Well, my time in cognitive based therapy was quite short. Prior to that I had undergone traditional psychotherapy and it really ended up unleashing a lot of anger but not at anyone in particular. I was put off by the notion that sleep deprivation is considered a valid tool for some treatments in the belief it lowers the ego. I think that’s right. But I loathe sleep deprivation from having had several years of it from work and because it’s a time honored and widely used method of torture. No thanks.

I looked at the biochemistry angle of things and was absolutely convinced since the chemistry itself was organically wired and functioning a certain way-to my detriment-that therapy was negligible at best. I refused a long time to spend any more money in therapy but finally caved and decided to try a clinical social worker.

She introduced me to the concept of ANTS ie automatic negative thoughts. The idea being, as I recall, that thoughts about the self are programmed in such a way as to reflect negatively in the self automatically. This would create a cascade effect making it worse.

So the countermeasure in part is mindfulness. It’s not as easy as it sounds because you have to think with awareness. I daydream a lot and can wander in all directions and could go down a dark path without thinking about it. That starts a nose dive. So I kept a small journal (which I lost last week somewhere in a university building) and reflected.

I had to catch myself going down dark paths and consciously put a stop to it by replacing the negative with something positive about myself. For example, “I bring important support to my wife and children” rather than the opposite. It’s not the same as saying the kids love me or they need me. There is s risk of identifying with a person for validation rather than the self.

Somehow within a couple or three weeks my brain just got it. It was like some missing piece of code that tipped the scale and I have not really had any episodes of depression in over two years. Being mindful is a good discipline regardless and taught in Buddhism for disciplined thinking. But I don’t do it much now, at least not consciously. Instead, I’ve developed some kind of tripwire it radar that picks up on the negative and then I become conscious of it and work to defeat it.

The Clinical social worker told me it is possible to ‘rewire’ The brain with therapy and I think PTSD sufferers may benefit from this concept though I have no past events to have given rise to PTSD.

So that’s basically how it worked. There were no deep couch crushing conversations and revelations, no lengthy exchanges, but rather examining the nature of what was going on, suggested strategies and implementation.