So far, we’ve focused on the physical: the Western brain-chemistry focus and the Ayurvedic tradition of Mind-Body medicine that can help you identify the food, supplements, exercise, and habits to help you overcome your depression.
Now, without forgetting the importance of this groundedness in the body, we’re going to move into more psychological and spiritual realms. But before we begin, I want to clear up two common misconceptions that I often encounter.
First, I am not trying to convert you to Buddhism or to any type of religious practice. Both my own and my patients’ interest in this approach comes from the broadest possible perspective, that of desiring to see the world clearly and to understand our own relationship to it. So whether you follow a Buddhist tradition, a different spiritual practice, or no spiritual practice at all, you can still join me in a study of Buddhist psychology and the mindfulness techniques it has inspired.
Second, although we’re now moving into psychological and emotional realms, I don’t want you to forget the importance of your body. Food, exercise, sleep, and biorhythms are all enormously important components of our lives, and I’ve seen my patients make remarkable progress when we worked within those realms. But the chemistry of joy is not a one-sided phenomenon, in which chemical elements single-handedly affect our mood. Our mental outlook, our spiritual practice, and our understanding of the larger questions of life and self all affect our chemistry as well. Indeed, when we are truly able to achieve joy, we come to see that there is very little distinction among mind, body, and spirit.
In Buddhist psychology there are three well-known “types.” While our personalities are more complex than that, it may be helpful to find out what your primary tendency is. For each question, circle the answer that best describes you. If more than one answer seems to fit, circle both, or all three.
1. When I get stressed, my first emotional response tends to be:
a. fear
b. anger
c. confusion
2. I worry most about other people:
a. disliking me
b. letting me down
c. abandoning me
3. I have the most trouble tolerating:
a. uncertainty
b. disappointment
c. the need to tell people what I want
4. One of my most noticeable qualities is
a. sensitivity
b. ambition and drive
c. steadiness
5. When I need to confront someone with whom I have a problem, I tend to
a. meekly ask them to do better
b. offer strong, sharp criticism
c. tell myself that it’s most likely my problem and try to find something I can do differently
6. I often find myself
a. worried that I won’t have enough of what I need
b. angry with people who are not doing what they should
c. uncertain of what I feel
7. If I could have one wish, it would be to feel
a. calm and secure
b. supported and understood
c. energetic and alive
8. When I feel anxious, upset, or depressed, I tend to
a. worry
b. criticize
c. shut down
9. If my friends or family were asked to name my greatest weakness, they would probably say I’m too
a. nervous
b. demanding
c. hard to read
10. I often feel
a. unworthy
b. frustrated
c. numb
SCORING: Count the number of answers that were:
a:__ (this corresponds to the Grasping or Fear type)
b:__ (this corresponds to the Rejecting or Anger type)
c:__ (this corresponds to the Denial or Adrift type)
If you scored significantly higher in one category, that’s your type. If you’ve got high scores in two categories, you’re a combination type. If you’ve got relatively equal scores in all three categories, you’re that rare phenomenon, a three-part combination type.
Now that you have a sense of where you fall in this spectrum, let’s consider each type more carefully. But remember, each of us contains all of these traits—just in different combinations. So read all the chapters in this step without being be too concerned about pigeonholing yourself.
Since I came clean about my Ayurvedic typing, I’ll offer the same confession for my Buddhist Emotional type. As you may have guessed from my being a vata, I’m a Fear or Grasping type. Although my own mindfulness practice helps me stay in balance, when I get stressed, I go immediately to a place of “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not going to get the things I need.” Fortunately, I’m usually able to rely on one of the techniques in Chapter 15 to help me regain my balance. So as you read through the following profiles, take heart. We all have our default positions, our favorite “unwise strategies,” to use the Buddhist term. The good news is that by becoming aware of them, we can make different, better choices.
Motto: There’s never enough.
Automatic reaction to stress: Always acquire more.
When operating from strength and security: Knows when he or she is stressed and takes positive action to do something about it.
When operating from weakness or insecurity: Confuses external or physical satisfaction—through money, food, security, status, or sex—with inner peace.
Western brain-chemistry connection: When depressed, likely to be diagnosed with anxious depression or serotonin depletion; may be helped by dietary and exercise recommendations for serotonin deficiency.
Ayurvedic connection: Corresponds in many ways to Air type, or vata; may be helped by Ayurvedic Mind-Body medicine recommendations for Air types.
Primary Pitfalls:
insecurity
fear and anxiety
difficulty letting go
scarcity
envy and greed
seeking to fill a void
the feeling that there is never enough
As the name suggests, the Fear-based Emotional type tends to react to stress with fear and anxiety. People in this category have a tendency to grasp, to hold tightly to possessions, ideas, other people, or situations. They often have difficulty letting go, even when they see clearly that an idea, person, or situation isn’t serving them well.
No matter how much Fear types acquire, however—whether their acquisitions take the form of money, relationships, activities, or information—they tend to be plagued by insecurity and the fear that there is somehow not enough, at least not for them. As a result, they suffer from envy and greed. When you’re in a grasping state of mind, satisfaction comes rarely and is then only fleeting. The moment you’ve tasted the desired fruit, dissatisfaction returns and the wanting begins again.
According to Buddhist psychology, the antidote to the fear of insufficiency is generosity. When you give to others—or to yourself—you realize that you have enough and that you are enough. Take as your new motto “All is well” and begin to give generously whenever you feel that it is not.
Motto: Whatever I have, it’s not good enough.
Automatic reaction to stress: Keep the world at a distance.
When operating from strength and security: Sees clearly when a person, item, or situation is problematic and acts to get rid of it or move away from it.
When operating from weakness and insecurity: Tends to take everything personally, including the weaknesses and shortcomings of loved ones, or random situations that cannot be prevented.
Western brain-chemistry connection: When depressed, likely to be diagnosed with agitated depression or excess of dopamine in relation to serotonin; may be helped by dietary and exercise recommendations for excess dopamine and serotonin deficiency.
Ayurvedic connection: Corresponds in many ways to Fire type, or pitta; may be helped by Ayurvedic Mind-Body medicine recommendations for Fire types.
Primary Pitfalls:
tendency to push away
being judgmental
feeling that “nothing is right”
anger
hatred
critical or even destructive of others around them
If Grasping/Fear types tend to cling, Rejecting/Anger types tend to push away people, situations, and opportunities that have disappointed them or that seem to evoke disappointing experiences from the past. Anger types are often filled with judgment: a rejection of things as they are and a wish for them to be different. If you’re an out-of-balance Anger type, nothing is ever quite right. Nothing is good enough. Your mind is filled not with what’s working or what’s making you happy but with what you don’t like. You respond to stress with anger, frustration, aggressiveness, and hostility, blaming others, yourself, or both whenever life doesn’t work out as planned or desired.
Of course Anger types feel fearful as well. Their response to insecurity, however, is to get angry and, in some cases, even to hate. Life seems to have let them down, and as a result, they’re willing to judge the world as failing and punish it accordingly.
What’s the solution for Anger types? Buddhist psychologists believe that the antidote to anger is compassion. Learn to see the weakness, fear, and vulnerability in others and in yourself, and to view it with tenderness. Take as your motto that beautiful statement of Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh: “Whenever you are angry at someone, remember that he or she is in pain, too.”
Motto: There’s no point in getting upset.
Automatic reaction to stress: Numb out and disconnect from painful feelings.
When operating from strength and security: Can take responsibility for a bad situation, avoiding blame or resentment.
When operating from weakness or insecurity: Tends to allow bad situations to continue far too long because of not being in touch with feelings of anger and sorrow.
Western brain-chemistry connection: When depressed, likely to be diagnosed with melancholia, or extreme sorrow, related to a shortage of dopamine; may be helped by dietary and exercise recommendations for insufficient norepinephrine/dopamine.
Ayurvedic connection: Corresponds in many ways to Earth type, or kapha; may be helped by Ayurvedic Mind-Body medicine recommendations for Earth types.
Primary Pitfalls:
denial
lack of clarity
flatness or apathy
sluggishness or lethargy
psychologically “asleep”
Rather than turning to fear or anger, this Emotional type tends to react to stress with confusion. This is the personality type that, when confronted with a difficult situation, simply “turns off,” “numbs out,” or freezes, seemingly without either emotions or opinions.
This group has psychologically fallen asleep. They are adrift. If you’re in this category, you may be aware of some sadness in your life, but more often you’re experiencing a lack of feeling, a flatness or apathy frequently accompanied by mental confusion, difficulty making decisions, lethargy, and sluggishness. Instead of feeling angry or fearful, you simply feel befuddled: unsure of how you feel, what you want, or what you’d like to change.
Fear may be at the root of your condition, too—fear of change, of losing a person you care about, of being “a bad person,” of your own buried anger. But your response to this fear is your favorite psychological defense—denial.
The antidote to denial is waking up. Let your motto become “I see clearly and accept all that is.” It may seem safer to go through life asleep—but only when you awaken can you know joy.
Of course we are all familiar with each of these states. But most of us fall into one of these categories more easily than the others. It is our default mode, our “favorite flavor,” our habitual response to suffering and stress, even if we act it out in different ways. A Fear type might buy a huge life-insurance policy—or simply surround herself with dependent men who shower her with attention. An Anger type might refuse to marry and maintain few friendships—or form a loyal group of loved ones who are then the subject of intense criticism. And self-delusion comes in many versions: Denial of your feelings, a rose-colored optimism, a determinedly negative self-image are only some of the ways people can set themselves adrift.
The good news is that once we become aware of these patterns, we can begin to adapt new, more effective strategies. The first step is to become mindful and to see the human experience in clear, honest terms. So in the remainder of this chapter, I’ll explain the basic principles on which mindfulness is based—a way of looking at suffering, joy, and life itself that I have found extremely helpful in overcoming depression.
As the Buddhists say, “All of life is suffering.” Buddhists love stories and parables, so here’s a famous tale that helps make clear the truth behind this concept.
Kisa Gotami’s daughter had died, and she was in agony over the loss. She had heard that the Buddha was capable of miracles, and she went to him, begging for her daughter to be brought back to life. The Buddha felt great compassion for the poor woman and promised he would help her—but only if she could bring him some mustard seed from a home that had known no sorrow.
Filled with hope, Kisa set out on her search. She knew that mustard seed was a common spice, and surely every home in the village had some. But as she knocked on every door, she heard one sad story after another. “Oh, we lost Grandfather last year.” “My son was born with a clubfoot and cannot walk.” “My mother suffers from palsy and is near death.” “I lost two daughters in childbirth and have just miscarried again.” Everywhere she went, the story was the same—sorrow, loss, and grief marked every home.
Soon Kisa realized that suffering was universal. No human on earth could escape sorrow and loss. She returned to the Buddha and asked, “What do I do now?” Buddha’s precepts for coping with universal suffering touched her heart, and she became one of his earliest and most devoted followers.
I can’t believe that Kisa’s revelation removed or even diminished her pain. The loss of a child is an irreparable blow, and from what I’ve seen among patients and friends, I don’t believe it ever stops hurting. But I do believe that Kisa’s newfound perspective changed her relationship to her pain. Before her understanding deepened, she was anguished and angry. All she could think was how much she wished her child had not died, how much she did not want the world to be as it was. She resisted the blow that life had dealt her, tightening up, hardening herself against it. If she had been a Fear type, she might have been eaten up with envy of other parents whose children had not died. If she’d been an Anger type, she might have railed against the unfairness of life. As a Denial type, she might have shut down, numbed out, blurring her grief into a vague sense of sorrow and loss that she neither fully experienced nor fully released.
Then she grasped that suffering was universal, that what had happened to her, painful as it might be, was an inevitable part of life. I think of her as accepting the blow life dealt her—not fearfully, angrily, or passively, but simply, with all the fullness of her genuine grief. Her pain might continue to throb for the rest of her life—but it no longer determined her thoughts or actions. She found some freedom, and ultimately, some joy—not in spite of her pain, or even because of it, but simply alongside it.
You come to me with your problems and hope that I can help. You are human. Face that first.
—IDRIES SHAH, ISLAMIC WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER
It is so hard, this human journey. Each of us is subject to all the vulnerabilities, all the moods, the pain, the reactivity, the suffering that comes with being human. Each of us has taken on the challenge of our own personality—our individual sensitivities, our own peculiar insecurities, the things that push our buttons, or stop us short, or shut us down. All of us are prey to the fruitless striving for perfection or the impossible desire to please others.
The poet Rumi has a wonderful line about what it’s like to be human: “Every day, we wake up empty and scared.” So start by accepting that it’s okay to suffer or to feel depressed at times. And then learn to distinguish between the pain that is unavoidable and the suffering that we create for ourselves.
Let me use an example of physical pain to illustrate the extent to which our individual responses affect our experience of the world’s pain. Suppose two people are stung by a bee. Both of them feel pain, and certainly neither would say that the bee sting was desirable. But for one person, that’s as far as it goes. He notices a little redness and swelling around the sting, he puts some ice on it, and the pain goes away. In an hour or so, he’s forgotten all about it.
For the second person, the bee sting is the beginning of a nightmare. This person is allergic to bees, and her body reacts to bee venom far beyond the actual danger of the sting. An enormous redness and swelling spreads swiftly from the bee sting outward. Her immune system pulls out all the stops, and soon her lungs swell, too, and she has trouble breathing. Her body is only trying to save her from what it perceives as a terrifying threat—but her response to the pain might actually kill her. Only an injection of rapid-acting antihistamine or an immune-system suppressant will save her from dying as a result of a seemingly minor insult.
Note that the type and amount of bee venom is the same in both people. But their bodies’ reactions to the sting can make the difference between a trivial pain and a life-threatening bout of suffering.
Just as we have different responses to pain, so do we have different responses to stress and abuse. One person thrives on the challenge of a demanding job, while the next crumbles beneath its weight. One person forgives his tormentors, while the next is destroyed by the bitterness and hatred that seem to last forever—causing her far greater suffering than the abusive act that engendered the pain in the first place. One person is somehow enlarged by an encounter with depression, while the next is markedly diminished by it.
As we saw in Chapter 2, we seem to be born with certain tendencies—to fret or to relax, to turn quickly to fear or to remain steady in our confidence, to spring to anger on a hair trigger or to blithely forgive and forget. But beyond our genetic makeup, we’ve learned to react, automatically and unconsciously, to life’s little stresses and insults, and just as with the person allergic to bee stings, our reactions do more damage than the initial source of pain. So regardless of our temperament or biochemical “givens,” our job is to change our automatic and destructive reactions into conscious and healthy responses.
In this way, suffering is optional, although pain—both physical and emotional—is not. Even if we live in constant pain, we have a choice about whether or not to suffer with it. Although thoughts and feelings will arise, seemingly of their own accord (“I feel miserable”; “Why does this happen to me?”; “I wish I were more like So-and-so”), we can choose to focus on those thoughts and feelings, to feed them with our attention—or we can choose to let them pass while we focus on other things.
Take a moment now to do an exercise. Give yourself a few quiet minutes where you will be undisturbed. Set this book down, take a pad and pen, and set them next to you. Close your eyes, take a few calming breaths, and invite your imagination to engage. Reflect for a few moments upon what you are like when you are most alive, most joyous, most truly your best self. Whom are you with? What are you doing? How do you look and feel? See yourself in your mind’s eye as joyous and present, and allow yourself to experience this feeling now, as best you can. Then take some time to write about what you imagined and what you learned from it.
Now repeat the exercise, only this time reflect upon what you are like when you are at your worst: depressed, moody, unable to handle the stresses of daily life. Again, try to see yourself in as much detail as possible. Whom are you with? What are you doing? How do you look and feel? See yourself as stressed and miserable, and allow yourself to experience this feeling, now, as best you can. Again, write down your experience.
Now ask yourself how the second experience was different from the first? Which do you prefer?
I’d like you to notice how, with just a few minutes’ effort, you were able to create two very different experiences for yourself. Nothing in your life had actually changed, except that you’d read a few more sentences of this book. No loved ones had abandoned you, no work problems arose, no opportunities for happiness or security had been lost. Yet you were able to take yourself from a joyous or at least a calm state into a state of misery and depression—simply with the power of your mind. Although you don’t do it consciously or “on purpose,” if you’re often depressed, your mind follows a similar course several times a day, so start becoming aware of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences on which you choose to focus.
This can be a very difficult point for many of us to grasp. When we’re in the depths of our depression, nothing is more insulting—or less help-ful—than hearing someone say, “It’s your own fault. Why don’t you just buck up and think of something cheerful?” When you’re overwhelmed with a flood of fear, anger, or confusion, you know that’s all there is. You can’t begin to imagine that life holds calm, compassion, joy.
I promise you, whatever you feel, however deep your depression runs, you can experience joy within it and alongside it. If you’ve already begun to act on some of the diet, exercise, and lifestyle suggestions in Steps One and Two, you may already have begun to feel a bit better. But beyond these important physical steps, there are mental, emotional, and spiritual steps you can take as well, not to eradicate the automatic reactions you’ve practiced for so long, but to train yourself to turn to new responses. Just as you’ve learned to focus on the “worst-self” aspects of your experience—a focus aided and abetted by your brain chemistry and genetics, to be sure—now you can learn to create that “best-self” experience for yourself, simply by practicing it over and over again.
I’ll share with you one final story to illustrate the importance of where we place our attention. This one comes not from the East but from our own North America, a lovely Native American tale about a boy and his grandfather:
A young boy, about five years old, goes to spend the summer with his grandfather, who is a respected tribal elder. He adores his grandfather and watches his every move. Very quickly he notices a pattern. Every morning, about sunrise, his grandfather goes to an altar in his home, takes off a necklace, and places it on the altar. Then he sits in silence for several minutes. Afterward, he puts on the necklace and continues with his day. Every evening, around sunset, he repeats this ritual.
After a few days, the little boy can no longer contain himself. “Grandfather, what are you doing?” he asks.
“I am taking some time to quiet my spirit and honor our ancestors,” the old man replies.
“But what is on the necklace?” the boy inquires.
The grandfather takes off the necklace and shows it to the boy. On it are the heads of two wolves.
“Grandfather, what do they mean?”
“Well,” the grandfather replies, “inside each of us there are two wolves fighting to control us. One of them is scared and mean and has a hunger that can never be filled. It cares only about itself. The other is brave and kind and shares whatever it has with others. It cares as much about the community as it does for itself.”
Wide-eyed and a little frightened, the boy asks, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”
The old man smiles at his grandson. “Whichever one we feed the most.”