So Long, Depression: Learn What Is Keeping You Unmotivated and How You Can Alter Your Mood Without Medication

By Farnoosh Nouri Ph.D., Dr. Harville Hendrix and Helen Lakely Hunt

Are you struggling to manage depression—even with antidepressants?

Farnoosh (Faith) Nouri, Ph.D., a psychotherapist, researcher, educator, and speaker shares her journey of learning to manage depression and later helping others escape this debilitating condition. In this book, you’ll learn:

• how to find hope when you’re hopeless;
• why even though you’re on antidepressants you’re still feeling depressed;
• how to change your mood fast without medication;
• how to think clearly and make sound decisions.

Other topics include motivating yourself to accomplish tasks, tips on enriching relationships, lessons on boosting communication skills, and how to avoid feelings of hopelessness.

If you are ready to do some work to discover your inner strength, overcome obstacles, and say goodbye to depression, then this book is for you!

"Dr. Nouri’s remarkable work is a comprehensive treatment of depression that is also succinct and practical. … She lets us know that we matter and are never alone. This book is more than about depression. It is about personal growth."
—David M. McKeon, EdD, LPC, LMFT

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982268190

Farnoosh Nouri Ph.D.

Farnoosh Nouri, Ph.D., is an educator in higher education and a licensed professional counselor and supervisor. She works with clients on a variety of mental health–related issues. She is an international speaker, presenting on topics related to mental health, communication skills, wellness, and personal and spiritual growth at professional conferences throughout the world. She is the author of numerous journal articles on wellness and mental health.

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Copyright © 2021 Farnoosh Nouri.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use

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intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help

you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright ©

1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-6818-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-6820-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-6819-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021908484

Balboa Press rev. date:   06/21/2021

To Professor Nader Angha,

for guiding me out of depression and

toward a higher purpose

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

PART 1

Chapter 1     You Are Not Alone!

Chapter 2     How Is This Book Organized?

Chapter 3     Every Moment of Life Is a Lesson

Chapter 4     What Is Depression?

PART 2

Chapter 5     Step 1: The Decision

Chapter 6     Step 2: Getting to Know You

Chapter 7     Step 3: How to Move Up and Down the Scale of Moods, and Why

Chapter 8     Step 4: Let’s Get to a Right Start

Chapter 9     Step 5: Have You Needed Detox All Along?

Chapter 10   Step 6: Your Obstacles

Chapter 11   Step 7: Planning for Life

Chapter 12   Can Therapy Help, and How?

Chapter 13   Beyond Therapy, What Is Your Purpose?

PART 3

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Depression has a long history with different names, such as melancholia and sadness, that spares no race or class or economic or social status. It currently inhabits over 350 million people worldwide, not only causing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering but is the tenth leading cause of death by various forms of illness and suicide.

While historical and prevalent, however, depression is not an innate or defining feature of human experience. Rather, depression is a symptom, like anger, that mitigates the pain and terror of an underlying and more intolerable condition—anxiety. Anxiety is the intolerable sensation that attends the imagination that one might not only be harmed or die but disappear from the universe. This possibility is so terrifying that we numb its disempowering effect by constricting the energy in our neural pathways or protest against this ultimate disempowerment by accelerating our neural energy into anger and rage. Anger and depression are more tolerable than anxiety, so they replace it. And between these extremes, we alternate between despair, when we are depressed, and hope, when we are angry. But gladness and joy, the defining features of our nature, are hidden from our awareness because of negative energy in our lives’ circumstances.

Since the nature of human nature as joy is visioned in literature and science, depression is an intruder. In his famous poem, Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth claims that every child comes into the world trailing clouds of glory from when they came, and child psychiatrist Ed Tronic mirrors Wordsworth in his film of joyful infant-mother resonance and the sheer pleasure of spontaneous play. Wordsworth indicates that soon there is a forgetting and the glory fades, and Tronic, in parallel, films the infant’s torturous anxiety when the caretaker turns away, breaking connecting, and then turns back with a still and unresponsive face. The joy that is our nature is now marred with a memory its possible disappearance again.

From our perspective, herein lies the source and cure of depression. It is a response of helplessness and disempowerment when connection with a significant other or others is ruptured, and there is no immediate or obvious way to restore it. Anger, as a protest against the rupture, is usually the first response, for it mitigates the pain of the anxiety. When it fails, and it usually does, the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system is swapped for the parasympathetic side, shutting down the energetic flow and dampening the painful sensation. When that happens and endures over time without remediation, then we can refer to that condition as depression, and it becomes the objective of treatment.

The transition from depression to joy is beautifully and convincingly articulated by Farnoosh Nouri in her clear and instructive book, So Long, Depression. Dr. Nouri offers a clear path out of the darkness but a way that requires releasing the energy and facing the sensation of anxiety—facing the demons, whatever they are, and recovering access to our emotions by a series of intentional efforts. Essentially, the book is a guide to the recovery of our power to engage in life at all levels and with everyone. So Long, Depression is a clear and directed set of practices that empower us to recover our sense of full aliveness and joy, our true nature. But as the author of this jewel of a manual makes clear, the path out of the darkness is challenging and calls for a decision and a commitment to engage in specific practices on a daily basis. With the discipline of practice, we build our resilience to stay on the bumpy road to a depression-free life.

We endorse this gem of a book with enthusiasm and recommend it to everyone, and to the reader who is depressed, you hold in your hands the way home to your true nature, which is not depression but joy.

—Harville Hendrix, PhD, and Helen Lakelly Hunt, PhD

Dallas, Texas

January 20, 2021

Introduction

A twelfth-century Sufi poet named Attar tells a story of a wise and powerful king who had everything he needed and ruled over a very large country. Once, he gathered all of his ministers and wise advisers and told them that he had been distraught and sad lately. He asked them to make him a ring so that any time he looked at the ring, he could be relieved from his sadness. The ministers got together for days and nights and brought in all the wise people in town. They went back and forth to find a ring that could help the king feel relieved from his moments of sadness. At last, a wise man brought a ring that read,

"This too shall pass"

The king smiled and was pleased and kept the ring on his finger ever after.

We live in an ever-changing world. The pandemic has taught us that the world changes. It can change so fast that no matter how fast we try to catch up, we may still feel behind. During the pandemic, many lost loved ones, jobs, possessions, health, and more. It was such a shock that, for months, people had a hard time believing what was really happening.

The good news is that, yes, it all passes, time heals. If we don’t live in the moment, however, and learn from every experience, we carry a load of experiences without knowing, and soon we feel burdened by life. The reason is that we forget to live, and instead, we get consumed by busy-ness; we forget the present and stay stuck in the past or in the hope of an unknown future.

My goal in writing this book is to offer a holistic approach for finding a way out of depression. For the past twenty years, I have worked in the field of mental health as a practitioner, researcher, presenter, and educator. This book, written in simple language, is a result of everything I have learned from research, clients, students, and my own challenges with depression; it is not meant to replace professional treatment. If medication has helped you with depression, especially without side effects, it is best to continue with whatever has worked to get the best possible results.

I have learned over the years, however, that to manage any challenge in life, it is best to find the answer at the root of the problem. And that is what this book is about.

Are you clinically depressed—so depressed that you