Has meditation cured your depression?

Do you feel that meditation has cured your depression? If so, what level of attainment do you feel made the difference? Do you still get depressed? If not, how long has it been? I'm trying to get a feel for whether developmental attainment is a reliable cure.

Possibly relevant: possessingme.com/bio/meditation-as-a-cure-for-mental-illness/

There's a guy named Eric Kolvig who wrote a great essay about his own severe depression and how his relationship to depressions changed through meditation and awakening, but his blog seems to be down.

Also perhaps relevant:

The default mode network and self -referential processes in depression.
www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1942 ...

If one is able to turn off temporarily (or permanently) or is able to regulate the activation of the default mode network at will (make it go blue) as I was able to witness in realtime at Yale, then depression is definitely something that can be ended. I think one can get the 'self referential' processes refined and regulated to such a degree that they cease to manifest depression like qualities. To turn it off temporarily or permanently would perhaps see even the residual refined and regulated self-referential processes cease to arise at all. What depression in any sort of manifestation would arise then?

I was able to see a correlation between seeing in the seen, hearing in the heard etc, as in apperceptive non-symbolic, unsegregating, non-objecifying awareness with when it was de-activated while in the fMRI machine.

I would say, 'depression' in its complete compounding ended at the shift I had in July last year, post what I believed was 4th path (centre point dropping). It however showed up as a residual weirdness for some time afterwards, an experience of 'almost affect but not quite affect thus very difficult to call affect', and thus difficult to call 'depression'. The mental overlay had changed, but perhaps the residual sensation component remained and was recognsied as once co-arising with fully compounding 'depression'. At what i believed was technical 4th, depression or sadness came and went with the situations of life, but extremely sticky free, yet still compounding from time to time for short periods. Still sucked a lot. The shadowy almost depression still was unsatisfactory as well.

A recent shift has led to no residual 'depression' arising at all in any manifestation, not for the past 2 months at least. Don't really know for sure what to call this last baseline shift in comparison with all the models out there. But I do believe 'depression' can be ended via an appropriate practice.

Nick

I no longer suffer from chronic depression, although I get an uptick of depressive thoughts and feelings from time to time. I don't know whether this is practice-related, as I'm only 1st path. I tapered my medication last year and have felt no need to resume taking it.

On the other hand, I still have substantial problems with anxiety, and my phobias persist. I'd like to know about others with this condition as well. At my stage of things, I still cycle (and will continue to cycle, I gather) through the Dark Night. For me, the fear nyana seems to be paramount. But I also cycle out of it, which means I have an idea now of what life without chronic anxiety is like.

Both in my own case and in others that I've read here, path attainments can create or be accompanied by anxiety. So maybe anxiety has a different relationship to this practice than depression.

Maybe. I had a diagnosis of dysthymia for many years. Following a lot of years of meditative-ish stuff like biofeedback, relaxation tapes, etc., it seemed to fade away, pre-path, after several hundred hours of that stuff.

As Nick was pointing toward, some of the changes in the brain from mindfulness match up with changes from a number of anti-depressant strategies, SSRIs, etc. (My info from a talk by Robin Carhart-Harris).

I also find that vipassana is like a kind of continuous micro therapy - you are continuously "feeling your feelings" and dealing with them rather than avoiding them. You see the beliefs and expectations arise, and the suffering that results, and you end up taking them less seriously, reacting less strongly.

My own depression and anxiety tended to be triggered situationally or become severe/chronic during certain periods (after my father's death, during a personal crisis, etc.) during which times I would go to therapy for a year or two and sometimes took medications. In childhood I was generally depressed and anxious. In adulthood, outside of these periods, I would not have called myself depressed or anxious in general. I think the therapy helped a lot.

I don't think the dark night type anxieties and depressions, for me, generally correlate to this other type of depression/anxiety. For example, for most of my meditation practice dark night stuff has tended to be very cushion-related or spiritual in content/context. I could be having a perfectly pleasant day, then sit down to meditate and GAH! This is still the case, a year and a half after awakening, that I occasionally have contractive phases where during meditation I have a lot of physical tensions, energetic phenomena, flickers of fear or doubt related thoughts/images, etc. But I would not call them depression or anxiety, as they are so clearly a process-related thing that just happens during meditation. The former kind of depression/anxiety - the kind I'd go to therapy for - was pervasive, day in and day out, and completely colored my day to day functioning.

I seem to have lost most of my phobias. For example all my life you couldn't get me to be in the same room as a spider, and I would scream and panic if one surprised me. Even pictures of them freaked me out. Last winter I was driving and felt something on my face. I brushed it away and it landed on my lap. It was a large spider. I was surprised, pulled over, opened the door, shook it off, and continued on my way. I then realized with a shock and a laugh that I hadn't reacted with panic.

I'm a bit hesitant to say "meditation cured my depression" because there were a lot of other factors - years of therapy, general maturity and life experience, etc that also played a role. I also had a long period of devotional religious practice years before I started meditating, and that impacted my development. So it's not as clear as "1st path this happened" etc. I have tended to notice instead that one day I would be doing something that previously aggravated me or made me anxious or depressed, and it wasn't happening that way anymore.

I'm also wary of pitching meditation as a "cure" - it probably depends a great deal on the specific situation. A person with childhood abuse or serious PTSD/trauma is going to have a bigger burden to deal with; age and general maturity play a role; life experience and personality play a role. But awakening certainly offers a perspective from which one can work on "problems" from a whole different place. It becomes much easier, even in the early paths, to be with your crap as it arises, see how the game is played, and allow entanglements with delusional ******** to release. My perspective at the moment, in any case.

I think my girlfriend would say it has. Even pre-path I noticed that when I was practicing a lot behavior modification was a lot easier. For example, I would resolve to be aware of anger arising, which would seem to quickly reduce the frequency of anger arising. Now I notice drastic reductions in reactivity, especially in my tendency to get caught in thought-loops about the past with all their resentment, etc. I used to worry about money with every breath. Now I feel like that impulse was surgically removed. And my mood is a lot more stable. So, I'm a long way from happiness regardless of conditions, but also no longer meet the criteria of clinical depression, imo.

As for anxiety, after 1st path I felt an initial drop off of "baseline" anxiety that I hadn't really realized was there. Since then I've noticed it coming back at times but I'm a lot more aware of it and I think it's still decreasing.

I suspect that it depends a lot of what it is that is causing the depression. From my experience depression can come out of cognitive stuck-points (depressive thinking), behavioral issues (not engaging in positive activities), environmental problems (chronic stress from bad situations) or it can be a pure biological-chemical issue.

Where things get tricky is that it is rarely just one of these at a time.

My point though is that meditation might have different effects on depression depending on what the root of the depression is. For cognitive depression, you'd likely see improvement before SE. Maybe the same for behavioral. For environmental though, I'm not so sure. For biological-based depression a person may not see substantial relief until some significant rewiring occurs, maybe not until fourth path.

I hope this contributes to the study. I think it's not dramatizing to say that meditation eventually took my life from complete ship wreck to fairly functional, pre-path (I'm still pre-path) and years ago, having never heard of plasticity and thinking it was not credible, after several years of meditating I felt like I was being re-wired both mentally and, somehow, in my chest as if there were empathy neurons flickering on, opening up ranges of experience that other people seemed to have but I had never understood before.

I think it's physiological and hereditary since 4 generations of my family had similar issues, and for me and my kids, from childhood. It walked and quacked like depression but I avoided shrinks since my father had been committed for a few months once, so not sure. At root I felt like I had no ego stability or integrity, nothing to hold me together or to relate from socially. I spent age 18 to 22 alone in one bedroom apt.s feeling hopeless, watching t.v. and eating massive junk food. Is that depression?

Interestingly many members of my family line sought spriritual paths. My father, a Christian minister, told me after psych hospitalization that intense contemplative prayer kept him sane. My mother introduced me to Christian meditation (which she continues to teach to church groups). Out of desperation I started meditating and clung to it for a couple of years even though it seemed to be doing nothing. But one day I noticed it had done something. That's why I was motivated to go to a 3 month retreat hoping deep experience would change me.

The one lasting take away I got from the retreat was the desire to sit at least an hour once or more per day. Amazingly after doing this for a while I found that it was giving me a sense of ego stability that was making it possible to do some socialization. I found that if I sat for an hour or more, towards the end some kind of healing strengthening energy would come up and I was ready to face the day. Gradually I got to the point where I could handle a career and family life, though I'm still marginal socially. And I'm getting to the point where I feel like I can hold my ego stability more lightly and relax and let go around it. I think of meditation as a miracle. No medication ever came close. I've been diagnosed recently as sub-clinical hypo manic, but before I knew what it was, I'd already learned how to use meditation to even it out. Maybe that's why it's sub-clinical. Later I found out that the manic phase could be a great way to get to A&P.

Sorry to go on for so long, but I've never heard anyone describe something like this and would love to know if anyone has. I've always wished I could share it with someone who looks in the same boat, but how could you sell them on sitting for years before you get something to show for it? Here's a wierd thing, if I don't sit for only 2 days, I still start to go right back to having no inner stability or sense of integrity. Sit a couple of times and I'm back. And seeing some of my lost relatives, I can tell you this is not imaginary. How wierd is that?

I have a hunch though, that I dug a groove of using meditation for this purpose and inadvertantly made it harder to use it for developmental enlightment progress. I think this is why I became a chronic dark night yogi for years, decades despite years of sitting and retreats. Good instruction early on might have prevented this. Only after some things Kenneth said to me did I get a hunch about it. So now I'm trying new ways of relating to meditation, with Chris's mentoring that felt worrysomely unfamilar at first but seem to be opening up some new direction.

Mark, you are doing just wonderfully in your practice. You should feel very, very good about it, but it certainly isn't due to anything I've done. It's all because of YOU and your willingness to try a few new things.

kacchapa - thanks so much for that - feeling inspired!

I can speak a little bit to anxiety and minor depression. I was a pretty chilled out, go with the flow kind of person until about 3 years ago I somehow got an inner ear disorder that leaves me with vertigo and eventually lead to ridiculous amounts of anxiety due to constantly feeling like I am going to pass out (The fear doesn't come from nothing though as I have passed out several times from it)

Anyways, about 1.5 years ago, after trying everything from my ENT, the Neurologists, Acupuncture, Diet changes, Therapy, etc... I finally decided to look into meditation. Started reading basic mindfulness books but was left frustrated with the lack of real instruction. Being the geek I am, I found MCTB through Buddhist Geeks. Daniel, frankly, scared me out of vipassana, so I started doing samatha instead, but after several months I started getting into some serious absorption (jhana territory) and began investigating the sensations without realizing it. So I crossed the A&P on accident then found this place and reached out to Ron. I found some articles from Shinzen that made me feel like I could handle the DN and I began vipassana.

So 2 paths later, my anxiety is there and at times can still grab hold of me, but it is significantly reduced. There have been some really amazing moments of clarity through it all that I can only imagine will continue to deepen as I progress. These moments truly make me realize I can have my old "self" back but much better. I can currently watch when anxiety is arising and (most of time) ground it pretty well. The inner ear problems are still there, but I no longer allow it 'spin' my mind out of control.

Thanks Chris and Ron!

CURED: the problem is solved. you don't have contribute in any way to stay healthy. the dynamic of the unconscious has changed and therefore no symptoms ever arise.

STABILISED: the problem is untouched. you have to permanently do something to reajust the system like take medication or meditate regularly to recalibrate the system. the system would permanently be heading into the wrong direction. you learned to live with it and how to counterbalance it.

CONVERTED: you stopped smoking but gained 20 kg weight, you behave well educated but got a gastric ulcer, the panic attacks ar gone but you are depressed now ...

cured means if i would stop meditating, everything would stay the same for me. the system (conscious and unconscious) has changed.

I had some severe depressions and panic level anxiety for a long time, and I would credit my meditation and contemplation practices for ending almost all of the depression and the worst of the anxiety as well. After six months of the pragmatic dharma style practice (noting, etc...) I am feeling better than ever, despite some extreme stressors in my life at the moment. Since I found this practice because of the stressors, to help me cope with them, I can't judge the results against some normal baseline -- but I can say that this practice has helped me do very well in a situation that normally would have stressed me to the point of panic attacks. Once everything settles down I think I might be free of even the mild anxiety and depression that I've been feeling lately.

At any rate, it isn't the same as in the past. Now there seems to be some space in the anxiety and depression, probably because I am more likely to remember Dependent Origination and not cling to the feelings that arise and start craving something different, thereby setting up the whole cycle of suffering. It is more like I am just watching the anxiety and depression, not living it, not really suffering. It actually tends to come up more while I am sitting, especially lately. It is there, but it is distant.

I struggled with depression for a long time, and it wasn't until I entered psychoanalysis that things started to turn around. However, I kept having a recurring sense of hopelessness even after six years of analysis. I started meditating seriously about two years ago, and the hopelessness started to fade once I hit equanimity prior to stream entry. Now, I can no longer imagine ever being depressed again.

<shameless plug for analysis>
The combination of analysis and meditation has proven very potent for me. I see psychoanalysis as not only similar to vipassana, but also having elements of concentration, and a large portion of ethics as well. Free association in analysis strongly reminds me of vipassana's noticing whatever arises but not getting involved. Concentration develops some as you free associate for longer and longer periods of time, and if you define ethics as living skillfully, then analysis surely contributes on that front as well.
</shameless plug for analysis>

There are still situations that trigger strong emotional reactions and related thinking, but I can stand back and watch much more easily. In any case, these fade fairly quickly rather than spiraling out of control.

All this being said, evaluating and treating depression is an enormously complicated undertaking. I'd hesitate to state that developmental attainments are a reliable cure for any kind of depression without some objective way of judging that. Heartfelt personal testimonials do not an FDA approval make.

"
I started meditating seriously about two years ago, and the hopelessness started to fade once I hit equanimity prior to stream entry. Now, I can no longer imagine ever being depressed again.


"

Bingo for me. When I got to equanimity that was the most healthy feeling I've had, and it was childlike and felt very sane. I didn't struggle with depression too much but I certainly had some bouts of it occasionally. I can't imagine being depressed again. Angry yes, but not depressed.

"...Free association in analysis strongly reminds me of vipassana's noticing whatever arises but not getting involved. Concentration develops some as you free associate for longer and longer periods of time, and if you define ethics as living skillfully, then analysis surely contributes on that front as well.
</shameless plug for analysis>...
"

This is something I thought about in hindsight myself. I did years of therapy in the past but it was before I had a meditation practice. Looking back now I realize that the way I often spent therapy sessions, speaking outloud what seemed to be random thoughts, then noticing how one triggered the next or discovering the underlying desires or aversions that were triggering the stories, was not unconnected to the kind of noticing of phenomena I later learned to do meditation.