Emotional Arousal Levels Must Be Lowered.
1.
The necessity to relax is most important.
Don't think that for one moment you're relaxing simply by sitting in your favourite chair and brooding! Sitting down doesn't equal relaxation.
The important steps are to calm your emotions.
Anxiety and anger must be expelled from your thinking.
Why? Because they're Absolutes.
Suppose you're a lady who normally loves dressmaking.
Turn your thoughts towards this.
Think about patterns, colours and design.
This will all help your brain function with more subtlety.
Try to stop the incursion of what we might call catastrophic thoughts.
Try to practice relaxation therapies.
Tai Chi is good.
It's a physical discipline which keeps the mind active, while you perform gentle exercise.
Relaxation therapy is excellent as guided imagery.
Self hypnosis would be another way of putting it.
We'll be discussing hypnosis a lot more later on.
Do What You Enjoy.
2.
Or at least, used to enjoy.
That's such a wretched part of Depression.
It rids you of all desire to do anything, even that which you formerly loved to do.
Let's assume you're a model-maker.
There was a time when your wife would have to tear you away from your bench, kicking and screaming! But now? You pass by the workbench, giving it perhaps a passing glance.
Next time, go into the workshop and fiddle with some tools.
Don't necessarily do anything with them.
Just pick them up and see how they feel in your hands.
As a model-maker, you must have some mechanisms lying around.
Pick them up.
Spin a wheel or two.
You never know.
It may start you thinking; well, if I do this and that, it might improve the performance.
Failing this, change a light bulb.
Try some very small task which ends in a positive outcome.
Then think; yes, that turned out well.
Effectively, give yourself a pat on the back.
It's so important to turn what has been totally negative thinking back to positive.
More than that, try to find the positive in other things, too.
I do realize that this is one of our most difficult tasks.
We're so wrapped up in negativity, that being positive is alien to us.
But then again, you have to try.
Develop A Regular Sleep Regimen 3.
Don't simply sit in front of the TV when it goes off every evening and doze for half the night.
Or worse still, brood.
Make a point of going to bed at, say, 11 o'clock, set your alarm for 8 in the morning and climb out of bed.
Do not just lie there.
Worse still, do not sleep.
If the latter, then you'll start dreaming again and this is exactly what you don't need.
Spend eight or nine hours in bed, but no more.
I remember how I detested that part of the day, climbing out of bed to face the great, grey wall again, but try to think of it as progress and give yourself another pat on the back