@Loveyourfate
If you are sad and depressed, and you find yourself dwelling on certain thoughts, which seem to make you even more sad and depressed, then what you should do in that situation, is continue exactly as you are, but without assuming that your feelings, or your thoughts, are a problem. And without assuming that you need to escape from any feeling, and just let the emotion flow inside you, without reacting to it.
What sadness and depression is designed by natural selection to accomplish, is acceptance.
It is literally an acceptance emotion. Actually, it's more like an integration emotion, but I'm keeping it simple here.
Anger, is a fighting emotion.
Fear, is a running and hiding emotion.
Joy, is a celebrating and sharing and reaping emotion.
Sadness, is an accepting and ruminating emotion.
Now, when it comes to sad things, there is resistance to accepting sad possibilities or sad facts, and that is precisely why you need an emotional reflex to put your system into the right gear to handle that painful acceptance. Like a bowel movement. It's automatic, but it can be impeded.
There is resistance, because of the fact that the thing is difficult to accept. So resistance and difficulty is a given to begin with.
Say you are sad about being lonely. Maybe it's a certain time of year, or day of the week like today, friday. And so like many, myself included, there often comes an feeling of sadness, because your system is aware of something, that we're alone. So you may get lost in all sorts of things. Why? Because what sadness does is it withdraws your attention, and sits you down. It makes things which are otherwise appealing, seem unappealing. This is the apathy aspect of it. It redirects all that attention inwardly on how *** you feel, almost like it wants to feel ***. Because actually... it kind of does. It's trying to unpack the bad feelings so it can feel and accept them. This is part of a kind of psychological integration, and how your system works with information which is constantly changing your self-image and world view. It's literally and simply processing information.
It gets stuck with the feelings, and the resistance to feeling those feelings. We try to bypass those feelings in all kinds of ways, especially with thinking. And thinking itself is a good bypass to feeling feelings.
We think with our (imagined) brains, but we feel with our bodies. So if you shift some of your attention away from your head (and brain) and into your body, relaxed muscles and deep breaths, you will open up more to feelings and emotions. And they will process more.
I get sad everyday, and when I feel struggle, it's an instant signpost that I'm running away from something, and I literally will stop and just sit and breath and relax and open up my body and muscles to the feeling and sort of feel my way towards what I don't want to accept. It's mostly feelings, and little bit of attached thoughts. And I just sort of exhale and accept the *** truths of life, and it actually works.
Before I was bypass in so many ways, I was almost insane. I would literally talk to myself. And do other things. It was all bypassing. Thinking. Distracting. All in the name of avoiding feelings.
When I'm really overwhelmed with deep sadness, it can be actually incapacitating, and I will sit like a statue, half dead. But really I'm just deep processing, and not much excessive thinking is going on, I'm kind of just letting the feeling digest like food, and I know from experience, that in a certain amount of time it will digest and pass. And it does.
All that's needed is to not react too much to them. And thinking, is a subtle way we react to and evade our feelings.
I wish I could put that more simple and better. I hope it's understandable anyway.
