I recently had the pleasure of reviewing Little Voice Mastery, and it was a very different read than most of my business book reviews. Although author Blair Singer is focused on helping people improve the bottom line, hit sales goals, and the like, this book has some real meat in it for the depressed person.

For example: on page 126, in the middle of a series of very specific techniques Singer suggests for quelling the nagging, doubting voices that echo in all of our heads, he offers a technique for shiftly one's mood quickly. It's a role play, and it will almost make anyone feeling depressed additionally feel stupid, but that's the little voice of the depression talking, so pay attention to me, not it.

In essence, the technique is one of having a dialogue with oneself, just asking questions about mood until one gets an answer. It's surprising how easy it is to get the subconscious to own up to how it feels if you just ask it a direct question or two. After you've identified your real mood (and we all know that sometimes the anger or sadness is masking something else), the exercise helps you pick another mood and try it out.

Emotions do really follow our direction. If you feel powerless to change, it's not because you're not capable - it's because that damned depression has convinced that you're impotent. Instead of dwelling on it, try a role play out. Just walk through the steps and follow the instructions carefully, so you have no choice but to succeed. You may be surprised that it was easier than you expected.

Business Leadership and Depression

I read and review business books from time to time, and one thing that always comes up in them is leadership. You've got to stand out from the crowd, go against the grain, create a climate of change if you're going to succeed, they all say.

Really?

Business books target the people that want to be exceptional, want to make more money,want to share a special idea or way of doing things with the world - or so they say. But that makes it sound like depressed people aren't - or shouldn't be - in business.

Deep in the depths of depression, who can pick up a book about rallying the troops to victory and not feel inadequate? Designed to inspire, a lot of these books do the opposite for a depression suffererer - and the truth is, plenty of business owners wrestle with depression.

So how do depressed business people succeed? Do they? Can they grow their companies while neglecting themselves, or do both suffer if both are not addressed? I don't know the answers yet.

Do you own a business? Are you depressed? What do you do to make sure your business stays on track, even if you don't?

Depression Stinks Squidoo Lens

I've created a Depression Stinks Lens on Squidoo. Right now it's got links to a basic course on happiness, posts from this blog, and an interesting article on hormones and depression. I would like to add book reviews and other material; please stop in here or there and leave some feedback about what you'd like to see.

Salt Linked to Depression

I grew up in a family that loved salt - it was always handy in a shaker on the dinner table, and we added it to everything. I can remember the soups my mother made as being particularly salty, and how that made them particularly good. I've since given up adding salt to my foods, but I still enjoy a nice, salty bag of chips from time to time. Salt is an awfully satisfying experience for my tongue.

At the University of Iowa some researchers have posited that salt enhances mood, which certainly fits nicely into my own anecdotal experience. Rats were less likely to engage in pleasurable behaviors, such as drink sugary rat goodness, if their salt levels dropped too low. Between the researchers and me we've come up with a few observations about this:

• Salt is a good conductor and probably affects brain function.
• We evolved in a saline environment (the ocean), and have carried on with the same basic chemistry on land.
  
• Our bodies and minds seek out more salt than we probably need, which could suggest addiction or a system that hasn't adapted to the relative abundance of salt we now have. It's not clear if the reason makes much of a difference in the result.
  
• Mood elevation that's tied to salt consumption could be caused by the salt, but it also could be the other way around. Maybe the lack of salt causes anxiety, which is alleviated by eating salt and giving the body what it wants.

"One sign of addiction is using a substance even when it's known to be harmful. Many people are told to reduce sodium due to health concerns, but they have trouble doing so because they like the taste and find low-sodium foods bland."

Again, it could also be that it takes thousands of years for our bodies to adapt to changing circumstances - two thousand years ago the phrase "common table salt" would have been incomprehensible. The desire for salt could simply be an overexaggeration of a real need.

Boy, is this ever a tough blog to keep up! When you're fully depressed, you don't want to right, and when you're fully well, you really can't explain much about how depression feels anymore. The best state of mind, it turns out, is that slightly annoyed and angry space.

Maybe this blog should be less about the disease and more about just letting sufferers rant? I'm not sure yet, but if you have an idea you'd like to share I'm certainly open to ways to keeping this running. I'll keep plugging along as best I can in the meantime, though.

Depression and Homeopathy

I didn't go to a homeopath to have depression treated. Homeopathy doesn't really work that way, despite what the labels on the remedies at the health food store may lead you to believe.
Homeopathy is based on the principle that like cures like, but the word "like" can be complicated here. Remedies are created out of substances that are known to have effects on healthy humans (ranging from mercury and arsenic to lion's milk and wind flower), diluting them down again and again until they're theoretically unable to do much of anything. However, homeopathic theory states that these dilute forms will trigger an immune response the same as if the actual symptoms are present, and kick start the body into healing the causes of those symptoms.
Remedies are "proven" by being given to healthy adults, who track what symptoms manifest after they take them. This is how a given remedy gets the little bullet points on the bottle, like "runny nose" and "arthritis." In fact, though, a remedy may effect quite a few symptoms, and a trained homeopath will identify the remedy that addresses the largest number of symptoms her or she can.
When a remedy is the correct one for a patient, it will even address symptoms you didn't talk about with the homeopath, or that have been suppressed. You can tell this is happening because you may experience little flare-ups ("aggravations,: in the homeopathic vernacular), generally not as strong as the actual symptom and lasting only a day or two. I had what appeared to be poison ivy show up on my knuckle - it was where I got a really bad case about ten years ago, one that spread all over my body.
So I didn't go to a homeopath for depression, but I discovered a couple weeks later that my remedy was addressing suppressed depression. It was a remedy I was taking daily, and after a couple of days of short temper, lack of focus, and mood swings, I consulted with her and she reduced the frequency. The symptoms went away (thankfully), and I know that the little kernel of depression inside me is being chipped away at by my own immune system.
The real point here is that homeopathy is a powerful medicine, and should not be used by people suffering from depression without professional supervision! Taking a remedy for headaches could lead to a lot of problems for a depressed person. On the other hand, undergoing treatment by a trained homeopath could be the solution after long years of suffering.

The Dangerous Law of Attraction

If you've seen the widespread movie The Secret, or you're a practitioner of magic(k), or you have really optimistic friends, you've probably heard about the law of attraction. What you think about, it says, is what you draw into your life.

This tends to work really well for your optimistic friends, who constantly brood over their fulfilling relationships, dwell on their prosperity, and languish in their joy. Not so easy if there's a festering, stinking black cloud worming its way into your soul, though.

This law certainly must work, because it doesn't discriminate. It rewards the positive thinker and punishes the pessimist. Suffering from depression makes this one a real kick in the jimmy, too, since thought=pain already; just realizing that your own negative thoughts could be drawing to you things that reinforce and justify themselves can make a person sink even deeper into the hole - why bother trying?

Break the Blame Cycle
Teaching depressed people about the law of attraction is a great idea - when they're not depressed. It may make them less likely to slip back in, if they can master the thoughts that keep them from the pit. But that's not how it works when the disease is making headway. If you're depressed and dwelling on how negative thoughts create a negative life, it's going to balloon out of control faster than you can imagine.

Don't stop and dwell on how the universe punishes you for suffering - put the brakes on that runaway train right now. Won't do you any good. If the law of attraction is keeping you down, first thing to do is ignore the law of attraction.

Here's what you get if you are depressed and think about the law of attraction:

• Blaming the Universe for your problems
• Blaming God for your problems
• Blaming yourself for your problems

None of the blame solves anything, and it really doesn't matter why depression is happening anyway. There will be time to think about attracting things into your life when you have some positive thoughts. For now, you need to shove that idea out of your mind the way New Yorkers ignore a homeless person on the street.

Time Enough for Attraction Later
It should be clear that I consider depression to be a crafty opponent, one that's inside your head and whispering things to you that make you sink deeper into the pit. Everyone has to judge for themselves, but at the darkest hour I don't think you'll see a lot of success trying to think positive thoughts. There will be time to use the law of attraction later, once you're out of the current hole.

It should be possible, though, to change the subject of that conversation in your head. Don't think about (fill in the bad idea here) right now. Make up a shopping list or walk up and down the stairs ten times. Make a phone call or pet the cat. Anything to distract yourself from that one thought, just for now.

Small Steps
A big part of depression is being overwhelmed by the big picture. No big picture allowed here! Just stop thinking one negative thought by thinking about something neutral. There will be time for more another day. For now, setting aside that shovel with which you're digging that hole, just for a moment, should be enough.