Even though the effects of depression might be all too real in your life, depression is not real. If you're suffering from depression, you're only imagining it because depression is the direct result of your subconscious mind's obsession with useless thoughts that were impressed upon it during your formative years. I know that this may seem completely unreasonable to anyone who is trapped in the dark by depression - or, indeed, to anyone whose life is deeply affected because a loved one or family member suffers from depression. But it is a psychological fact. Not only that, it's the way every single person's mind works. In other words, it's normal for your subconscious mind to focus on the past - everyone's does - it's just that the psychological snapshots that your subconscious is focused on are more negative - and the subconscious mind loves negative. This is not your fault - it's the way we're all wired. Nor is it your fault that you're carrying more negative baggage than someone else. Your subconscious mind was impressed with those thoughts by others, people and events that made you feel bad, guilty, useless, upset or traumatised during your childhood years.

Now, whilst it is normal for your subconscious to focus on past deeply-rooted thoughts, it's doing you damage - you can see it and feel the all too obvious results in your everyday life. Again, there's no need to feel bad about this - everyone's subconscious mind is doing them damage - at least you have the advantage over other normal people in realizing that you've got a problem.

But that problem is solely down to what your subconscious mind is focused on - there are no other broken pieces in your make up, no damaged hard-wiring. It follows then that medication is not going to treat your problem, it's only going to ease the symptoms. What you have got to do is tear your mind's attention away from those self-destructive thoughts. This is easier said than done for two reasons. First of all, your mind has been 'comfortable' in focusing on those old childhood snapshots for all of your adult life - you're trying to break the habit of an adult lifetime. Secondly, your mind's 'default settings' are set to pay attention to what you do not want to pay attention to - it's the way you're wired as a normal adult.

So, whilst your depression's cause is rooted in your own brain - the ultimate and permanent solution to your depression is also in your own head. This solution is found by embarking on a 'self-training course' in paying attention to the only place and time that's real, the only place and time that you can really live - the here and now. This training course requires daily commitment - perhaps only five or ten minutes, but five or ten minutes every single day - otherwise your mind will drift back to its default settings. But the good news is that you won't be training yourself to do something that's foreign to you. When you were a child, you paid full attention to the here and now - that's how you took those negative snapshots in the first place. Do you think that five or ten minutes each day might be worth the bother? Could ten minutes each morning make the remaining twenty three hours and fifty minutes that much better? The answer is a resounding Yes! But five or ten minutes doing what?

You make 'sense' of your life by noticing what your five senses are telling you and then interpreting that information using your childhood snapshots. As a result, you make nonsense of the reality of the information being fed to you be your five senses. You've got to take your childhood snapshots out of this process entirely, by deliberately, for ten minutes each morning, only paying attention to what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste. For those ten minutes, you simply notice what's going on, you don't interpret it, you simply observe. When you get frustrated because your mind starts wandering - or your subconscious tries to tell you that the exercise is a complete waste of time - you simply see, feel, hear, smell and taste. I believe that the best way to relearn how to pay attention to the reality of your five senses is meditation - preferably, for starters, guided meditation. It will take you a while to get into it, you will find it difficult or strange or both but a little commitment will yield enormous benefit. And remember, you will be meditating to clear your mind - not to ascend to some other spiritual plane (if there is one) but to prevent your mind paying attention to the unreal conditioning that's playing havoc with your life.

If you do manage to turn your attention to the reality of the here and now you will experience something that you probably have never experienced before - there's no such thing as depression, there's no such thing as fear or worry, there's only a world full of possibilities and potential. Pills or medicine won't enable you experience the difference between reality and the illusion of depression - they might make the pain go away for a while but your subconscious mind will always wander back to those thoughts that are not real but just an imprint of a past long gone. The only way you will experience reality - one without depression - is to learn how to clear your mind.

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