Just One Look Forum Archives

Hiya, I don't suppose I have a hell of a lot to say that hasn't already probably been said, but I kinda wanted to anyway, throw my voice into the mix.

I'm new to looking, only been doing it for a couple of months now. I'm 23 and have been suffering from anxiety and depression from as early 8, never got much help apart from some anti depressants and therapists. Neither have really done anything to help me. One day in a particularly strong depressive spell I laid in bed playing the why game with myself, trying to understand it all, why I felt the way I did, the final answer I came to was that I was afraid of life and typing that into Google led me here. So of course to hear of someone else coming to the same conclusion made me think that just maybe I was onto something, especially since it was an answer I gave myself and not something I had been told. Maybe when kids play the why game they really are asking the right questions, after all there's less nonsense having been built up in their minds, fresh souls so to speak. I wonder if a baby could communicate as well as an adult, that baby could have some profound things to say.

I'm still wonder whether I'm doing it right, then of course I think how could I do it wrong, that kind of sense of self and existence is such a subtle feeling but has always been there. I can never hold my attention onto it for more than a few seconds, though I am looking many times a day because at this stage it does have the practical use of taking my mind out of whatever feelings or thought processes I'm currently going through, even if it's just for a second before they kick back in again. So whenever I think or feel something I don't like (which is pretty much 99% of my day) I have look.

Whether it's having an effect on me yet I don't know, some things I have started to see a little differently than before the looking, but I have no way of telling whether that's just my mind working as always, jumping from idea to idea. One example would be my perception of depression, I always used to think people became depressed because they were unhappy, now I feel like people become depressed because they've become AWARE that they are unhappy and have just started paying attention to it. Especially since the depressed mind becomes cynical, feeling that many of the things that people do to make themselves happy are really just meaningless distractions, these aren't making them happy, that what they call happiness is really just a state of denial. What if the depressed mind is a mind that's actually starting to see through the veil as it were, I tell my therapist this and she disagrees, I think to myself maybe you're just in the same state of denial as everyone else. She always tries to get me to do things and get things into my life to lift my mood, I try to tell her I don't need distractions, that it's not my life that needs fixing it's my mind, that she's trying to treat my depression by treating my symptoms, that I don't want to return to the same of denial that so many seem to be in. I'm sure anyone who has had depression has heard someone say "no wonder you're depressed, you never go out!". Has no-one ever stopped to think that maybe it's the other way around. Of course these thoughts could just be the product of a depressed mental state as she says, and have no more truth to them than anything else.

Either way I'll keep looking, it's starting to become habit now, it feels like a familiar place in my mind I can always go back to, rest on. The pure simplicity of the idea of looking is really attractive too, I can explain it to someone in a text message, or in the space of a couple of minutes, which makes it really easy to spread the idea, even if I'm not sure whether there's anything to it or not, that simplicity just makes you want to try because, why not?

Lorcraven,

I like the simplicity of your story......you really lay in bed and looked until you figured the fear puzzle out. Keep asking questions, I believe that independent, less conditioned thinking is a byproduct of the looking. One simply looks at life differently, from small things like light refracting on the snow, to larger questions like the ones you ask.

I too was quite depressed and anxious before my recovery. I would swing from one to the other finding momentary relief in the change over from anxiety to depression.....slightly new miserableness! After the looking I found that I became more successful at alleviating my symptoms of depression.....things that I had tried in the past, but failed to maintain, like a healthy diet, exercise, and avoiding numbing (food, alcohol, media) gradually have become routine and second nature. Lately I have noticed that loops of compulsive thinking that seemed so necessary in a kind of superstitious, neurotic way to keep the fear muted somewhat, and the whole apparatus chugging along are slowing and disintegrating. I believe the shifting of the context of fear allows fresh, positive influences to emerge and 'willpower' is no longer as critical.

This, of course, did not happen all at once, but looking back on the last two plus years, I'm astonished at the changes. Sometimes I think, well of course I feel better, I've been running 15 miles a week, eating a very healthy diet, sleeping peacefully, and work and relationships are going well.....but I know that I never could have sustained this for more than a month or two in my former depressive, anxious frame of mind.

Keep asking questions and follow those small impulses to take care of yourself. As John says, all that is false and destructive leaves.