and create the opposite effect in them. That’s why it is so very important to develop positive reactions to negative people. It preserves your sanity and helps maintain your own sense of well being - in spite of their attitudes. Besides, they desperately need the positive influence of your cheerful countenance in their lives. Sure, I know. They often seem to have an unreasonable urge to bring you down to their level, but that’s all the more reason why you should be determined to hold your ground. There’s no future in downward spirals and low-level misery. People who live in basements have a terrible view.

Let’s move to the housetops

where we can see

forever!