How I understood and then escaped

Nina Simone · Mar 16, 2015 at 05:02 AM

Marking this thread for continued reading.

vital · Mar 16, 2015 at 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Olanza-what?

Wow, this sounds fantastic, but how do you explain the snapping in public. I struggle a lot at work. I disappear in my own head even when I am aware, I still fall into my own rabbit hole. This is my biggest problem, don't know if its depression or cognitive issue, residue from aneurysm. It wouldn't hurt to try tho. like right now, I need to go to bed, but I can't make myself. I will be a wreck in the morning. You took the time to share with me, I shall take the time to try...I do want to be better and I am too young to die.

Dear Olanza,

Thanks for the response. If you're out in public, I'd suggest just snapping anyway and seeing what happens. I think you'll find that nobody minds at all or even notices. Once it starts to work, I think you'll notice that people randomly smile and talk to you much more often, just because you are no longer afraid and are feeling your own inner power. That's what is happened to me. There are times and places where it would be rude to snap my fingers (in a seminar for instance). In those cases, I think to myself

SNAP!

in bold, all capital, brightly colored letters.

I think it's good to start with teeny tiny ridiculous decisions as described here

http://forums.psychcentral.com/4047568-post4.html

It's OK to forget a lot. I forget a lot myself. I think that the most important thing is to FEEL it, to savor the moment and to NOTICE how you feel when you do it. Make up your own crazy things to decide. I think it helps to make it your own. You may find yourself smiling when you do it. You may find yourself smiling even in anticipation of deciding some crazy little thing. You might even find yourself smiling right now.

- vital

p.s. You've probably checked, but I always remind people that it's good to check for common medical/nutritional issues that might be causing a problem: http://forums.psychcentral.com/4262681-post105.html

vital · Mar 16, 2015 at 11:55 AM

Hi everyone,

I have met the first few patients who tried SNAP CLUB at one of the local hospitals here in Boston. The results were really encouraging. Two of the first three were very enthusiastic and it was really obviously working. You should have seen their smiles! The third person had mostly forgotten to do it, but she is going to try again. We're going to go with a larger group at the end of the month.

- vital

Olanza-what? · Mar 16, 2015 at 12:03 PM

I am going to try this. I was wondering if you think that this might work as well for addictions ie smoking and over eating. Lets say, that every time I want a smoke or that extra donut I just say no then snap my fingers. What do you think? I have totally let myself go and would love to gain control. If I get over these hurdles I can without any doubt do anything, right? You mentioned also that underlining health issues may be a contributor to depression, I think this is true. I oh so want my heart to give up or my brain to pop again. I spend a lot of time wishing for ill health, not that I am a coward and can't do it myself, it would just sound better to family and friends if doc says it was from natural causes. One more question. Do you think it will work for the voices and images/shadows that I see and hear? Not all the time, but when they do, I can just snap them away? I'm so excited that there maybe something to make me normal again that my heart is beating so fast I feel faint.
Thanks again Vital ((Hugs)). Perhaps you should study medicine.

Olanza-what? · Mar 16, 2015 at 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vital

Hi everyone,

I have met the first few patients who tried SNAP CLUB at one of the local hospitals here in Boston. The results were really encouraging. Two of the first three were very enthusiastic and it was really obviously working. You should have seen their smiles! The third person had mostly forgotten to do it, but she is going to try again. We're going to go with a larger group at the end of the month.

- vital

WTG!!!!! Awesome news. I am excited for you and those who will benefit from SNAP. I can see you on Good Morning America and all the other popular talk shows.

Mar 16, 2015 at 01:03 PM

Im becoming part of the SNAP club. Thank you for sharing this with us.

floridaman38 · Mar 17, 2015 at 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vital

Just to keep track of it, here is an update of what I personally think is the best plan if you are depressed. I'm not a medical professional, I'm only writing this up because this makes so much more sense to me than what usually happens.

1. Deal with any physical/nutritional issues first.

As pointed out by Mark Hyman, M.D., there are a large number of common medical or nutritional issues that can case mental problems including depression. These include Vitamin B or D deficiencies, hypothyroidism, heavy metal toxicity, pre-diabetes, infection, gluten allergy, omega 3 fat deficiency and others. If you have any of these common issues, the best thing to do is surely to address them first. For references, see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPRp_K6QQY

The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First: M.D. Mark Hyman: 9780743570480: Amazon.com: Books

The latter book by Mark Hyman is a great resource for diet as well. I often also use Andrew Weil’s web pages as a source of information.

2. Try all the safe healthy ways to overcome depression next.

Very often if people see an M.D. and have the symptoms of depression, they are immediately put on an antidepressant. However, I think that this is a terrible idea. Antidepressant drugs have dangerous short and long term side-effects, can lead to dependence and often don’t work:

Why Antidepressants Don?t Work for Treating Depression - Dr. Mark Hyman

Negative Effects of Antidepressants | Mad in America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFbs8s3VI6M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6MXO2j0V0

It is important to realize that because of oppositional tolerance, taking these drugs may cause negative changes in your brain, which may be irreversible. It’s also important to realize that the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression is wrong (see the references above). If you have depression, you are not fated by biology to take drugs in order to get better.

Because of all this, it seems so much better to first try all of the safe, easy and/or healthy ways to overcome depression first, before even considering a drug approach. Promising things to try include exercise (walking, running, swimming, yoga, weight training, for instance), improving your diet and taking supplements (see Mark Hyman’s books for great advice and for inspiration about what this can do), meditation, improving your sleep, talk therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, light therapy and mind training. I especially recommend starting with SNAP CLUB as described at the top of this thread. It is easy and fun and usually works and sometimes works spectacularly well, and, when it works, it really helps you take further steps on your upward healthy path.

3. If 1. And 2. above fail and you are desperate, go to the next steps with a medical doctor.

I suspect that in almost all cases of depression, a serious attempt at some combination of 1 and 2 above will greatly help or completely solve the problem, but that’s really only a guess on my part. Meditation is a good example of the need to try seriously, I think. If you look in the depression success stories on this site, you’ll see that some people have completely resolved their depression, just with meditation. They also report, however, that it takes a solid couple of weeks of doing it before they get the big benefit. There are cases that I believe (on this forum and elsewhere) where people report that antidepressant drugs work dramatically well for them, even in the long term. This sometimes happens only after trying many different drug combinations. If nothing at all works in 1 or 2 above, you may have to try this, after, of course assessing the risks with a Medical Doctor. I have heard similar testimonials from people for whom only Electroconvulsive Therapy worked. See, for example,

Sherwin Nuland: How electroshock therapy changed me | Talk Video | TED.com

and people for whom nothing worked except for a cyngulotomy. See, for example,

Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share | Talk Video | TED.com.

Now GO GET EM!!

As Stephen Colbert used to say: I’LL SEE YOU IN HEALTH!!!

- vital

thanks vital, I am in therapy and she uses cognitive behavioral therapy but I seem to be fine until the next day then I get lonely and depressed I don't know why I just do. I feel as if I miss talking or something. It's really weird

vital · Mar 17, 2015 at 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by floridaman38

thanks vital, I am in therapy and she uses cognitive behavioral therapy but I seem to be fine until the next day then I get lonely and depressed I don't know why I just do. I feel as if I miss talking or something. It's really weird

Try "SNAP CLUB" as explained at the top of the thread. It works like magic and you can tell your therapist about it. I think all the CBT people are going to end up using it at some point anyway!

- vital

BreakForTheLight · Mar 26, 2015 at 12:03 PM

SNAP - I just decided I'm going to give this a try

vital · Mar 30, 2015 at 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BreakForTheLight

SNAP - I just decided I'm going to give this a try

Hi BreakForTheLight & everyone;

Yay.

I just gave at talk and demonstration of SNAP CLUB to about fifteen new patients at the Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston. I can tell that it's really working for them already

.

Here is a pdf of the notes from the session:

http://egg.bu.edu/~youssef/SNAP_CLUB...0164151576.pdf

SNAP!

- vital

eggplantlife · Apr 03, 2015 at 05:28 PM

Hey vital, that's great about your talk.

helpless79 · Apr 14, 2015 at 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vital

Hi BreakForTheLight & everyone;

Yay.

I just gave at talk and demonstration of SNAP CLUB to about fifteen new patients at the Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston. I can tell that it's really working for them already

.

Here is a pdf of the notes from the session:

http://egg.bu.edu/~youssef/SNAP_CLUB...0164151576.pdf

SNAP!

- vital

i will give it a try tonight..but i am sick and tired of wasting half of my life trying to solve my mental issues instead of actually living

it hurts a lot

thank you

zoetic · Apr 19, 2015 at 06:53 PM

Came across this last night and made a account so I could reply...
I think this is really interesting, thank you so much for sharing it. I've already given the link to a few of my friends, and considering giving it to my school counsellor.
I think SNAP CLUB could be a really valuable therapy, can I ask what you've done to share this? Currently posted online and done a talk (congratulations!) from what I've picked up, but i almost want the whole world to know about this...so many people could benefit from it

vital · Apr 20, 2015 at 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zoetic

Came across this last night and made a account so I could reply...
I think this is really interesting, thank you so much for sharing it. I've already given the link to a few of my friends, and considering giving it to my school counsellor.
I think SNAP CLUB could be a really valuable therapy, can I ask what you've done to share this? Currently posted online and done a talk (congratulations!) from what I've picked up, but i almost want the whole world to know about this...so many people could benefit from it

Thanks very much for the comments zoetic. I also think that this is valuable therapy and could help many people. As for sharing, I've been in touch with several psychologists at one of the Harvard affiliated hospitals here in Boston (Brigham and Womens). They were interested enough to invite me to make a presentation for about 15 of their depression patients as part of their therapy (that's what those hand written notes are from). Pretty soon we'll have feedback about how well this works from those patients. Judging from a few earlier patients and from the reception I got, I think that the results are going to be really positive. The smiles from a few who have tried it for about a month and the "aha"s from the new patients as they recognize what has been really happening to them is very encouraging to me. I think that SNAP CLUB works because I'm right about how depression works, at least for many people. Feel free to spread the word in Australia in the mean time!

- vital

zoetic · Apr 21, 2015 at 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by helpless79

i will give it a try tonight..but i am sick and tired of wasting half of my life trying to solve my mental issues instead of actually living

it hurts a lot

thank you

good luck

its definitely worth a try

zoetic · Apr 21, 2015 at 05:13 AM

Okay, that's great! Yeah, I think you've hit on something key about depression here, I've never heard it described like that before but it feels all too familiar and I think you're right. From what you've said its going well with the patients, im glad. I will definitely be trying to spread the word around here, as well

Starburst90 · Apr 28, 2015 at 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vital

Hi BreakForTheLight & everyone;

- vital

Thank you for the link to the notes. I found myself towards the end I was snapping. I am going to keep trying this . I think this may help. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

vital · May 01, 2015 at 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zoetic

Okay, that's great! Yeah, I think you've hit on something key about depression here, I've never heard it described like that before but it feels all too familiar and I think you're right. From what you've said its going well with the patients, im glad. I will definitely be trying to spread the word around here, as well

Hi zoetic, everyone,

I just got feedback from the professionals at Brigham and Women's Hospital here in Boston where I did a presentation for a group of patients. SNAP CLUB seems to be working for many of the patients and they want to keep using it

- vital

vital · Jun 06, 2015 at 08:11 PM

== What's wrong with the "chemical imbalance" view of depression? ==

I want to record what I think wrong with the "chemical imbalance" view of depression. The specific idea that depression is caused by low serotonin was shown to be wrong by the late 1980s as is convincingly (to me) explained by Robert Whitaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6MXO2j0V0

and others (see, for example, the Peter Gotzsche and the Cochrane Collaboration).

In spite of this, many patients still get told that they have a "chemical imbalance" in their brains and that's why they need to take medication. I suspect that many MDs and psychiatrists still say this in spite of the failure of the serotonin hypothesis simply because how you feel in general is determined by your brain chemistry. If you're feeling bad, then, there must, therefore, be something wrong with your brain chemistry. If it isn't just serotonin, further research will clarify exactly what the problem is and will lead to better drugs. In the mean time, the current antidepressants are the best we have. What could be wrong with that?

As reasonable as it seems, I think that this view can be very, very damaging. To see how, imagine that your laptop has a virus and has developed “laptop depression.” Your laptop is sluggish, unenthusiastic and sleeps too much. Suppose you then take it to the Apple store and they say that since everything happening in your laptop is determined by electrical signals, your laptop has an “electrical imbalance.” We are therefore going to try increasing your clock speed, add some more wires and pull out a few capacitors. Notice that even though it is correct that your laptop’s behavior is determined by electrical signals, the Apple store is about to make a very serious mistake that will likely harm your laptop and will likely not solve the problem. The point is that the Apple store has mistaken a software problem for a hardware problem. I think that depression is essentially a brain software problem and not a brain hardware problem. I think that depression is essentially caused by an ingrained, habitual, unconscious thinking pattern and not by neurotransmitter imbalances. If that is so, it’s not surprising that no biochemical test for depression has been found. It’s the same for laptops. You can’t get out a voltmeter and test if your laptop has a virus. Notice that technology improvements won’t change what you should do here. Even if extensive research into laptop depression shows that you can sometimes electrically determine if a laptop has a virus, the right treatment is still going to be to remove the bad software and not to have a hardware intervention.

I think that believing the chemical imbalance story can be particularly harmful for depressives because it feeds into the idea that you are helpless. If you have defective brain chemistry, it's very natural to think that you are just unlucky genetically and can't expect to fix the problem yourself. You have to rely on the experts and take the drugs. On the other hand, if depression is a brain software problem, no one has control of your brain software (your thoughts, in other words) except YOU. This is the reverse situation. NO ONE can help except you yourself!

- vital

chunkymonkey555 · Jun 10, 2015 at 09:55 PM

i've just been referred to this page, so far its fun snapping, and its taken away some of the painful emotions of negative thinking. Thank you for this idea!

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Nina Simone Member Member Since Jul 2014 Location: New Jersey Posts: 98 9 109 hugs given	Mar 16, 2015 at 05:02 AM #121 Marking this thread for continued reading. __________________ "What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did." ~ Nina Simone

Anonymous100185 Guest Posts: n/a	Mar 16, 2015 at 01:03 PM #126 Im becoming part of the SNAP club. Thank you for sharing this with us.

BreakForTheLight Grand Member Member Since Jan 2015 Location: Europe Posts: 852 9 211 hugs given	Mar 26, 2015 at 12:03 PM #129 SNAP - I just decided I'm going to give this a try

eggplantlife Veteran Member Member Since May 2014 Location: Looking Posts: 531 9 334 hugs given	Apr 03, 2015 at 05:28 PM #131 Hey vital, that's great about your talk.

zoetic New Member Member Since Apr 2015 Location: Australia Posts: 3 9 2 hugs given	Apr 21, 2015 at 05:13 AM #136 Okay, that's great! Yeah, I think you've hit on something key about depression here, I've never heard it described like that before but it feels all too familiar and I think you're right. From what you've said its going well with the patients, im glad. I will definitely be trying to spread the word around here, as well

chunkymonkey555 Member Member Since Apr 2011 Posts: 69 13 6 hugs given	Jun 10, 2015 at 09:55 PM #140 i've just been referred to this page, so far its fun snapping, and its taken away some of the painful emotions of negative thinking. Thank you for this idea!