A. B. Curtiss - Depression is a Choice - Winning the Battle Without Drugs

Thought for the Week
Some personal reflections from the author of Depression is a Choice, A. B. Curtiss

Click on any of the dates for the full article.

May 07, 2006 -All suffering, depression included, should be understood in terms of what we know about utilizing healthy brain functions, not just
January 17, 2004 - When we are in high spirits is it all right to think about what we are feeling. However, since the mind is essentially
January 25, 2004 - The mind is complex. So in trying to command it, we need to get very tricky sometimes. A depressed person asked me to give them assurance that if they practiced Directed Thinking...
March 20, 2004 - I was doing a workshop with fellow therapists recently and several of them complained wistfully that they didn't seem to feel the same zest
May 14, 2004 - I think it is true for any thinking person that confidence comes and goes. Everyone has failures and regrets that creep into thinking.
May 30, 2004 - The Transition Exercise - Even when we have formed a good neuronal pathway that triggers up to remind us that we can use simple exercises to immediately
April 13, 2003 - I received a letter recently from someone who offered me another great exercise. So here it is and the credit goes to John Winston Bush....
April 26, 2003 - A short while ago I received the following letter with two great quotes that deserve some contemplation....
May 01, 2003 - A woman wrote online that she lived in fear as a child but that her three siblings did not. She said that she was the only one to suffer....
May 08, 2003 - Any past traumatic event of a person's life must be re-experienced through the
use of imagination....
May 16, 2003 - A human being is not forced to function from emotion and instinct as other animals in nature. A human being ...
May 28, 2003 - This was written more than 40 years ago. "And it seems to be perfectly in the cards that there will be, within the next generation or so, a "pharmacological method" of making...
January 04, 2002 - It’s been almost four months now, and the news programs are still interviewing people whose lives have been changed by the World Trade ...
January 11, 2002 - The mind is a great computer. If we use it wisely we can avoid a lot of stress and add to our efficiency in almost any area of our life. Right...
January 18, 2002 - I feel very superior to the road rager and the drug abuser and wife beater. Why can’t they just control themselves I think, smugly knowing I...
January 25, 2002 - Decisions to avoid temptation are more efficient the further distance from temptation that they can be made. For instance ...
February 2, 2002 - We have to learn to be very clever accountants, emotionally speaking. We should never, for instance, carry the failures of today, however
February 9, 2002 - Any decision made out of fear will be bound to be inappropriate in some way. Whatever decision we make should be made out of courage ...
February 16, 2002 - As I struggled with some heavy guilt due to some over-eating which was very distressing this morning I happened upon the thought "This is the Hundredth Day." ...
February 22, 2002 - When all else fails to get you out of the downs, just get up out of bed and start the day ANYWAY. I have found that I can always get rid of...
March 1, 2002 - One Saturday afternoon, when I was in college, I walked down the hallway from my room and passed a room where two of the other girls were studying ...
March 8, 2002 - I still have a natural, unfortunate tendency to grade people. Maybe it's part of my caveman genetics for "survival of the herd." Is this person...
March 15, 2002 - The advice for all of us who feel a little "down" since the World Trade Center disaster is to stop watching news shows and television reports of violence, ...
March 22, 2002 - A Beautiful Mind was a beautiful movie. But insidious in a way. The truth is that John Nash never took any drugs after 1971. And it was only after ...
March 29, 2002 - We don't realize how modern life is immersing us in darker and darker images of humanity: starving and drug-addicted children, terrorism, ...
April 9, 2002 - I bought an old framed letter/testimonial in an antique shop about fifteen years ago. I paid $25 for it and have never regretted it ...
April 16, 2002 - It’s not how many times you fall. It’s how many times you get up. It’s not how many times you get depressed it’s how ...
April 23, 2002 - We are getting to be an unforgiving culture because we are not very self-questioning. We can very well see that there is a bell curve ...
April 30, 2002 - I have been asked the question "How do you let people know that they have these terrible faults without hurting ..
May 7, 2002 - How do you change someone’s behavior. You can’t do it directly. You can try to negotiate a change by offering something in return ...
May 14, 2002 - Choose your work carefully because what you get from it is not as important as what you become by doing it.
May 21, 2002 - If we would be more accurate in describing things we would be able to make better decisions about them. If we called ....
May 28, 2002 - We must live the life we have, not the life we would rather have. The to-be-improved life is always in the future. We can’t live ...
June 4, 2002 - The problem with depression is that we have a stronger relationship to our feelings than to the objective reality of our...
June 11, 2002 - Psychological exercises are quite magical because only after we do them do we fully understand what the result...
June 18, 2002 - I do think there is such a thing as right conduct and that it takes precedence over depression in an educated mind. The trick is...
June 25, 2002 - You are not likely to take responsibility for something if you feel helpless to do anything about it...