I was going to put this in my blog but thought it was such an important matter it needed the biggest (and best) possible audience to see if there was any collective means of solving this problem.

Two of us here had independently asked this question previously and then they asked me and I realised that though currently it appeared one of those insoluble areas like squaring the circle (whatever that is) or beating gravity, it was still one worth addressing, that of quick non-medical fixes to depression (or any other negative emotion).

The official medical and psychological opinion is ‘no’. and they leave it at that, preferring a combination of long term therapy and tablets which do work for many but not ‘on demand’.
The field of hypnosis, specifically neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), plus two very new methods, eye movement DR and Emotional freedom technique (acupressure tapping while focusing on your feeling) are beginning to make claims in this area but secondary data shows the longer-running NLP to offer quick but short term relief from such emotions, but does give at least clues in which directions to be going towards a reliable and possibly lasting fix for negative feelings.
Yoga and meditation offer ways of conquering negative emotions but again only in a very persistent and gradual way, and I have gleaned the books thoroughly to find some teachers who agree even they haven’t found a way to do it quickly, implying humans aren’t designed to do this so why even try to find a way. This seems very discouraging and though an old colleague used to say there’s nothing new in the world, each generation looks for God and world peace and prosperity as if no one had tried before, it doesn’t mean occasionally if you look far enough one of the issues will be soluble, like many other accidental discoveries.

This, of course, is my field of work so I felt it was safe to raise here as I am not mentioning medical treatments and am able to correct any ‘loose talk’ around the area should any arise.

So, the task I present is like many previous world challenges like man-powered flight, proof of psychic powers etc- I am looking for any method that will shake a person out of a depression quickly and reliably. Current science says ‘impossible’ but our minds, unlike our organs, are flexible and can be changed in unimaginable ways by hypnosis and meditation, which gives me hope this isn’t a wasted effort. I’ll summarise earlier suggestions I’ve had already and the results found when I looked up their previous usage in relevant places.

Thinking positive thoughts: Waste of time.
Distraction: Can work but more luck than judgement, and would need customising to what would work for each person rather than find a single method.
NLP: Anchoring and similar techniques have the seeds of success in them, and need to be tested on hundreds of subjects or more to be refined, and then taught to all doctors and therapists if successful as would save a lot of treatment time.
Yoga: Can work very well for long term inner peace but offers and claims no short term techniques. Yogis claim progress can even take many lifetimes, which doesn’t bode well for depression treatment…
Watching the emotion. This is used my many spiritual teachers, who say if you watch any negative emotion it will eventually lose its energy and die. But this can take ages and not recommended for quick results, and is used to burn away negativity over a very long period in normal usage.

But having had the exact question asked recently as I had queried myself, I realised the time had come to make it a major research area. If anyone could crack this it would be the psychological equivalent of discovering fire. And just because it’s never been done before and relies on a combination of basic common knowledge (as we all share the same spectrum of emotions) and pure chance doesn’t make it a waste of effort. The least likely sources can give insights which can move mountains, and without asking how can we know if anyone may have one of these insights? Let’s see what we can come up with!

If you are not talking about strict clinical depression, but rather "the blues" - reasonably short term and situational depression, then I have a few suggestions.
Is "NLP" what some refer to as "staying in the moment"? If so, it is one of the main techniques recommended by a support group I belong to - it really does work, especially if the negative emotions are asssociated with things like worry, relationship problems, etc.
Excercise - vigorous, outside if at all possible, and, again if possible, with a concrete result. That is, raking the yard is better than running on the treadmill. This leads naturally to the next one-
Getting busy. Any useful, practical activity, preferably involving at least some large motor movements - housecleaning being better than paperwork.
This next one is corny but true - helping others. Altruism is a big self esteem and mood booster, especially when, again, the results are visible and concrete.
Physical contact with other living things. I remember, years ago when I had babies, reading about research into the human need for skin to skin contact - most of us only get this during sex, and it's not enough. Things like cuddling a cat are a poor substitute, but I've heard of some research saying that even that is very beneficial.

The problem with depression is that it creates a state of mind where everything is pointless. I can speak from experience here. Getting busy, helping others and exercise are all good ways not only to combat a downer but it's probably good for everyone regardless. The problem lies in when you are suffering depression nothing really matters, and to make matters worse depression can feed on the facts, much of the time things we consider important are in fact pointless. Depression even though we can acknowledge it as a state of mind doesn't change the depressing facts. If you follow me.
It really gets bad when the depression is off and you hit a high where everything is fantastic (strangely in my case the facts remain the same but the interpretation changes, everything is pointless but thats a good thing) but lurking in the not to distant future things will snap back into depression mode.
I have no doubt physical contact or indeed postive social contact can reduce the depth of depression but there again such contact is regularly the trigger for depression.
Exercise is good to but if you fail to meet the objectives, whether it be running 10 miles or walking around the block, it can cause self loathing.
I tried nothing for years but my friends got sick of me, so I tried herbal treatments which didn't work then after a particularly severe "attack" (following the high of Australia qualifing for the World Cup "is that as good as it gets..blah blah") I finally got medical help. The medicine doesn't get rid of the black hole but it does put a lid over it. Mind you some of the side effects can be a little frustrating.

I agree that most of my suggestions are of the 'snap out of it' variety, which is not much good to a real clinical depression.

I belong to a group of people who have a lot of negative emotion mostly because they are living horrible lives. This kind of thing can really help, with us, and even sometimes lead us to make changes in our life situations.

I am adding every little bit of advice here, and gradually a picture may build up. I have plenty of people who can try it then and see which works better for who, and maybe refine things until there are a few specific clear methods that can be used for all but the worst clinical depressions to make at least a little or even a lot of difference.

I come into contact with this so much that the time just seemed to come to look for this answer (especially as I was asked directly) and there can't be many problems (or neutrally, projects or puzzles) without a solution, however convoluted they may be.

Neuro linguistic programming is a form of non-trance hypnosis using physical anchors combined with positive memories which replace the old feeling with a new one, but must be repeated many times to sink in. It uses various senses together to combine to retrain mental patterns.

Let's see, for me talking to someone who is out of the situation I'm in helps...just shooting the breeze. I know that I also find it helpful, as Agony says, to help others. As my work was basically doing just that, it helped...being out of that job, I don't 'get my fix'.
If I were sociable, I'd probably be much worse. Plus, I know I can usually cheer up people with jokes or kind of laughing about a really dreary situation. I know that they've always returned the favor!


Light is extremely important and as I've lived in several climate types, I find that the long winter gets on my nerves.
If I can set up my desk in a place that gets some natural light, it helps, and getting out in the light does too.
They apparently are treating SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder with lamps when light isn't practical from what I recall. I would think that having a few lights on would help if it was really dark and gloomy outside. If someone bugs you about the whole how much does it cost to keep the light on thing, give them a printout about the cost of a lightbulb vs the cost of therapy!

How could I have forgotten Light? Yes, very very important.

Listening to "cheerful music"- doesn't do a bit of good for me. Thinking positively doesn't help either.
For me running helps. As does meditation and writing in my journal. Focusing on where I am and what I am feeling helps as well but is difficult to maintain. But the effects are very short term.

What is better for relaxation basic meditation or pranayama? What about EMG biofeedback in terms of relaxation?

I'd say whatever works for you. The common feature in most methods is a direct lowering of brainwaves to include alpha and possibly even theta while remaining awake. You then learn to be conscious in such relaxed states without being asleep at the same time.
The Silva method is probably one of the simplest and easiest to get hold of (the whole course is now on a book and/or cassette) but any form of regular practise that works will gradually retrain your mind, and Barry Long's tape 'start meditating now' did wonders for me, though it's so complicated you'd have a job working without it trying to do it from memory.

Of course by being more relaxed you are lessening your potential for anxiety and environmental stresses, I remember after well over an hour in a float tank I felt I really didn't care about anything, and it shows such a state can be found somehow, I just couldn't maintain it, or create it without floating for over an hour! My doctor says anxiety overlaps depression (as the same part of the brain is affected) so what helps the one will tend to help the other. So any anxiety tricks should be added as anything that works more often than not can be used for either.

The coincidence machine's still operating, I just told someone I know about this thread (I'd be very pleased if he joined in but that's a tall order) and he said sunlight as well. I know when I wake up and it's like nighttime (we may only be 51' north but we've had days this year the sun barely appeared to rise) but on the rare occasions the heavy clouds parted my spirit often instantly rose as well. He said it could be our body's need for vitamin D and we are attracted to sunlight as this is how we get it. Probably similar for chocolate as that makes most people feel a lot better for a short time as well.

I believe depression is nature's way of shutting us down when we've lived and acted against our own true natures for too long. We've been taught to ignore and deny our true selves.

Nature shuts us down completely in order to protect our true selves from irrepairable harm. So our work is to peel off the layers of delusion that we have built up like a scab to protect ourselves from a world just beginning to acknowledge individualism. This scab has lain on top of our true self for so long that once peeled off, our true self, like the sensitive pink skin beneath a scab, is exposed and vulnerable to injury from the harsh world that developed the original scab.

Then we have to learn what we didn't learn as children. How to protect that sensitive pink flesh of our true self while making our way through the world.

This is why our choice of friends and environment is so important and why we may loose all of them because of 'depression'.

I like what 'satguru' said in a post somewhere once but I can't find it for an exact quote. Something about the concept of Karma is that the self once broken can be rebuilt to be better and stronger than before but we suffer much throughout that process.

All the books in the world won't be able to give us anything more than clues but these can be crucial tools for us to gather if we gather enough of the right ones. The bottom line is we all have to figure out when to put other people's books away, turn, face ourselves and read our own book written in a language only we can decipher.

Very, very scary stuff.

I imagine that what is true for the individual is also applicable to group dynamics. At least, in my personal situation, I hope so.

That was gestalt theory trifle, and has been borrowed and extended by many others such as Werner Erhard's EST.

But the raw emotional skin is a lot tougher than its physical equivalent as long as treated with care by a friend or therapist. And it is the route to dealing with any damage beneath it.

I should have copied what it was you typed when I first say it because I liked it and which I could remember exactly how you worded it. Can I persuade you to repost it here so I can try to understand it better?

Otherwise I'm likely going to spend my time trying to understand your signature and I think that, not only do I stand a better chance, but my time is better spent trying to understand the quote from gestalt theory.

I'll answer the signature (it may take some time and a few clues to find the other bit), it's a truly British bit of humour from the old TV programme in the 60s and 70s called Nearest and dearest, said by Hylda Baker to the always silent old man Walter, and when he smiled back she'd always say 'He's been'.
You had to be there...

umm..nope..I get it. Me speak both British and American sitcom lingo. Just my own country's sitcom's I snub.

I've been searching on google about Float Tanks, and I came accross this board.

If you haven't tried an hour in a float tank, I recommend it. The deal with floatation is that among many other things, it aids in the release of endorphins (our mind's narcotic of choice), and it cuts down on the release of cortisol (which can make one feel blue).

The float tanks affect your brain, and then your brain affects your body.

Little annoying things usually illicit a "fight or flight" response from me, which makes me feel chilly and anxious. Now that I've floated for an hour (TWICE, that's it!) -- I feel that "fight of flight" response....but then it's backed up by what scientists call the "relaxation response --" which is basically the opposite thing from fight or flight. I feel a calm, warm rush follow my chilly feeling of "AUGHH."

Will the float tank cure depression disorders? I don't know. I am not clinicly depressed. But I do get down sometimes, and I can't control it fully.

But I'm A LOT better at controling my emotions NOW after floating.

Has anyone else had this experience?

Wow, lots of good insights here. I have suffered from clinical depression for years - medication and counseling have helped but due to lack of insurance from job loss, that was interrupted for a few years. Of course the job loss as well as financial and other circumstances deepened the depression, making it harder to find and keep a job that included insurance benefits...downward spiral...I now have a steady job with good pay and benefits so I hope I can get back into counseling and medication soon. The problem is that the field I have been working in for many years is not a very good fit for me emotionally. I'm fairly competent at it but find it increasingly unfulfilling as it involves a lot of dull routine interspersed with periods of frantic activity to meet weekly deadlines. Unfortunately anything I really enjoy doing and excel at doesn't pay anything or at least not enough to live on. I'm on a "golden treadmill" - the pay, benefits and general atmosphere are great; it's just that I'm bored to tears most of the time, and tired of constantly having to suppress my true self in order to get by. I agree with Trifle's comment that "depression is nature's way of shutting us down when we've lived and acted against our own true natures for too long. We've been taught to ignore and deny our true selves." In the past when in similar jobs, at least I had an after-hours outlet in a volunteer group activity where I could express my true self. The current job, however, is at some distance from the volunteer location and traffic has been getting worse; therefore I can't participate in my fun activity because my schedule doesn't mesh with it anymore. There are no other alternative groups that are within reach, so I'm pretty well cut off from the group, and that isolation contributes to the depression as well. Also while I was between jobs, I followed advice from family and did not participate much, because I "needed to concentrate on finding a full-time job" - now I feel somewhat cheated as I missed out on that sense of connectedness when I needed a boost and had some time to devote to group activities.

It helps to be able to connect with others (like through FunTrivia and the forums/blogs/chat boards) - thanks for letting me ramble on!

Some real wisdom in Trifle's comment there. Of course that only applies to reactive depression, and I'd prefer to have a less reliable income and follow my heart if I had to choose. We only have one life and spending a third or more of it becoming bored in order to earn money is not my idea of life. Many forms of illness force us to stop or slow down, I'm getting over a year of chronic fatigue following a lowered immune system from a year of stress and being forced to spend ages at home produced a pile of paintings and spent the time I was able to go out and about taking photos. I couldn't have kept a job if it paid a million, I'd have been off sick and broke, but achieved far more for myself than I ever would had I been out at work instead (unless it was spent doing similar creative things). I write, paint, play music and make videos usually for no money at all but if anyone ever thought just one was good enough for major exposure I'd get as much as many people would in a year in a regular job. Being creative seems to pay a lot more for the few where it does pay, and anything which gives you time to better your talents and build up a portfolio can be a blessing in disguise. I never chose when I worked, it was always driven by my employers' choices and found it's a lot easier to survive without full time work than you'd think. How that happens is often down to what seems like a disaster at the time but you can find a lot of benefit in it if you look in the right places.

I'm going to sound very simplistic but it has worked for me....
Sunshine!
Strenuous exercise.
A good therapist.
And my best....letting my anger out. Being reactive, sometimes in a nice way, and sometimes in not such a nice way. There is something so liberating about speaking your mind instead of seething inside, rehashing what I should have said.
I was diagnosed a year ago, with metastatic colon cancer that was misdiagnosed for 6 months. Despite intensive medical treatment, my survival rate is poor. The immediate assumption by my physicians was that I would be depressed and was suggested I start medication right away. I refused because the physician that misdiagnosed me gave me anti-depressants for months assuming IBS. (She assumed my complaint of change in bowel habits meant I was depressed. Instead, a good old colonoscopy would have determined my diagnosis right away!)
Trying to be the "good patient", even though I am a nurse,I attempted them again, with once again the loss of my usual fun loving personality. So they went down the loo. Yes, I am sad, and angy, and anxious (I'm just not ready to die at age 50) and sometimes denial peeks through, but depressed....no.
My husband, son, and daughter all take antidepressants. There is a definite familial tendency on his side for chronic depression...all of his sibs require them also.

Mentally, I actually feel well. One of my nurse colleagues asked me the other day if I was seeing a therapist. She said good, I have needed it since the day I was diagnosed.. I could feel myself getting angry so I snapped at her. She has major depressive disorder and yet will stop her meds, and become unbearable to work with. I suggested she clean up her act and keep her opinions,which are way off base and none of her business to herself. Snap! Her mouth hung over and poof, my anger at her was gone! So my best help is let that anger out and let it go, even if it means boring everyone on the forum to tears!
Thanks for listening. Writing about my fears, sadness etc is a great catharsis for me and by telling parts of my story, if I can educate just one person about this "embarrassing" cancer, it will make my time in the horror house of cancer treatment worth it.

You are not boring us and how true, it does help to talk it out and this is a great place to do it. Talking to 'anonymous' people here is quite often easier than talking people you see face to face. A number of members here have drawn a short straw when it comes to real life and if we can support each other by listening then that is just great.

If you want to have a rant then that is fine, it is good to let it out. I feel angry on your behalf that they didn't listen to you, that your current fears and lack of quality of life was unnecessary. You are amongst friends.

Yes, bullyb, I agree with Sue. Better out than in and you are definitely among friends ("cyber"-such as we are). I think a support system is, without any rigid definition of it, a great 'cure' for depression. Or at least it is a very nice attachment to making the moods much more livable. It's always such a relief to discover that you're not "the only one", no matter what the situation happens to be. It's one of those things, I suspect, that we all instinctively know but find such refreshment in discovering we were right about.

I think, for me, the best medicine for depression or anxiety (am I the only one who thinks there is a microscopic difference between those two things ? ~ I find that most think the two are so polarized but it doesn't seem so in my private world) is clever distraction. For almost everything! I think if I sit about and try to figure out, understand, label or otherwise empower what is "wrong" with me it seems to just get more dangerously there. Humorous/fun distraction works best for me (FT is penicillin in that department ) but a real gut-wrenching book or movie of a deeply serious nature can do it, too. I suppose, simply put, the latter tends to highlight what could be worse while the former reminds how fun and grand an imperfect situation can be. I have MS every minute of every day, and I know it and, quite frankly, don't want to forget it. I just don't like it when it becomes the "theme" of a day. I'll give it fair time (just like I would a pet hamster, if I had one) but, even with that imaginary rodent, I wouldn't sit there and stare at it every waking moment to make sure it's still using its recreational wheel. I'll just peek in once and a while to see if it needs food. Or water. Or if the wheel might need a bit of oil to keep it from squeaking, etc. The rest of the time I'll be thinking about other things. Of course I'm reasonably sure that hamster wouldn't like to be stared at all the time, anyway.

I was interested to read that they're concerned about your mental climate as you face this current challenge, too. My Dad had colon cancer some years ago (a dozen) and he was diagnosed at just 62 - which is only to say that he was still what most consider 'young'. It surprised me at the time that not once did anyone look at the damage done to his attitude/optimism sometimes as he was ill. It was all about addressing the physical battle and he was pretty much left alone to deal with the mood shifts and fears and little victories on his own. I thought that was questionable even then (and did my untrained best to take up that side of things with him) and, now, I KNOW how health is so inclusive. The body is going to do its travels as it will happen to want to but health, the whole map of it, starts between the ears.

I'm rambling ( ~ again), but [bottom line] I think involvement in anything that includes BUT is not driven by the physical or emotional or financial or even "whether the car is going to make it through the winter" topic du jour is less a balloon-deflating thing if you step away from it where you can, how you can and as enthusiastically as you can. I guess my point is that your 'sunshine' or my 'distraction(s)' or anything at all that comes to balance matters is a fine thing indeed. And that everyone could benefit from knowing it. Maybe health problems teach that? Maybe not. But, again, it works for me.

Sometimes I feel a little down in the dumps. Just feels as everything is going wrong, and nothing will ever be right again. Personally, I beat this mood by curling up in bed and listening to a favourite audio tape. And somehow the depression lifts...it might take a hour, a day or even longer. But is also helps, being in the forums, where you can talk how you feel with your Internet "family". Just my way of dealing with the "down days"

Hope your down days are few and far between Jane.

I am learning as I go along. Being a therapist I need to keep up with all the variations of problem for my own clients, and have a new theory I'll offer here for testing.

There are three variations of negative feelings, those caused by depression, anxiety and illness. Because of the location in the brain depression and anxiety often overlap as well.
Now I have deduced if you get physical symptoms from anxiety as in panic attacks (I have tachycardia as well which produces some frightening symptoms now covered bt beta blockers) and then get a clean bill of health the anxiety tends to improve as well as half of it can be caused simply by assuming the symptoms mean far worse.
Then if you are depressed and look at the formula there is nothing physically wrong with me, hence the term 'functioning depressives', meaning you can carry on life normally despite your depression, the only problem is my depression. I have seen depression tend to be worse on waking and tail off during the day. So you start by saying 'this usually wears off'. Then you have told yourself it isn't permanent, which is what it pretends to make you think at the time. That takes the edge off it.
Then it can be seen as a sort of challenge to not focus on how you feel, as Gatsby said, not to keep checking how you feel, but say to yourself 'If I'm physically capable of doing this I will, and ignore how I feel emotionally'. Of course it takes practice and effort as these things need time to adapt, but by setting your intention clearly in advance and sticking to such a simple method offers at least a possible way of taking the energy away from the depression. And once you find something like that is partially controllable you realise it's not totally outside your power and another edge is removed from it. I won't remove the role of tablets which are the main attack method at the moment, but anything that can help with or without them is an improvement.

I have only recently worked this out from quite a bit of data and have a little sample of volunteers to test it on. It would need a few weeks of repeat programming as it takes time, and we usually mark the depression out of 10 each test and also record the frequency and duration of episodes. Then it's easy to see if any treatment is working as even slow but continual changes can be followed this way. It's also a variation of the themes already mentioned, just simplified down to a few elements.

Thank you everyone for your kind words and support!

Gats, wow. What a battle you have too! We seem to be all a little ragged around the edges but with such compassion and humor! I love those better than ice cream.

Before I started seeing my therapist, I was allowing myself a set amount of time per day to grieve, cry, scream, yell, whatever, then it was get up and move on. Once I started seeing my therapist, he told me he does the same thing (he is my age, had a severe heart attack in his 30's and there is nothing else they can do for him. Each day to him is a blessing too)

Gats, the healthy me is a very energetic, goofy, always smiling person. One day, I went to see my oncologist, he took one look at me and said "I have to fix this" He has known me as a nurse, and knew by my demeanor that I had had it. Plus, his wife is a psychiatrist. He is a wonderful person. He insisted, after I requested a psychologist referral, that I go home and have a root beer float. And I did. And it made me smile.

Right after he told me my diagnosis, he told me that there cannot be a world without me in it -that I am too special. Then told my family the same thing. I am exceptionally blessed to have him-I wish your dad could have been so lucky Gats.

Sue and Gats both-I am smiling as I write this. Thank you!
Jane, hang in there! Thinking about you, too.

I can`t add anything "deep" to this subject but I`ve found that when I`m "down" spending money helps me a great deal, followed by the joy of either wearing or playing with the items I`ve purchased. Shallow person here but hey it works for me.