Hi there Rise: I wanted to second your post and thank you for sharing! I have recently had a similar experience. After many years of suffering from depression/anxiety, I began to explore meditation a few months ago.

I found it was one of the only things that relaxed me even a tiny bit. So I continued to explore it... I really started to hit the nail on the head when I read two books:

One is "The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression" by Strosahl and Robinson. It is based on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness therapy and has lots of great (and difficut) exercises.

The other (which I read afterwards, a good strategy) was "The Joy of Living" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. He is a Buddhist monk but the book is not really about religion, it is about science and meditation (see my caveat about religion below).

In meditating a little bit each day, I also realized that for so many years I had been avoiding the top question "What does my life mean?" and avoiding painful conflicts in my life - and this was just spiraling out of control.

I am also recognizing my negative thoughts when they come in, and I am also finding your strategy helpful too - just letting them be there and realizing that they do disappear after a few moments. They come back of course, but they are just thoughts! After reading these books, I realized that my mind wasn't going to just be quiet, I had to do some accepting that these thoughts and feelings are there. Ironically, that acceptance is what is helping them to go away (or at least they are having less power over me).

I can hardly believe how much this is helping me -- AND my family and community, all of whom have noticed a change for the better. I am still taking medicine but for the first time in my life I have felt that this change in my thinking pattern could actually be MORE effective than meds.

For anyone else interested, I want to emphasize that (despite my initial wariness) from what I have experienced so far, it seems to me that meditative techniques can work for all religions and ways of life. Whether one is Christian, Muslim, atheist, Jewish, etc. It's not religion-based and it's not just for the leisure classes with too much time on their hands. : )

One big misconception I had beforehand was that meditation involved just thinking positive thoughts or avoiding thinking about negative things. When I realized that it is the opposite - NOT trying to suppress thoughts or feelings - I found that immensely helpful and liberating.

You also don't have to just sit around in a lotus position or join a yoga club - in fact, I spend one or two minutes (or even less than one minute) meditating while walking, driving, before sleeping, while doing dishes. I know I "don't have time or money" to sit for hours (of course that is just one of those negative thoughts too, that I don't have time to care for myself). Also, sitting meditation is really challenging for me, it is hard to sit still! But it's not strictly necessary to sit and meditate - it can be helpful no matter when you do it. I find that just having the intention to relax my mind in tiny little bursts, even if I don't have time for more, is helpful.

I still suffer from daily depressive/anxious thoughts and feelings : ) And there are many challenges in my life ahead --