Lufciferius

Thanks for your kind words.

Thank you very much for your kind words and wishes. The technique I described is something that work for me. Even in this regard. That does not mean that I am a saint. I still hurt the people around me from time to time. That is the nature of us humans I guess. But it is by far not as often as it used to be and I have the strength to apologies and set things right again shortly after I hurt somebody. Just yesterday when I got the children into bed was such an occasion. When my children go to bed they usually read a story and cuddle with my wife, while I attend my youngest daughter (3 month old). Yesterday was different. Both of my eldest children were screaming and hurting each other and even hurting my wife. I do not know exactly what happened and it is not important here. After a while I was as usual switching with my wife - because I got to bed together with the children. When I came into the bedroom I could smell the tension. My wife was furious and only her willpower kept her from doing something she would regret later. I was ensuring her, that I can handle the situation and she can go. At that moment I seriously intended to calm both children peacefully. I assumed, that I was peaceful myself. I could not have been more wrong. After a period of not even one minute of trying the peaceful way I snapped. I put both children into their respective places. I basically dumped the blankets over them without a second thought and then ignored them. My eldest daughter was crying because I dumped two blankets on her and it was to warm and my son was almost crying because I gave him literally a cold shoulder without cuddling him even once. As I was lying there I still felt the same rage, but also shame. I waited for the rage to subside and first forgave myself for that moment. Afterwards I calmed down my daughter and apologiesed to her. Than I applogiesed to my son and cuddled him as long as he wanted. A year ago I would have slept with that rage and even taken it into the next day. I am very grateful that I now have developed emotionally to that point.

I am sorry to have caused such a strong reaction in you. I hoped to inspire not to polarize with this topic. You are correct, that from another point of view this certainly could look like spam. That is why I took the time to write about it in as much detail as possible and to include everything I have found as free resources. I do not know how I would have reacted to this post, had I read it during my depression. Unfortunately it is not possible for me to proof that I am not affiliated with Dr. Tataryn. If you can think of a way to do that I am more than happy to hear about it. As for the 3 weeks. That is just my personal journey. I have no other account of someone who used it to resolve their depression. Therefore I cannot say how long it will take for others. I hope that my post did not give you the impression, that I claim that everyone can resolve their depression in a matter of three weeks. If that was the case, than I am sorry. I do not want to claim that or even that is can resolve any depression. I just want to add another tool that others can try to use for their depression.

First, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on the subject. I am indeed not as well informed as you on the other therapies, that you mentioned. As I never took any therapy I cannot judge how close the approach I used is to any of these. But I remember Dr. Tataryn talking about that the approach is based on a standard intervention used in psycho-therapy. Lately - after writing this topic - I came the same realization, that this technique might have work as well for me as I was already aware of the connection from body-sensations, emotions and thoughts. Although in the course of using it a gained many new insights into this dynamic. So in the end I assume that it can be used as a tool for developing that awareness. E.g. when I use one of the trigger sentences and my body starts to shake or I am start to cry, than the link between the spoken emotion and the body sensations should be obvious 😅 I am aware of, that as of now and in comparison to other people here, I did not face any of the crises you mentioned. I am also aware of that when facing a big loss I will go through the same stages of grieve as anyone. What I meant with the "certainly" statement is, that using this technique has stringly reduced the fear of strong emotions. I can now go into situations, which are emotionally charged, with confidence that even when I get a scar, I know how to heal it. But that is obviously only my gut feeling. In the beginning I thought that this is a passing euphoria. If it is, it lasts now for almost a year, getting stronger as time goes by. Thank you very much for sharing your experience on that matter. I will keep it in mind. 😊

For me nothing seemed to help in the beginning. I tried Nootropics (plant based pills to enhance mood and cognitive functions), cold showers (I lasted one week), intermitted fasting, dopamine fasting (this actually helped, but I could not stick to it), different meditation styles and talking about it. At this point I was looking into local supportive groups I can join. As I am not an outgoing person this was not my first choice. By pure coincidence I happened to come across a practise, that was intended to explore emotions and therefore raise emotional intelligence. I never suspected, that it cleared my depression in a matter of three weeks. That was a year ago. I never driffted back to a depressed state since. So to summaries. It was pure psychological for me and all I needed to do was learn how to heal my emotional scars.

What does that mean exactly? Googling it did not give me more information. At least if you did not mean Timberlake Lake Camping Resort 😅 Sry if that question seems stupid.

Not at all. At least not for me. That is one of the reasons why I started this topic. Anyone how comes across the website for this practice would think the same. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to try despite my doubts as nothing else worked. Could you tell me more about, where your doubts are? I would like to have a sincere discussion about that if you like.

With this post I share my journey into and out of my depression in the hope that I can help at least one person out of their depression My Story February 2019 - my second child was born. Our first child was two years old at that time. Although she was what you call an "easy child", I had some experiences with her that left scars. Shortly after our second child was born my depression started. It was quite mild in the beginning. I was in a bad mood more than usual or at times even apathetic. From that point on it got progressively worse. I was in spiral which goes like this: I am in a bad mood -> I hurt my children or my wife -> I feel bad about it -> I am more often in a bad mood. The only good thing was, that I was aware of the damage that I did. Still at the peak of the depression I had passive suicide thoughts (like "It would be nice if that truck on the other side of the road would roll over me). So after half a year I started searching for ways out of my depression. Never did I expect that the key would fall into my lap by coincidence. I tried almost anything that did not cost too much. I tried Nootropics (plant based pills to enhance mood and cognitive functions)⚕️, cold showers (I lasted one week)🥶, intermitted fasting🤢, dopamine fasting (this actually helped, but I could not stick to it)🙅‍♀️, different meditation styles 👼 and talking about it. At this point I was looking into local supportive groups I can join. As I am not an outgoing person this was not my first choice. This was January 2020 - almost a year into the depression and also the month it ended. While listening to a podcast about meditation there was something that piqued my interest. A coincidence that dissolved my depression in a matter of only three weeks. A coincidence that now after more than a year has given me an unprecedented emotional stability. Now I can say with certainty, that it is not possible for me to fall back into the depression. That coincidence is the bio-emotive framework [message member for further info]. The rest of the post is about that technique. The technique At first it sounded like your typical "Give me your money and I make you happy" hoax. Fortunately, I found enough freely available information on podcasts, YouTube and reddit to piece together the technique of it. Here I will describe the technique I used to dissolve my depression and which I still use today. There are two ways to approach this. The first is doing it regularly at a specific set time ⏰ - I would recommend that for the beginning. I did it in the first two weeks 2-3 times per day. Still even 1 times per day is good enough. When doing it regularly I am doing it like this: Find a place where you feel safe. For me that is the sauna. It must be a place where can relax yourself. Where you can be yourself without fear. You will later see why that is important. Start by feeling your body. That means feeling the breath and movements that come with the breath. Feeling each body part. Whenever you feel a body part that is tense, try to relax it. For each trigger sentence (I give a list of them after the second way) do the following: Say the sentence out loud. Observe if there is a reaction in the body (this can range from a slight tension in the chest to outright sobbing). Wait for at least two breath for a reaction. When there is no reaction go back to saying the sentence until you have said it 5 times (when you do the practice for some time you will know when there is no reaction and 1-2 times is enough) When there is a reaction wait for it to pass or at least clam down a little and say it again. Do that until there is no reaction anymore (this can take a while - for me the longest time was about 30 minutes for a single sentence). Let your emotions guide you when the reactions are strong (crying or sobbing) - I will go into detail what I mean by that in the details section. Reframe each sentence that had a reaction either by inverting the sentence or by rewriting the memory/situations that accompanied the sentence. I will give a few examples of reframing after listing all trigger sentences. The second way to approach this is when there is a strong emotion either suppressed or open. With open emotions I mean anger/rage 😡, fear/panic 😱, or sadness/grief 😭. I found that using open emotions is the easiest way to approach this technique, but it is not always possible to do the practice in these situations. With suppressed emotions I mean emotions you do not feel directly, but as body sensations. For example, when I am angry, but I must suppress it for any reason, my throat gets super tight. In extreme cases I cannot speak anymore as my jaw tightens up too 🤐. Most of the time it is far more subtle than that. To identify these situations a lot of awareness is necessary. That is why I said that the first approach is easier for the beginning. Of course, both can be used at the same time (having a regular time and doing it when strong emotions arrive). The second way is similar to the first, but it has usually a context. Find a place where you feel safe. For me that is the sauna. It must be a place where can relax yourself. Where you can be yourself without fear. You will later see why that is important. Remember the situation that caused the strong emotion (if you know it). Try to resist the urge to release the strong emotions by crying - at least I have developed that tendency over time. Wait to find the correct trigger sentence For each trigger sentence (I give a list of them down below) do the following: Say the sentence out loud while picturing the situation. Observe if there is a reaction in the body (this can range from a slight tension in the chest to outright sobbing). Wait for at least two breath for a reaction. When there is no reaction go to the next trigger sentence. When a string emotion is ready to usually does not take more than one time saying the sentence to have a reaction. When there is a reaction wait for it to pass or at least clam down a little and say it again. Do that until there is no reaction anymore (this can take a while - for me the longest time was about 30 minutes for a single sentence). Let your emotions guide you when the reactions are strong (crying or sobbing) - I will go into detail what I mean by that in the details section. Reframe each sentence that had a reaction either by inverting the sentence or by reframing the memory/situations that accompanied the sentence. I will give a few examples of reframing after listing all trigger sentences. Here is the list for the trigger sentences as well as the inverted sentence: Trigger: I am helpless Opposite: I am potent/powerful Trigger: I am hopeless Opposite: I am optimistic Trigger: I am worthless Opposite: I am valued Trigger: I am insignificant Opposite: I am significant Trigger: I am inadequate Opposite: I am adequate Trigger: I am a bad person/parent/... Opposite: I am a good person/parent/... Trigger: I am alone Opposite: I am connected/cared for Trigger: I am lost/disoriented Opposite: I have a vision Trigger: I am empty Opposite: I am full Reframing step in detail This is the most transforming step of the practice. Only with this step do long lasting changes occur. As explained later in the section "What happens and why does it work?" this technique basically resolves feeling believes. In short because for traumatic or many smaller experiences where one of the trigger sentences is felt a believe is formed, that "I am [..]". This is part of our character, of who we are. The reframing step tries to dissolve the believes from their root. This might sound a bit too good to be true, but you will see that is quite logical shortly. Especially in intensive sessions it is often the case for me that I remember something from the past. Either an especially traumatic memory or many smaller occurrences of this feeling believe. It does not necessarily have to be a memory of my childhood. It can also be a memory from a few minutes ago. While being in the third step I will play these memories over and over again together with saying the trigger sentences until all emotions of that memory are released 😭. I know that I am at that point is simply that I have no bodily reaction to the memory nor to the trigger sentence. And now the interesting part starts. At this point my head is extremely clear as there are no emotions that cloud my mind. So, my logical brain can now look at these memories objectively 🧐. It is easy to see why that feeling occurred, but also why it most likely does not have any relevance in my life anymore. That realization alone is enough to color that memory in a different emotional color, so that it does not trigger anymore. And now I will give some examples how I resolved some of my feeling believes. Example - Going through my regrets in life 😟 The trigger sentence here was "I am worthless". I remembered while releasing the emotions many memories of wrong decisions. These ranged from buying a useless toy as a child to not perusing my dream career with more vigor. After releasing the emotions, I could look at each memory individually and see what I learned from that regret and how I applied that knowledge. Even now after many weeks after that session I can still look at these memories without feeling troubled. Example - Finding my purpose 💪 The trigger sentences were "I am disoriented." and "I am worthless.". This time more general memories were occurring , that I always did what I was told instead of choosing myself. Choosing my profession, choosing my school, choosing my hobbies, ... This time it was not enough to look at the memories objectively. Sometimes it is necessary to go into action. For this session I felt that I needed to find a purpose which reflects me and which is not decided by others. And just like that I knew it. For me being in the reframing step this happens quite often, that I have a sudden inspiration about the problem. Example - Accepting helplessness 😨 The trigger sentences were "I am helpless." and "I am hopeless." In this session it did not need to go to my childhood. I remembered a night with my daughter where I was alone with her and she did not take the feeding bottle from me. She cried herself to sleep because she wanted milk and I sat helpless beside her bed and could do nothing. Here there was no reframing at all. It simply had to accept that I was helpless and that something like that will happen again, because that is life. It took me a couple of sessions to work that one out. When there is no clear memory involved with the session, I will at least say the opposite sentence out loud. For example, "I am bad." -> "I am good." or "I want to be good". Sometimes this gives me another emotional release. In the reframing examples above I had additional emotional releases as well. Other times when inverting the sentence I suddenly remember something and can work with that. There are even times when nothing happens. In that case the same sentence will come up again in the future. The last case where nothing happens usually occurs, when the "emotional pressure" was not enough. Other fine details Here I will go into a few fine points about the technique, that I found out during the course of this year of using it. What is meant with "let your emotions guide you"? First of all being emotionally charged liked that, triggers some memories from the recent but also from the distant past. Do not resist the memory. Do not analyze the memory. Simply let the memory play 🎥. Once you remembered it you can use the memory in addition to the trigger sentence by consciously playing the memory while saying the trigger sentence. Sometimes it is helpful to articulate the memory. For example in the third reframing example above I articulated "I don't know what to do. I am so sorry. I don't want to hurt you." while playing the memory of me sitting beside the bed. These were things I could not say back then. A little trick to invoke memories, when there is no memory is to ask in my thoughts "Where have I felt these feelings before? Was there a similar situation in the past like the one that triggered these feelings?". Another thing I mean by "let your emotions guide you" is to let your emotional brain change the trigger sentence. Sometimes I feel like the trigger sentence is not the cause, but only an effect. For example, I can switch from "I am a bad parent" because I yelled at my children to "I am alone" because I remember a situation where I had to much responsibility in the past. For me that also means that I sometimes go from "I am worthless." to another sentence, which is not a trigger sentence like "I am not needed.", because the reaction is bigger. How to start with this practice? As mentioned before, I would recommend doing it at least daily or even more than once per day until you had a couple of strong reactions (crying, sobbing) 😭. For me it was difficult to let go of my control. It was difficult to let the tears flow. I needed two weeks of daily practice and small reactions until I got my first big release. After it becomes easy to let go, to release the emotions and to recognize suppressed emotions, it is usually enough the do the second approach, that I talked about above. How to handle strong emotions? With that I not only mean crying and sobbing. For me that means rocking back and forth. Having the feeling, that there is too much. That if I continue, I will burst or go crazy 🤯. For me it also means that I feel like I must flee or destroy something or someone (including myself). For me it also means that I have the feeling of millions of ants crawling over me. In the beginning I had stopped and would tell my wife about it. She would than clam me down and I would cry "more comfortably". Now I know that this is not necessary (which is probably a blessing if you do not have someone to turn to). Now I ensure myself that I am safe. That nothing can hurt me in the place where I do the practice. After that it is always a combination of patience and relaxation that pulls me through the reaction. Patience to wait until it is over, even when it feels like it will never stop. I have learned that for me it is often a sudden and unpredictable stop. Especially when I want to flee or hurt myself or others it helps tremendously to relax my body. The whole practice should be done with a relaxed body - as far as possible. Only then will the reactions be "safer". Why do I keep yawning during the practice? It took me a while to figure that one out. At first, I thought, that yawning is a way for me to suppress crying. Later I accepted, that yawning is simply a weak reaction like tearing up. Nonetheless, I am still annoyed by it from time to time. What happens and why does it work? In this section I will go into the theory behind it 📔. Both from the sources I used as well as my own understanding. When I have any experience, the brain stores the memory together with the feeling. When the feeling is strong the memory is strong too. That much is common knowledge. Some of you might even know the next part. When I have an experience, where the feeling is especially strong or suppressed - suppressing seems to strengthen the impression -, my brain will remember that I must avoid these experiences. The process to do that is a bit of a double-edged sword. When I am in a similar situation, I will subconsciously feel the same feeling I felt in the first experience. This is valuable, as I will not make the same mistake again. But if the remembered feeling is strong, the new memory will be stored with the same feeling even when nothing happened. To go with an example here, let's imagine a small child not remembering something when it was asked about it in front of an audience (for example school). The feeling might be: I feel stupid -> I feel inadequate. Later when faced with a similar situation the child will be nervous as it subconsciously remembers the feeling 😖. Because it is nervous it makes a mistake again and again. Now comes the part which was new to me. For each new memory a so-called feeling believe is strengthened. In the first experience the child simply felt inadequacy. But after many instances the child will develop the believe: I am inadequate. It becomes a part of their being, of their character. Later in life when as an adult he/she needs to give a presentation 👩‍💼, he/she might trigger this feeling believe and in worst case avoid the presentation at all cost. How does the technique help in this case? This is what was hard for me to believe, but in this one year I confirmed it over and over again. When doing the practice, I remember all or at least some of the situations. I feel very strongly the accumulated feeling believe. I release all the emotions safely through cry, sobbing and so on 😭. After that the memories are still in my head, but the feeling is not. Now the logical brain can look at the memories and reframe them. Basically, I am reprogramming the memory. I do not change the feeling I remember in that situation, but the feeling that this memory is giving me. For the example above she/he could reframe like that. She/he could summaries that she/he felt inadequate because the teacher was ridiculing her/him. But she/he simply had not learned that fact yet. Later he/she was simply nervous and could not remember the facts he/she had already learned. Now he/she is very knowledgeable in her/his field. So, there is no reason to feel inadequate. Later when remembering the first experience he/she remembers, that as a child he/she felt inadequate, but the feeling he/she now feels when remembering is a feeling of sympathy and acceptance 👼. With that the feeling believes are dissolved. I assume that all of us have many feeling believes we are not aware of. With this practice we can dissolve them one by one and become free of the burden of our past. And now I will take about why that is helpful for depression. Why does it work for depression? Unfortunately, I do not remember the talk in which [message member for details] talked about depression. But I remember that it resonated with my experience. The following is only a hypothesis based on my own experiences. It is not scientific accurate. When I was in a depression, I was most of the time apathetic and exploded easily 🤯. The hypothesis is, that when there is too much suppressed emotions, the emotional brain is cut off. Because we cannot work being "emotional" 24/7 or because there is no time - because you cannot punch anyone in the face for no apparent reason. Being triggered 24/7 happens most likely because there are many strong feeling believes which get triggered throughout the day. Being in a depression means that most experiences are colored in negative feelings, so the feeling believes accumulate faster -> the depression gets worse. The way out is the way through these feelings. Processing them safely, reframing the feeling believes and finally returning to a "normal" state of mind 👼. Further resources Originally I wanted to post a few helpful links here, but this is difficult. You can find many free resources from the website. Simply google "bio-emotive framework" and you should find the website. There you can find in the navigation bar "Free -> Podcasts/Videos". I would recommend the podcast with "Deconstructing Yourself" and "Emerge". I used these two to get a better understanding of the practice. I found the basic idea of a practice on reddit. For anyone interested, I can share the link via message. Beside that you will get an ebook about "Healthy Crying" when you subscribe to the bio-emotive framework newsletter at the time of writing this. And last but not least you can pay money to participate in a regular training-for-beginner type o' thing. I personally never felt the need and unfortunately I cannot affort it. Conclusion This technique can potentially get you out of the depression. But it is not the safest way. It is a good practice for explorers and anyone who does not know what to do anymore - seriously before doing something more extreme, there is not more harm in trying this. Again, if there is even one person that I can help with this post all the effort was worth it. Please feel free to ask me anything. I will always try to answer as fast as possible. Just keep in mind that I am German so there might be a delay because I must sleep 😉

Thanks for the suggestion. I will gladly do that. I have put the post in "One Step At A Time". I think that is a good place for it. Unfortunately because I use a few links to further resources, the post needs to be Approved. I hope it gets approved soon.

With this post I share my journey into and out of my depression in the hope that I can help at least one person out of their depression. My Story February 2019 - my second child was born. Our first child was two years old at that time. Although she was what you call an "easy child", I had some experiences with her that left scars. Shortly after our second child was born my depression started. It was quite mild in the beginning. I was in a bad mood more than usual or at times even apathetic. From that point on it got progressively worse. I was in spiral which goes like this: I am in a bad mood -> I hurt my children or my wife -> I feel bad about it -> I am more often in a bad mood. The only good thing was, that I was aware of the damage that I did. Still at the peak of the depression I had passive suicide thoughts (like "It would be nice if that truck on the other side of the road would roll over me). So after half a year I started searching for ways out of my depression. Never did I expect that the key would fall into my lap by coincidence. I tried almost anything that did not cost too much. I tried Nootropics (plant based pills to enhance mood and cognitive functions)⚕️, cold showers (I lasted one week)🥶, intermitted fasting🤢, dopamine fasting (this actually helped, but I could not stick to it)🙅‍♀️, different meditation styles 👼 and talking about it. At this point I was looking into local supportive groups I can join. As I am not an outgoing person this was not my first choice. This was January 2020 - almost a year into the depression and also the month it ended. While listening to a podcast about meditation there was something that piqued my interest. A coincidence that dissolved my depression in a matter of only three weeks. A coincidence that now after more than a year has given me an unprecedented emotional stability. Now I can say with certainty, that it is not possible for me to fall back into the depression. That coincidence is the bio-emotive framework from Dr. Douglas J. Tataryn. The rest of the post is about that technique. The technique At first it sounded like your typical "Give me your money and I make you happy" hoax. Fortunately, I found enough freely available information on podcasts, YouTube and reddit to piece together the technique of it. Here I will describe the technique I used to dissolve my depression and which I still use today. There are two ways to approach this. The first is doing it regularly at a specific set time ⏰ - I would recommend that for the beginning. I did it in the first two weeks 2-3 times per day. Still even 1 times per day is good enough. When doing it regularly I am doing it like this: Find a place where you feel safe. For me that is the sauna. It must be a place where can relax yourself. Where you can be yourself without fear. You will later see why that is important. Start by feeling your body. That means feeling the breath and movements that come with the breath. Feeling each body part. Whenever you feel a body part that is tense, try to relax it. For each trigger sentence (I give a list of them after the second way) do the following: Say the sentence out loud. Observe if there is a reaction in the body (this can range from a slight tension in the chest to outright sobbing). Wait for at least two breath for a reaction. When there is no reaction go back to saying the sentence until you have said it 5 times (when you do the practice for some time you will know when there is no reaction and 1-2 times is enough) When there is a reaction wait for it to pass or at least clam down a little and say it again. Do that until there is no reaction anymore (this can take a while - for me the longest time was about 30 minutes for a single sentence). Let your emotions guide you when the reactions are strong (crying or sobbing) - I will go into detail what I mean by that in the details section. Reframe each sentence that had a reaction either by inverting the sentence or by rewriting the memory/situations that accompanied the sentence. I will give a few examples of reframing after listing all trigger sentences. The second way to approach this is when there is a strong emotion either suppressed or open. With open emotions I mean anger/rage 😡, fear/panic 😱, or sadness/grief 😭. I found that using open emotions is the easiest way to approach this technique, but it is not always possible to do the practice in these situations. With suppressed emotions I mean emotions you do not feel directly, but as body sensations. For example, when I am angry, but I must suppress it for any reason, my throat gets super tight. In extreme cases I cannot speak anymore as my jaw tightens up too 🤐. Most of the time it is far more subtle than that. To identify these situations a lot of awareness is necessary. That is why I said that the first approach is easier for the beginning. Of course, both can be used at the same time (having a regular time and doing it when strong emotions arrive). The second way is similar to the first, but it has usually a context. Find a place where you feel safe. For me that is the sauna. It must be a place where can relax yourself. Where you can be yourself without fear. You will later see why that is important. Remember the situation that caused the strong emotion (if you know it). Try to resist the urge to release the strong emotions by crying - at least I have developed that tendency over time. Wait to find the correct trigger sentence For each trigger sentence (I give a list of them down below) do the following: Say the sentence out loud while picturing the situation. Observe if there is a reaction in the body (this can range from a slight tension in the chest to outright sobbing). Wait for at least two breath for a reaction. When there is no reaction go to the next trigger sentence. When a string emotion is ready to usually does not take more than one time saying the sentence to have a reaction. When there is a reaction wait for it to pass or at least clam down a little and say it again. Do that until there is no reaction anymore (this can take a while - for me the longest time was about 30 minutes for a single sentence). Let your emotions guide you when the reactions are strong (crying or sobbing) - I will go into detail what I mean by that in the details section. Reframe each sentence that had a reaction either by inverting the sentence or by reframing the memory/situations that accompanied the sentence. I will give a few examples of reframing after listing all trigger sentences. Here is the list for the trigger sentences as well as the inverted sentence: Trigger: I am helpless Opposite: I am potent/powerful Trigger: I am hopeless Opposite: I am optimistic Trigger: I am worthless Opposite: I am valued Trigger: I am insignificant Opposite: I am significant Trigger: I am inadequate Opposite: I am adequate Trigger: I am a bad person/parent/... Opposite: I am a good person/parent/... Trigger: I am alone Opposite: I am connected/cared for Trigger: I am lost/disoriented Opposite: I have a vision Trigger: I am empty Opposite: I am full Reframing step in detail This is the most transforming step of the practice. Only with this step do long lasting changes occur. As explained later in the section "What happens and why does it work?" this technique basically resolves feeling believes. In short because for traumatic or many smaller experiences where one of the trigger sentences is felt a believe is formed, that "I am [..]". This is part of our character, of who we are. The reframing step tries to dissolve the believes from their root. This might sound a bit too good to be true, but you will see that is quite logical shortly. Especially in intensive sessions it is often the case for me that I remember something from the past. Either an especially traumatic memory or many smaller occurrences of this feeling believe. It does not necessarily have to be a memory of my childhood. It can also be a memory from a few minutes ago. While being in the third step I will play these memories over and over again together with saying the trigger sentences until all emotions of that memory are released 😭. I know that I am at that point is simply that I have no bodily reaction to the memory nor to the trigger sentence. And now the interesting part starts. At this point my head is extremely clear as there are no emotions that cloud my mind. So, my logical brain can now look at these memories objectively 🧐. It is easy to see why that feeling occurred, but also why it most likely does not have any relevance in my life anymore. That realization alone is enough to color that memory in a different emotional color, so that it does not trigger anymore. And now I will give some examples how I resolved some of my feeling believes. Example - Going through my regrets in life 😟 The trigger sentence here was "I am worthless". I remembered while releasing the emotions many memories of wrong decisions. These ranged from buying a useless toy as a child to not perusing my dream career with more vigor. After releasing the emotions, I could look at each memory individually and see what I learned from that regret and how I applied that knowledge. Even now after many weeks after that session I can still look at these memories without feeling troubled. Example - Finding my purpose 💪 The trigger sentences were "I am disoriented." and "I am worthless.". This time more general memories were occurring , that I always did what I was told instead of choosing myself. Choosing my profession, choosing my school, choosing my hobbies, ... This time it was not enough to look at the memories objectively. Sometimes it is necessary to go into action. For this session I felt that I needed to find a purpose which reflects me and which is not decided by others. And just like that I knew it. For me being in the reframing step this happens quite often, that I have a sudden inspiration about the problem. Example - Accepting helplessness 😨 The trigger sentences were "I am helpless." and "I am hopeless." In this session it did not need to go to my childhood. I remembered a night with my daughter where I was alone with her and she did not take the feeding bottle from me. She cried herself to sleep because she wanted milk and I sat helpless beside her bed and could do nothing. Here there was no reframing at all. It simply had to accept that I was helpless and that something like that will happen again, because that is life. It took me a couple of sessions to work that one out. When there is no clear memory involved with the session, I will at least say the opposite sentence out loud. For example, "I am bad." -> "I am good." or "I want to be good". Sometimes this gives me another emotional release. In the reframing examples above I had additional emotional releases as well. Other times when inverting the sentence I suddenly remember something and can work with that. There are even times when nothing happens. In that case the same sentence will come up again in the future. The last case where nothing happens usually occurs, when the "emotional pressure" was not enough. Other fine details Here I will go into a few fine points about the technique, that I found out during the course of this year of using it. What is meant with "let your emotions guide you"? First of all being emotionally charged liked that, triggers some memories from the recent but also from the distant past. Do not resist the memory. Do not analyze the memory. Simply let the memory play 🎥. Once you remembered it you can use the memory in addition to the trigger sentence by consciously playing the memory while saying the trigger sentence. Sometimes it is helpful to articulate the memory. For example in the third reframing example above I articulated "I don't know what to do. I am so sorry. I don't want to hurt you." while playing the memory of me sitting beside the bed. These were things I could not say back then. A little trick to invoke memories, when there is no memory is to ask in my thoughts "Where have I felt these feelings before? Was there a similar situation in the past like the one that triggered these feelings?". Another thing I mean by "let your emotions guide you" is to let your emotional brain change the trigger sentence. Sometimes I feel like the trigger sentence is not the cause, but only an effect. For example, I can switch from "I am a bad parent" because I yelled at my children to "I am alone" because I remember a situation where I had to much responsibility in the past. For me that also means that I sometimes go from "I am worthless." to another sentence, which is not a trigger sentence like "I am not needed.", because the reaction is bigger. How to start with this practice? As mentioned before, I would recommend doing it at least daily or even more than once per day until you had a couple of strong reactions (crying, sobbing) 😭. For me it was difficult to let go of my control. It was difficult to let the tears flow. I needed two weeks of daily practice and small reactions until I got my first big release. After it becomes easy to let go, to release the emotions and to recognize suppressed emotions, it is usually enough the do the second approach, that I talked about above. How to handle strong emotions? With that I not only mean crying and sobbing. For me that means rocking back and forth. Having the feeling, that there is too much. That if I continue, I will burst or go crazy 🤯. For me it also means that I feel like I must flee or destroy something or someone (including myself). For me it also means that I have the feeling of millions of ants crawling over me. In the beginning I had stopped and would tell my wife about it. She would than clam me down and I would cry "more comfortably". Now I know that this is not necessary (which is probably a blessing if you do not have someone to turn to). Now I ensure myself that I am safe. That nothing can hurt me in the place where I do the practice. After that it is always a combination of patience and relaxation that pulls me through the reaction. Patience to wait until it is over, even when it feels like it will never stop. I have learned that for me it is often a sudden and unpredictable stop. Especially when I want to flee or hurt myself or others it helps tremendously to relax my body. The whole practice should be done with a relaxed body - as far as possible. Only then will the reactions be "safer". Why do I keep yawning during the practice? It took me a while to figure that one out. At first, I thought, that yawning is a way for me to suppress crying. Later I accepted, that yawning is simply a weak reaction like tearing up. Nonetheless, I am still annoyed by it from time to time. What happens and why does it work? In this section I will go into the theory behind it 📔. Both from the sources I used as well as my own understanding. When I have any experience, the brain stores the memory together with the feeling. When the feeling is strong the memory is strong too. That much is common knowledge. Some of you might even know the next part. When I have an experience, where the feeling is especially strong or suppressed - suppressing seems to strengthen the impression -, my brain will remember that I must avoid these experiences. The process to do that is a bit of a double-edged sword. When I am in a similar situation, I will subconsciously feel the same feeling I felt in the first experience. This is valuable, as I will not make the same mistake again. But if the remembered feeling is strong, the new memory will be stored with the same feeling even when nothing happened. To go with an example here, let's imagine a small child not remembering something when it was asked about it in front of an audience (for example school). The feeling might be: I feel stupid -> I feel inadequate. Later when faced with a similar situation the child will be nervous as it subconsciously remembers the feeling 😖. Because it is nervous it makes a mistake again and again. Now comes the part which was new to me. For each new memory a so-called feeling believe is strengthened. In the first experience the child simply felt inadequacy. But after many instances the child will develop the believe: I am inadequate. It becomes a part of their being, of their character. Later in life when as an adult he/she needs to give a presentation 👩‍💼, he/she might trigger this feeling believe and in worst case avoid the presentation at all cost. How does the technique help in this case? This is what was hard for me to believe, but in this one year I confirmed it over and over again. When doing the practice, I remember all or at least some of the situations. I feel very strongly the accumulated feeling believe. I release all the emotions safely through cry, sobbing and so on 😭. After that the memories are still in my head, but the feeling is not. Now the logical brain can look at the memories and reframe them. Basically, I am reprogramming the memory. I do not change the feeling I remember in that situation, but the feeling that this memory is giving me. For the example above she/he could reframe like that. She/he could summaries that she/he felt inadequate because the teacher was ridiculing her/him. But she/he simply had not learned that fact yet. Later he/she was simply nervous and could not remember the facts he/she had already learned. Now he/she is very knowledgeable in her/his field. So, there is no reason to feel inadequate. Later when remembering the first experience he/she remembers, that as a child he/she felt inadequate, but the feeling he/she now feels when remembering is a feeling of sympathy and acceptance 👼. With that the feeling believes are dissolved. I assume that all of us have many feeling believes we are not aware of. With this practice we can dissolve them one by one and become free of the burden of our past. And now I will take about why that is helpful for depression. Why does it work for depression? Unfortunately, I do not remember the talk in which Dr. Douglas J. Tataryn talked about depression. But I remember that it resonated with my experience. The following is only a hypothesis based on my own experiences. It is not scientific accurate. When I was in a depression, I was most of the time apathetic and exploded easily 🤯. The hypothesis is, that when there is too much suppressed emotions, the emotional brain is cut off. Because we cannot work being "emotional" 24/7 or because there is no time - because you cannot punch anyone in the face for no apparent reason. Being triggered 24/7 happens most likely because there are many strong feeling believes which get triggered throughout the day. Being in a depression means that most experiences are colored in negative feelings, so the feeling believes accumulate faster -> the depression gets worse. The way out is the way through these feelings. Processing them safely, reframing the feeling believes and finally returning to a "normal" state of mind 👼. Further resources The first podcast, that helped me understand the basic concepts The second podcast, that helped me understand the basic concepts This reddit post describes the basic technique Here are many more informative talks and videos When you subscribe to the newsletter you get a short e-book about "Healthy Crying" - at the time of writing this Here is the shop, if you want to spend money - you should be able to start without spending money Conclusion This technique can potentially get you out of the depression. But it is not the safest way. It is a good practice for explorers and anyone who does not know what to do anymore - seriously before doing something more extreme, there is not more harm in trying this. Again, if there is even one person that I can help with this post all the effort was worth it. Please feel free to ask me anything. I will always try to answer as fast as possible. Just keep in mind that I am German so there might be a delay because I must sleep 😉

Hi there, I am now roughly one year post depression and I would like to share the practice which got me out of the depression and keeps me constantly on the bright side of life. My goal is not to impress or to sell anything. I simply want to help at least one other person to get rid of their depression. I want to create a lengthy post about everything, that I know about that practice and give a forum where members can ask me anything about the technique or my experiences with it and my depression. My question is now, where to put the post? I would like to have as many people as possible reading the post as it increases the chance to help them. By nature it probably should go into the "Therapy" category as it is psychological by nature. But the Depression Central probably has a wider audience. Can anyone suggest me the best place? Thanks in advance.