Tag Archives: Depression

And now, time for the wrap up of this serial. Here are just some of the changes I noticed in myself over the past year.

1. I’m less judgmental. One of the first changes I noticed in myself after starting this detox was that I didn’t come down as hard on other people in my thoughts. I still judge, but right on the heels of my judgment is often a benefit-of-the-doubt type modifier. She’s lazy, I’ll think. But hey, I get that. I’m lazy, too, when I think I can get away with it. I complain to no end about housework and cooking, for instance. . . . He’s negative, I’ll think. But I’m negative, too. I focus way too much on what I don’t have. These reminders take much of the bite out of my thoughts, which helps me see people more clearly. And I think they notice the difference.
2. I am more fair-minded about myself. As described previously, I’ve found a great deal of freedom from the belief that I should be perfect and that I have to accomplish something significant every day (or ever, for that matter). I write when I have the time, energy and desire to do so, and I’m usually surprised by how much ends up getting done.
3. I feel more secure in my friendships. Byron Katie says that the relationship you perceive yourself to have with someone else is the true relationship–even if the perception and reality of it is different for the other person. One of my favorite Katie quotes: “I like to say that I have the perfect marriage, and I can never know what kind of marriage my husband has.” In the past, I’ve often tried to analyze a friend’s feelings for me–take her temperature, so to speak–then grade our relationship accordingly. Lately, I’ve felt a much reduced compulsion to do so. When the temptation comes, I say to myself, “I love her. That’s my only job here.”
4. I enjoy motherhood and marriage more. I love my family the same as ever, but now I appreciate them more. I understand that they’re not the source of my unhappiness–or my happiness, either.
5. I feel less attached to my positive-feeling beliefs (including my spiritual beliefs). I’m humbled knowing I could be wrong about every last one of them.
6. When a stressful thought arises, I feel a great sense of relief when I remember that I have the Work. I wrote about this realization early on in this serial, and it remains one of the most significant advantages of the process for me. The Work calms me, even before I begin.
7. I am more grateful for challenges, more accepting of pain. I’m reminding myself often that the worst is really the best. Doing so has become a new spiritual practice.

In the beginning of this serial, I hoped to make major inroads against my depression, to get rid of my negativity and maybe even to experience a glimpse of the nonbelief state in which nothing is known. I also wondered if the Work might be my so-called One Great Spiritual Practice–my go-to strategy for feeling better when everything else fails. I did not accomplish most of these goals. As I said before, I am still depressed. I didn’t glimpse the nonbelief state and truth be told, I’m not sure I want to anymore. I’ve decided I no longer believe in a One Great Practice; to the three I’ve been doing this year (mantra meditation, following my inner guidance and the Work) I’ve added two more: reminding myself in difficult moments that pain is a gift and taking time to feel my feelings of sadness. All these practices are helpful, and I don’t plan to prioritize the Work over any other of them. I’ll admit, though, that I have no desire to add another to the list. It just gets hard to keep track.

But there’s the negativity thing, too, and in that the improvement is significant. I didn’t realize how much victim thinking I’d fallen into until this year. As I wrote down my negative thoughts one by one, self-awareness crept in. Then, as I worked through them, my head cleared.

I called this process my detox, but do I feel detoxified? Honestly, not as much as I’d like. One year is a long time, but the thirty-eight and a half that came before it have taken their toll. My detox continues.

But then, you knew it would.

Byron Katie, thank you.

So, it’s June. June 12, my phone says. I find myself, suddenly, at the end of my detox. But it’s not done. I’m still going.

There’s more.

Though I appreciate the freedom I found this year as often as I remember it (which is often), as I told you before, my depression did not improve. I don’t know why this is, though I don’t think it’s a failure of the Work.

Depression is complicated. No one really understands it. Is it genetic? Is it reversible? We don’t know. I do know that I’ve now spent a year dealing with my negative thoughts using the primary non-medicinal treatment, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and another process that’s similar. I’ve dealt with my negative thought patterns, untangled a lot of brush. I feel like I’ve cleared a pretty nice path and found a great amount of peace.

And my efforts, of course, were not limited to this year. The last decade of my life has been devoted in part to overcoming depression through spiritual and other means. And though I’ve had some significant successes with the spiritual stuff, it’s the non-spiritual methods that have worked the best so far.

So, this month, I return to my full dose of my antidepressant. Too, I recommit myself to frequent heart rate-raising exercise. I’m not giving up spiritual techniques; I’ll definitely continue doing the Work on depression. But I am giving up the idea that in order to be mentally healthy, I can’t rely on medication. I’m giving up the idea that antidepressants are a weakness, that I could do this on my own if only I were perfect enough.

I am not perfect. I am not always strong. And even if I were, I might not be able to cure my depression. “Even if I were.” How profound. How ridiculous. I’m not perfect. I’m not always strong. And because I’m not, I don’t need to be.

There are no “shoulds,” remember? There’s only what is. There is only each of us, doing the best we can. Right now, as I sit here, on the twelfth day of June, the best I can do is exercise and medication.

And more Work.

In May, I did the Work on twenty-one stressful thoughts, and I did a handful of extras so far this month as well. Here are a few significant examples of my turnarounds.

Thought: My husband doesn’t appreciate me. He takes me for granted.

Turnarounds: My husband does not take me for granted. I take him for granted. I take myself for granted. He respects me. I don’t respect him. I don’t respect myself. He was mad at me about an action. It was me who made it about not appreciating me and not acknowledging me, me who started looking for evidence of that.

Thought: My depression is deeply ingrained and will take a long time to undo. 

Turnarounds: My depression is not deeply ingrained and it will not take a long time to undo. It will take the right amount of time to undo. It is not ingrained at all. It is a result of my stressful and untrue beliefs. Maybe a different medication will help a lot very quickly. Just exercising helps me immediately, too, almost every time.

Thought: I am bored with life. Motherhood is so boring.

Turnarounds: I love being a mom. Love it. I can write, read, watch TV, talk with friends, make art and more if I feel bored. I am not bored with life. Motherhood is good to me. Life is good to me. Motherhood is quiet sometimes, but not boring.

Thought: I should not be depressed.

Turnarounds: I am meant to be depressed. There is a reason for it. I should be depressed. It is teaching me a lot. It makes me more compassionate, more caring, more sensitive, a better friend and a better human. I will be able to help a lot more people because of it.

Thought: I want to help more people in my life. I am not helping other people enough.

Turnarounds: The right opportunities to help others come along when they come along. What’s meant to be will be.

Thought: I cannot handle this much depression.

Turnarounds: I can handle this much depression. The nanny comes tomorrow and after that I’ll take a nap. I have things to look forward to. David is helping me greatly with the kids every day. I will get through, like I always do.

Other thoughts I worked on:

• I am not a very likable person.
• There is something about me that is unattractive to other people.
• I am bossy, opinionated, uncaring, a loudmouth and judgmental.
• I am incomplete.
• I am deprived.
• I am lonely.
• I am heartsick.

Several years after first learning about the power of the mind, I, too, was finding my way. For a time, my main spiritual practice was saying mantras and affirmations in an attempt to change my life circumstances. The strategy worked; things I wanted came to me. Then, the rate of change slowed. I became interested in other ways of improving myself, an interest that led to my writing the first two books in this series. During this time I learned several new spiritual practices, including meditation and following my intuition, practices I value to this day. By the end of the second of these spiritual memoirs, though, my focus began to shift. Rather than seeking enlightenment, I started seeking acceptance. And I don’t think it’d be an overstatement to say that since completing that book, acceptance has been the theme of my life.

It keeps coming back. It started with Matt Kahn and his book, Whatever Arises, Love That: A Love Revolution That Begins With You. Then, oh–Pema Chodron. She wrote When Things Fall Apart: A Heart Advice for Difficult Times, and several others just as good on the same topic. I was surprised by Glennon Doyle’s marriage memoir Love Warrior and then, at the tail end of my last pregnancy, I read Byron Katie’s Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, and that did it.

I’d learn this acceptance thing if it killed me.

One afternoon during this difficult time my Buddhist friend came to my house for a visit. She let me sit on the mattress on my living room floor–practically at her feet–and ask her what she thought of my life goal to live in a state of meditation (which for me is spiritual-ese for “continual bliss”).

“That’s a good goal,” she said. I was buoyed, but she wasn’t done. “You will still feel pain, though, you know. The waves won’t knock you over, and whatever happens, you’ll have peace. But sadness? That’s still going to happen.”

“Even if you’re perfect, if you do everything right?” I asked. “Even if you’re in touch with the Divine at all times?”

“I think so,” she said. “I think you always will.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But part of me is convinced that if I’m spiritual enough, pain will be impossible. I’ll be able to return to my spiritual high, no matter what happens–at least most of the time.”

“Well, that’s what you’ve been taught. As a Buddhist, I’ve been taught something different. Buddhists seek to be at peace in the midst of all circumstances. But we don’t try to maintain an emotional high. The body can’t handle it. It wouldn’t even be healthy.

“The high is temporary. The high is a buzz. When you seek to sustain it, you create attachment.”

Byron Katie disagrees. “Peace is our natural condition,” she says. When we’re free of our limiting beliefs, we can’t help but feel good; it’s who we are. The discomfort, the pain–they’re not the truth. They’re the result of our fears. As we do the Work and the untrue thoughts dissipate, we free ourselves from suffering. This is my experience, and yet–there’s still pain. Lots of it. Even after a year of the Work. Maybe a year isn’t long enough to find freedom. Or maybe my Buddhist friend is right, and as long as I’m still on earth, I’ll have suffering.

I don’t know. I wonder. I don’t know.

But I know what I know, which is that when you can’t avoid pain, you can still appreciate it.

Appreciation is a shortcut to acceptance.

***

A few days ago, a blog reader asked me how we can balance our need to change difficult life circumstances with our need to accept them. It’s a great question, and when I began my response, I didn’t know where it would go. I made a few general statements, nothing particularly insightful. Then I decided to speak of my own experience. This is what I said:

“Personally, I don’t leave much to fate. If I want it, I go after it. I simply try to do so in an detached way, with the attitude that if it’s not meant to be, well, I’ll be fine. Does this ‘going after’ of something sometimes feel like non-acceptance? Surprisingly, not really. Think of it this way: Acceptance is not liking something. Acceptance is looking at something you don’t like and realizing that it is the very best thing for you right now.

“Acceptance isn’t liking something. It’s not liking it and appreciating it, anyway.”

At the start of this serial, I described my struggles with motherhood, perfectionism, depression and more. And since writing those words, little in my external reality has changed. Ellie is over a year old now. My boys are five and three. I still don’t get much time to write, and I’m still depressed.

And yet. Things have changed. Internally, that is. Somewhere along the line–I believe it began in the fall–I started interrupting myself during tough moments to remind myself to appreciate difficulty. “This is the good stuff,” I tell myself when I find myself bubbling with annoyance or anger. “This is the best part, the part that helps me grow. If I didn’t have challenges, life wouldn’t be worth living. If everything was always perfect, what would be the point?”

It’s a great habit. No–it’s a great spiritual practice. One of the best.

These days, I still seek to maintain a state of continuous meditation. I still try to use my intuition for decisions large and small. But when it comes to spirituality, I’ve shifted focus significantly. My new form of spirituality isn’t seeking bliss, or enlightenment, or a continual experience of the Divine. It’s less lofty than that, more practical. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like spirituality at all; instead, it’s just a philosophy that helps me get through the day. Put succinctly, my religion is peace, pain, hard work, appreciation and acceptance.

Pain is a gift. It’s the greatest teacher we’ll ever have. Inner peace is our truest compass. Hard work reminds us of our humanness, but it’s appreciation that does the heavy lifting. When I appreciate something without liking it is when I’m really being a master. Then, at the right time, acceptance follows.

Appreciation leads to acceptance, which leads to peace.

Like Kuffel, I’m not everyone’s idea of a success story. She’s still fat. I’m still depressed. But I’m starting to see my way more clearly. And for now, that’s enough.

Frances Kuffel is not a fashion model. She’s a literary agent, an author and a struggling overeater. She’s written two memoirs–both excellent, I might add–and she’s both your most smartest and your most understanding friend. In Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self, Kuffel recounts her journey from a size thirty-two to a size six. In Eating Ice Cream With My Dog: A True Story of Food, Friendship and Losing Weight . . . Again, she details her way back up the scale, and her attempts–and those of four of her friends–to regain control. In the end, none have met their goals.

And there is good reason for that, Kuffel writes. Everything from depression to hormonal imbalances to family to habits. When Kuffel attends a week-long weight-loss retreat, she follows the strict diet almost exactly . . . and loses two pounds. By the end of the book, she’s found acceptance for herself at her current weight, an example many of us would do well to follow. Of women who manage to maintain their hard-won weight loss, she says, “They are either biologically lucky or work so hard at it that it’s become their life.”

I have to agree. For some people who are temperamentally and evolutionarily predisposed to easy weight gain, being thin is worth the effort it takes. For others, it really isn’t. I wish more people would make the decision to maintain healthy eating and exercise habits, as Kuffel tries to do at any size, then let the numbers fall where they may.

It’s a bold decision, this cross-current choice. Many fat people feel constant pressure to force their bodies to change. I don’t know Kuffel’s thoughts about her body today and how much of that pressure she feels. But from her writing it seems that she’s found her own kind of happiness, her own way through it all.

In other words: she’s found acceptance.

Byron Katie isn’t the only one out there screaming about questioning one’s established beliefs. Lots of people are–people of all kinds. Most aren’t quite as awe-inspiring as Katie, but they’re pretty cool anyway. Here, a small list of people I find myself thinking about long after reading their stories.

• Gary Taubes argued convincingly against the health and effectiveness of the low-fat diet and quickly became a polarizing figure. (See Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease.)
• Timothy Ferris rethought work efficiency and built a huge, loyal following and a global brand. (Read The Four-Hour Work Week.)
• Josh Waitzkin came up with a unique learning strategy—and won both the U.S. Junior Chess championship and the world champion title in Taiji Push Hands, a martial art. (See The Art of Learning: A Journey In the Pursuit of Excellence.)
• Social media marketers Seth Godin and Jeff Jarvis were among the first to realize the potential of online social media-, gift- and content-based marketing. (Read anything by Godin and What Would Google Do?: Reverse-Engineering the Fastest-Growing Company in the History of the World by Jarvis.)
• Robert Kiyosaki redefined wealth as the ability to live off the interest of your assets (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!).
• Chris Anderson predicted the future of purchasing patterns (The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More).
• Tony Hsieh created a company devoted primarily to its front-line employees (Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose).

Then, of course, there’s Todd Beamer.

When United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked on September 11, 2001, this all-American hometown boy from Flint, Michigan helped deflect a terrorist attack. The Wikipedia article on his life tells the story:

“United Flight 93 was scheduled to depart at 8:00am, but the Boeing 757 did not depart until 42 minutes later due to runway traffic delays. Six minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. 15 minutes later, at 9:03 am, as United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, United 93 was climbing to cruising altitude, heading west over New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. At 9:25 am, Flight 93 was above eastern Ohio, and its pilot radioed Cleveland controllers to inquire about an alert that had been flashed on his cockpit computer screen to “beware of cockpit intrusion.” Three minutes later, Cleveland controllers could hear screams over the cockpit’s open microphone. Moments later, the hijackers, led by the Lebanese Ziad Samir Jarrah, took over the plane’s controls, disengaged the autopilot, and told passengers, “Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board.” Beamer and the other passengers were herded into the back of the plane. The curtain between first class and economy class had been drawn, at which point Beamer saw the pilot and co-pilot lying dead on the floor just outside the curtain, their throats having been cut, as a flight attendant informed him. Within six minutes, the plane changed course and was heading for Washington, D.C.. Several of the passengers made phone calls to loved ones, who informed them about the two planes that had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. Beamer tried to place a credit card call through a phone located on the back of a plane seat, but was routed to a customer-service representative, who passed him on to GTE airphone supervisor Lisa Jefferson. With FBI agents listening in on their call, Beamer informed Jefferson that hijackers had taken over United 93, that one passenger had been killed, and mentioned the dead pilots. He also stated that two of the hijackers had knives, and that one appeared to have a bomb strapped around his waist. When the hijackers veered the plane sharply south, Beamer briefly panicked, exclaiming, “We’re going down! We’re going down!”

At this point, Beamer and several other passengers and crew members decided to ignore the threats of the hijackers and face near-certain death by storming the cockpit and steering the plane into the ground. “The plane was twenty minutes of flying time away from its suspected target.”

Beamer, a baseball player and Sunday school teacher, was survived by his wife and two sons, aged three and one at the time.

What inspires me most about Beamer, and about all of the people in this list, is realizing that at some point, they all had to make a decision. A window opened–whether for minutes, as it did for Beamer, or for months, as it likely did for some of the others–during which they had to define who they were, no matter the consequences. And each of them was able to get it right.

Would I?

By a general standard, I’m not a fearful person. Not shy. No huge paranoias or looming existential concerns. And yet, the opinions of others–or, more accurately, the possible opinions of others–give me pause on a nearly daily basis. Talking to other moms about various parenting decisions, for instance. Talking about a controversial book I like, or the fact that I’m a libertarian. Just earlier today I found myself seriously considering what my neighbors would think if I plant a bunch of new trees in our yard. Twenty trees, but still. They’re just trees.

What the heck?

I don’t know what it’s like to be Gary Taubes or anyone a tenth as influential as he. But if he can face the ire of entire organizations devoted to vegetarianism, grain production and nutrition information dissemination, plus a lot of reputable scientists and in-person hecklers, I think I can plant any damn number of trees I want.

I can make my yard into a damned forest.

I can question my beliefs–even the ones that people swear are healthy and important.

And I can swear once in a while, too, damn it.

A Byron Katie Worksheet

Month Completed: April

The Statement: We have power.

The Questions:

Is it true? I’m getting a yes. I know that we often feel unable to change our bad habits, our bad feelings, our unhappy life situations. But when I close my eyes and question the belief, all I can think is, “Yes. I can feel it. My inner body, the energy inside myself that I feel when I’m meditating, is part of the rest of the world’s energy. I may be in this body right now, but the essence of me is power.”

Can I absolutely know it is true? No.

How do I feel when I think the thought? When I feel that I have power, I also feel that what I do, say and think is important. I remember that my thoughts create my reality, and even affect others around me and beyond.

How would I feel if I were unable to think the thought? If I thought I was powerless, I’d probably feel that life is meaningless, that nothing I did mattered.

The Turnaround: We don’t have power. This statement is also true. We don’t have power over God or other people. Also, though we do create our realities, the vast majority of that creation happens subconsciously. With years of spiritual practice, we can change our beliefs and brains somewhat, but most of us will never get around to doing the Work on them all. Which is why Katie tells us to focus on the thoughts that cause stress. The others just aren’t the priority.

So again, is it true? Yes and but. People have power, and yet, we can’t always access it. That is the truth, and it reminds me to have compassion for those among us that feel stuck in a pattern they don’t like.

Since my last personal update, three breakthroughs, no breaks. Three months with some good news, some bad. February was slow, with only nine worksheets. In March I did thirty-three and in April, twenty-eight. As promised, I addressed the thought “I am not accomplishing enough” and “I have depression.” I also did excavations on my feelings of depression and guilt. I’ll start with the good news: I discovered that I am accomplishing enough and that I don’t have to be perfect (a thought I found to be at the core of my guilt). So, yeah–good stuff. Significant.

I share shortened versions of my Work on the latter statement below. It shows how I turned the thought around, but it doesn’t show my inner shift. It would be impossible for me to accurately assess the changes that have occurred, much less describe them. I suppose I can tell you that I no longer have these thoughts every day. And when they do come, there’s the Work, following right behind. Saying in my ear, “Is it true?” The Work is never a one-time healing session; it’s a living creature with a specific, ongoing job to do. It gets assigned to a thought much like a blocker would be assigned an opponent in basketball. It follows the thought up and down the court, sometimes stealing the ball, sometimes missing. Even when it gets outmaneuvered, it’s never far from its player.

Now for the bad news. While I feel secure in my progress on my guilt and my compulsive need to achieve, my depression–that beast–is unchanged. In my last update I mentioned it was still with me and since that time, not a damn inch of ground gained. If anything I would say it’s worse than it has been all year. An example of my Work on the topic is below, and though as I was writing these turnarounds I believed them to be true, I’m really slogging through these beautiful spring days. The skeptic in me would say that the Work is inadequate; I seem to abolish one stressful thought only to replace it with another. On balance, I am less happy than I have been since starting this detox, even though I’ve made lots of progress.

I’m not feeling guilty. I’m not hating motherhood. I’m not obsessing about how much writing I’m getting done. I’m more at ease in my relationships, and generally less negative.

But for all that, I’m not feeling good.

Sucks.

Here, my Work examples for February, March and April.

Beliefs Behind My Sadness: An Excavation

I am heartsick. I am lonely. I have depression. I am depressed due to a genetic predisposition towards depression. I have negativity. I have stressful beliefs. I don’t love myself. Others don’t love me. I am incomplete. My life is incomplete. I am lacking. I am deprived of love, fulfillment, beauty, accomplishments, fun, ease, relaxation, the state of meditation, friendship, caring, yummy food, goodness, enoughness. There’s something I am missing. There’s something I need to do have or be that I am not doing having or being right now. I need to do more, have more, figure out more, change, be different. My life is not perfect yet. I am not perfect yet.

The thought from above that resonates the most: I am depressed due to a genetic predisposition towards depression.

Is it true? I don’t know.

How do I feel when I think the thought? Stuck. Conditioned. Hopeless.

How would I feel without the thought? Free to feel any way I feel, without judgment of that feeling and without identity creation around it.

The turnaround: I am not depressed due to a genetic predisposition towards depression.

Evidence: I can be and regularly am free or partly free from depression. When I’m immersed in something enjoyable, I’m not depressed. Also, I have experienced true, pure inner peace at certain moments in my life. This couldn’t occur if I had a permanent physical condition. My depression may be a result of lifelong thought habits that I can change over time. Or it may be a result of my current belief system, which can change in just a moment.

Beautiful.

Beliefs Behind My Guilt: An Excavation

I should: take more walks with the kids, drive the kids more places, visit friends more, be a better person, be a better friend,  be perfect, be less judgmental, do the work more, eat much less, eat healthier, not let baby cry, be more sympathetic to my kids, not take on so many outside projects, take day each week to just play with and read to kids, not give the kids so much candy, help the kids through their fights more carefully and thoroughly, meditate all day, embrace boredom, give the kids more vegetables, be cooler, be a loner, be self-sufficient, be more caring and giving, be less selfish, be in the state of meditation all day long, do my own projects only when I have a nanny, sit more, walk more, nap more, smile more, write more, get more accomplished, do the Work more, and be more in control of my kids.

The thought from above that resonates the most: I should be perfect.

Is it true? No.

How do I feel when I think the thought? Absolutely frustrated with myself.

How would I feel without the thought? I would be able to forgive myself for wasted time and other mistakes, small and large.

The turnaround: I don’t have to be perfect. I shouldn’t be perfect. I am perfect enough. I am entirely perfect. All of these statements feel more true to me than my original thought.

Evidence: No one is perfect. Imperfect people still have wonderful, close relationships, fulfilling jobs and meaningful, happy lives. People forgive them, and they forgive themselves. In fact, if someone always did and said the right thing, it would hinder their ability to learn and grow and help others do the same. It would probably mean they weren’t taking on any challenges.

Love it.

Other stressful thoughts I worked on:

• K is trying to take advantage of me.
• K is a blamer.
• That writing critique was mean.
• Life is hard.
• The kids should not cry so much.
• The kids need me constantly.
• The kids need more attention than I give them.
• I am not enjoying my life.
• My husband takes me for granted.
• I am ten pounds too heavy.
• I am bored.
• My back hurts. It should not be hurting.

Author Rachel Bersche is a woman after my own heart. She’s a doer. A planner. A fixer. A solver. Someone who doesn’t wait around for results.

Someone who takes charge.

(Someone, also, who writes memoirs about her one-year self-improvement goals, but that’s sort of beside the point.)

All this to say that MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend is my kind of book. The premise is as follows.

After a move to a distant city to be with her boyfriend, Bersche realizes something: she really needs some new friends. So, she hatches a plan uniquely designed for the Generation Y’ers among us: She’d go on fifty-two friend dates—one each week for a year. She’d meet the women online, of course, as well as in the traditional ways—an improv class, book clubs, parties. Her motive wouldn’t be a secret; she’d blog about her experiences and tell many of the women what she was up to. After all, as she argues in her book, if people can admit to looking for a partner, why can’t they admit they want a new best friend?

Cute stuff, right? So practical. So original. And pretty challenging, too. But she did it. She accomplished her goal. And these days, it’s the Rachels of the world I most want to emulate–not the visualizers, manifestors and conference attendees.

Mostly, I just want to work hard.

The law of attraction is a useful concept. The problem is that it’s a bit . . . limited. When Jane died, I didn’t see it coming; it just happened. Life happens. Sometimes we don’t get what we think we want; instead, we get other circumstances that better serve us.

That’s right: we get what we need.

The spirit has goals that the mind knows not of. And I’ve decided I’m okay with that. Hard work is it’s own religion. So is neuropathway rewiring, whether Byron Katie-style or otherwise.

Often, changing our perspective on our circumstances, rather than changing the circumstances themselves, is enough.

In recent years, the field of neuroscience has benefited from greater interest and better technology than ever before; “I’m a neuroscientist” is kind of the new “I’m a doctor.” Once a little-understood region of the human anatomy, the brain has become the ultimate research tool, providing clues to some of life’s biggest questions. Brain activity scans have been used to help scientists learn how the human mind responds to stimuli of every kind, leading to new ideas about how pleasure works, how addiction works, how people learn and make decisions–even why they believe in God.

One of the main insights from recent years: The brain is not an unchanging entity, the pattern of which is encoded once and for all by genetics. Instead, it is a highly malleable organ, reorganizing itself moment by moment. As each of our thoughts occur, our brains either create a new neural pathway (arrange multiple axons in a way that allows them to send neurotransmitter chemicals back and forth between two remote areas of the brain), or strengthen pathways that already exist (build up myelin around the axons). The pathways that don’t get used eventually die. Even more significant: Neural pathways continuously send out chemical requests for more of their kinds of thoughts to travel their way–and the stronger they get, the more requests they’re able to send.

All this to say, we can change our thought patterns, the physical ones.

We can change our brains.

Since learning meditation and other spiritual techniques, my appreciation of the mind has only grown. However, there’s another type of human power I mentioned that’s equally important.

There’s the old-fashioned kind.

I I first read the story of the Yale University torture study shortly after my New Age conversion, around the time that I first learned about the law of attraction. And though I’ve heard it several times since, I just can’t resist a retelling here. It’s just so darn . . . poignant. You know?

Beginning in the year 1961, Yale University conducted a set of frightening psychological experiments on a mix of average people. In each iteration of this study, three roles were played: the subject, the button pusher, and the director. The idea was simple: the button pusher would attempt to teach the subject, who was sitting in a different room, a set of word pairs. Then the button pusher would test the subject’s learning ability. When the subject responded incorrectly, the director (wearing a white lab coat) would tell the button pusher (the actual subject of the experiment) to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to the subject by—you guessed it—pressing a button.

Of course, the setup was a bit of a sham. No actual electrical current was delivered, but the subject made a convincing show of suffering, anyway.

The results of the study and subsequent studies shocked the researchers and the public alike: 65 percent of the button pushers complied with the researcher’s demands and pushed the torture button until the highest level of pain (an excruciating 450 volts) was delivered repeatedly—despite the fierce cries and protests of the subjects.

When the results of this study were announced to the public, they apparently caused quite a media frenzy. Respected analysts and psychologists made pessimistic observations about the evil inherent in human nature and in society. What the journalists apparently did not reveal, however, was this: the button pushers were in absolute anguish a great deal of the time.

They paced. They protested. They cried—even grown men cried. They begged not to be required to go on.

They didn’t want to do it at all.

People aren’t bad. We’re just . . . well, team players. We’re built to thrive best in healthy hierarchies. The real problem comes when the hierarchies malfunction–which of course they often do. Then, it’s time for some independent thought. It’s time to remember that we have power, even in seemingly hopeless situations.

It’s time to stop pushing the button.

When I think about it now, it seems pretty sudden. On my thirtieth birthday, I was recently separated from my first husband, living in the spare bedroom of an ant-infested, cat-run house on the wrong side of El Paso. I was only a month in to my writing career, working at a small ad agency for less money than I’d made as a part-time waitress. I had no friends, no car, no television and no family within several hundred miles. Yet somehow, four years later, four days after my thirty-fourth birthday, I was lying in a hospital in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Seattle, giving birth to a surprisingly good-looking and perfectly healthy baby boy, Xavier. My home, which I lived in with my new husband, David, was down the street from the Microsoft world headquarters in a neighborhood that boasts the best schools, the best parks. I had a small group of friends, and my writing career was everything I wanted it to be. I was running my own business, and I was succeeding.

Four years. That’s how long it took for everything to shift.

Xavier was born a year to the day after Jane was born, and in the years following his birth, the circumstances of my life continued to improve. Newly indoctrinated with New Age philosophy, I began to credit not just luck and hard work with the turnaround. Surely, the power of the mind was at work here, too.

Wasn’t it?

The law of attraction isn’t a particularly intelligent-sounding theory; to many, it sounds pretty silly. In spiritual circles debates over the exact mind-over-matter equation abound, but I won’t get into any of that here. I’ll just note that almost every modern non-Judeo-Christian spiritual teacher discusses the idea, whether or not they use the now-unfashionable term. We laugh about the book The Secret and it’s materialistic promises. But Matt Kahn, Eckhart Tolle and even Byron Katie mention similar ideas. They don’t make it their focus, but all of them and many others, including whole Eastern religions, believe in the mind’s ability to radically, even wholly, affect one’s life circumstances.

But even if you don’t love the idea (I get it, believe me), it’s hard to deny that people have power. We have the power to change our circumstances directly. The power to change our beliefs about those circumstances. And sometimes–maybe more than sometimes–we get a law of attraction-type superpower, and we get to change our circumstances by changing our beliefs alone, no special action required.

That’s a lot of power.

So why do we so often forget it’s there?

It might surprise you to learn that the relaxation of my goal this month wasn’t entirely due to laziness (though, admittedly, that was a factor). There was something else at work here, too–something even more unfortunate: I got tripped up by a bit of skepticism.

Here’s how it happened. While doing some research for this series, I came across a negative review of the Work. Intrigued by this perspective, I started seeking out similar information, and what I found was predictably disturbing.

Interestingly, Katie’s detractors seem to be relatively few in number; Googling combinations of the terms Byron Katie, The Work, fraud, guru, fake, and scandal brings up a few relevant pages and a whole lot of irrelevant ones. Even more significant, the same two naysayers are quoted on most of the relevant articles, and only one of these people claims firsthand experience with Byron Katie. That said, there are a few probable arguments made against Katie as a trustworthy guru and reliable source of information, as well as several good arguments against the validity and effectiveness of the Work. In the interests of objectivity and knowledge, I address them here.

The ad hominem arguments are as follows:

1. Byron Katie shows anger, annoyance and other negative emotions at times, even though she says she never suffers and she implies that she feels constantly at peace with what is.
2. Byron Katie says she doesn’t read self-help books, but she has, in fact, done so, and the Work seems to be a repackaging of CBT and some of the other techniques in books she has read.
3. The School for the Work, the conferences Katie leads to teach her process, uses cult-like methods to encourage loyalty and to heighten participants’ emotional response.

And here are the main arguments against the method itself:

1. The Work causes confusion in the practitioner who is taught to question her thoughts till nothing seems true anymore.
2. The Work employs several logical fallacies, including begging the question, false dichotomy and generalization.
3. The Work encourages a lack of compassion for people’s pain.
4. The Work encourages false blaming; if all of life is a mirror, the sufferer is at fault for everything he experiences.
5. The Work claims to be a one-size-fits-all approach, a cure for all pain, and discourages other important and effective therapeutic methods.
6. The Work is a form of self-deceit.

Pretty good list, isn’t it? You’d think I really did my homework. Actually, most of these arguments are found in a single online article (see end notes). A few are mentioned other places as well, and still others, notably the last few, are my own.

The ad hominem arguments are, strangely, the most convincing to me, even though logically they shouldn’t be. Though I understand that the imperfections of a guru in no way refute the truth of her ideas, when we don’t trust the messenger, the message itself is often compromised in our minds. The first personal attack I’ll address, and the one that seems most damaging, is that Katie isn’t perfect.

Ah, perfection. We love to pretend it exists. We want so badly for Eckhart Tolle to exert divine love while flossing his teeth and the Dalai Lama to bless the snot in his handkerchief. And these special teachers know this. Some go to pains to remind us they’re only human, too, telling stories about their difficult moments. Others, though, aren’t quite so forthcoming.

As a writer, I understand the temptation to withhold damaging information; they’re just trying to help people, right? When Katie says she never suffers and Tolle claims continuous awareness of the present moment, they think they’re doing us a favor. They’re communicating to us that their day-to-day experience is largely joyful and easy, and that ours can be, too.

They’re offering us hope.

It’s unfortunate, really, the damage done later when some minor mistake that reveals their humanity is exaggerated a hundredfold in the light of such high expectations.

There should be a class for new gurus.

All this to say, there are a few reports out there that Byron Katie acts differently in person than she does on camera or on the stage. Since I’ve never met her or even attended one of her conferences, I’m not in a position to judge the veracity of these reports, and even if I did, my experience with her would likely be a public, not private, one, which wouldn’t count for much. My position on Katie’s sincerity, reliability and character is, therefore, simple: it’s not for me to judge or concern myself with. My best guess is that she does have a few flaws and that she does behave at least a bit differently at times with those she knows well. She probably gets impatient, bored, angry and sad, but I believe her when she says she doesn’t suffer. It’s possible to lose sight of the bigger picture for minutes or hours at a time, and then to snap back to your usual happy frame of mind. It’s possible to be flawed, but not let the flaw drag on, to express a negative feeling without hanging onto it tightly.

It’s possible to feel and express pain without suffering.

Our second personal attack on Byron Katie is that she purposely and knowingly appropriated her self-help method from other self-help books, then passed it off as an original method. Again, there’s no proof of this, certainly no firsthand knowledge on my part, so I can only offer an opinion. But I just can’t believe that she lied about the inception of the Work. Such an elaborate story. So detailed. So personal.

That said, unconscious imitation is a common human experience; one could argue that it’s all we ever do. If Katie read books about CBT and the like before discovering the Work, that knowledge may have partly influenced her revelation.

I believe in divine inspiration. But divine inspiration is limited; it’s part and parcel of the medium. For this reason, different clairvoyants will often hear and learn very different things from the other side. Medium Esther Hicks, while in a trance channeling the spirit collective called Abraham, was once asked by a conference attendee if Abraham is able to speak Spanish and thus serve another community that needs their message.

“We can,” Abraham replied. “Just not through Esther.”

“Through someone else, then?” the man asked, and Abraham said, “We choose you. We choose you.”

Maybe we’re all channels, in our limited way. If so, it’s okay that we don’t have the whole picture. We pass along what we know, what we’ve learned. We imitate.

The third argument against Katie seems to be the most popular, but for me it’s the least convincing. I read three long testimonials about Katie’s School for The Work saying the the techniques use to heighten the experience are similar to those used in cults. Only one of these articles was written by someone who claims firsthand experience with the School; the other two quote her directly for their evidence. What’s more, in no way do I find this author’s interpretation of events convincing. What it comes down to is that the women felt manipulated and forced into certain activities like fasting, which others felt to be voluntary.

“Cult” is a popular word these days. Any decentralized group might be slandered as such, even non-religious ones. Individuals can and do get carried away with their loyalty, but in determining whether or not an organization uses manipulative practices to encourage loyalty, common sense will prevail.

Now I turn to the arguments against the process of inquiry itself. In a later section of this book, I will address the logical fallacies. The rest I deal with here.

The five remaining arguments have something significant in common: they apply only after a certain (some would say unhealthy) commitment level is reached. If a practitioner were to question each and every belief, all day long, confusion could certainly result. (Katie herself had this experience after her revelation that our beliefs are what causes pain. She had to re-enter the world of apparent truth–what we call reality–in order to start functioning again.) Similarly, a person who takes the Work to the extreme may become self-blaming and lose compassion. They may even attempt to deceive themselves about their own beliefs, pretending to let go of them in order to find freedom. Finally, Byron Katie followers may refuse other helpful therapeutic methods in the hopes that the Work will give them everything they need.

When we hear Katie’s words, we don’t hear moderation. This is one of the things I don’t love about her delivery. A parent grieving a lost child, a war victim recalling torture–no one, in her eyes, is too justified in their story to not benefit from letting it go.

And sometimes, she’s right. We do hold on to sadness too long. We do let it stand between ourselves and joy. But grief is a process. A beautiful one. An important one. It’s something we need to experience.

Conclusion: It’s so much simpler, isn’t it, to attach yourself to a spiritual practice (on a political ideal, or a parenting philosophy) wholly. It is so tempting to believe you’ve found the Answer, rather than to complicate things with annoying nuance. However, the illusion never lasts. Eventually, we find exceptions–times when our current favorite practices aren’t the most helpful or effective. Byron Katie fandom aside, I don’t plan to question my beliefs to the point of confusion, lack of compassion, self-blame or self-denial, and I’ll never (God willing) give up all other spiritual and therapeutic practices in favor of it.

I would be remiss not to remind you that Byron Katie agrees with me here. Though most of the time she seems to present her ideas as irreproachable, she occasionally reminds us that the Work is not about self-deception. If a turnaround doesn’t feel true to you, she says, move on. Find a different one that does. And never bring ulterior motives to the Work–that’s a technique that’s destined to fail.

And now we come to the crux of the matter: my detox report for January. Over three months have passed since my last update, and if memory serves (which admittedly it often doesn’t) my negativity demon has rarely been this . . . possessive. I mean, she’s there. But she’s sort of chilled out. She’s hanging around, but not really part of the conversation. At the risk of sounding like a commercial, I’m attributing the change to the Work. Even though I do have other choices.

I could consider the role of maturity, of time, or of working less. I could say, Hey, I must be experiencing a natural lull in the course of things. But that doesn’t feel true for me.

Time and maturity? The change wouldn’t be this abrupt, would it? And work? I’ve been going easy on (small-w) work since the baby was born, so that doesn’t seem like a likely candidate. Moreover, since my last entry, an unexpected change: I stopped meditating entirely. After a few weeks of practice with excellent results, the whole thing just dropped off a cliff.

So this increased inner peace definitely isn’t due to more spiritual practice.

The only other explanation I can think of is that aforementioned natural lull. Only time will tell if that’s a major factor.

The kids are still little handfuls and earfuls, and yet, their most difficult behaviors seem to bother me less. And anytime there’s a conflict (real or imagined) with a grown-up person, the Work short-circuits the drama. Lately, my biggest problem is that I’m a bit . . . bored. Things are too easy. Too simple. In November, I did the Work on the thought “Motherhood is difficult,” as I said I would, and what do you know? It helped. Ever since then–for almost three months straight–being a mom has felt pretty easy. After all, most of the day it really is. In doing the Work on the subject I realized that while the mornings are a bit challenging, afternoons are quiet and in the evenings my husband is home to help. And so, the ego switched it up a bit, so that now my pestering thought is that “motherhood is boring.” Typical.

Two more hard truths: I haven’t been in the state of meditation at all—not in the way I described in my last update. Plus, I’ve had my usual share of depression this winter. None of the thoughts that I pull out of my head regarding sadness seem to hit close enough to the bone. Depression is the only negative emotion I’ve experienced so far that doesn’t seem to respond to the Work.

And yet, I’ve been calm. Not overeating. Not overreacting. Patient with my kids and appreciative of my husband. I spend a lot of time looking at my kids—just looking. No mantra. No prescription. And . . . only a minimal amount of Work.

Yes, that’s what I said: a minimal amount of Work. Most days I’ve been skimping on even this basic, important practice. In the month of November, I wrote down forty-one stressful thoughts and in January, thirty-nine, though I didn’t do the full process on them all. In December, however, I wrote down zero–yup, zero. Whatever Work I did last month was brief, and not on paper. Instead, when a stressful thought came, I looked at it for a moment–just recognized it. Then I told myself to write it down later. Interestingly, though the whole month I failed to do so even once, some of the thoughts I’d noticed still evaporated. Not all of them, but some. And I think that’s pretty cool.

They couldn’t even stand a single true glance.

So, a bit of a break from my goal. But not really a break. The Work is becoming part of me, as Katie said it would. Recently, when I have written down my stressful thoughts, I’ve often abbreviated the process. I’ve been skipping the middle questions, focusing more on the first question and the turnarounds, then adding some CBT-type workups at the end.

I admit, somewhat guiltily, that I really, really prefer this shorter process.

Here are a few examples of my Work for November and January.

Thought: I am bored with my life as a mom.

True? Yes.

Byron Katie- and CBT-type turnarounds: I don’t feel bored as a mom. Not as bored, nearly, as I would at a regular writing or proofreading job. I have so many choices of things to do during my day. I get to take my kids out wherever I want to go. And at night I can read or do some writing. Being a mom challenges me in a way I’ve never been challenged before. And I have fun, too; I get to spend a lot of time with the people I like best, including my mom friends. Overall, it’s the best job I’ve ever had.

Thought: Writing is hard. Editing is even harder.

True? No.

Byron Katie- and CBT-type turnarounds: Writing flows well, once I choose a topic and a message to go with it, and get that tricky first sentence on the page. Editing is hard on the computer, but when I do it by hand, it is a challenge, but it’s fun.

Thought: I can’t think of work I can do right now with kids that I love and that matters.

True? No.

Byron Katie- and CBT-type turnarounds: I can write books. I can focus only on my kids. I can meditate. I can volunteer.

And here, my worksheet concerning my spiritual belief that God is reality. This was an interesting one for me.

A Byron Katie Worksheet

Month Completed: January

The Statement: God is reality.

The Questions:

Is it true? No.

Can I absolutely know it is true? No.

How do I feel when I think the thought? Great. I feel more able to accept any situation that arises than I would otherwise when I remind myself that what is–reality–is always good because it is part of God and God is always good. That’s the crux of the belief, the aspect of it that keeps me coming back. It has great practical value in my life.

How would I feel if I were unable to think the thought? I don’t know how I would feel. It might feel good to have no definition for God at all, but if I believed that God is a force separate from myself and my life, possibly one that I had to worship or to please, it might limit my growth or even cause despair.

The Turnarounds: God is not reality. God is not definable. Reality isn’t even real. Even Byron Katie doesn’t belief her own statement on the subject. She knows that everything we see is an illusion.

So again, is it true? No. God isn’t reality. Certainly not our reality–nothing we experience on this tiny, insignificant planet. Maybe God is the ultimate reality, something beyond what we can see or experience, but if that’s the case, there would be no concept of God, with it’s spiritual implications, at all. Spirituality is only useful here on earth, where it feels like something other, something to do or to define. While in a spiritual state in which we could understand this truth, there would be no need to name the All; it’d just be what it is. No spiritualization required. No need to identify it using that term.

All this said, however, I’m keeping my belief that God is reality. After all, I’m a limited being, a human. The so-called “reality” of my senses is the only reality I’m able to perceive at this time, and it does me good to think of it as a positive force irather than as a neutral or negative one. It helps me remember that everything in my life–absolutely everything–is a gift, created for me specifically by some great, loving power. Besides, even if the illusion is just an illusion, it’s still part of reality, too.

Right?

Maybe God isn’t reality, but our illusion-reality is a small taste of God. I don’t need the whole pie, anyway.

I just need one piece.