Recognize the ability for and embrace change (express and evaluate the axioms of behavior and belief that have carried you this far)

It is necessary to embrace both the past & the future. Clearly, for someone whose mood is perpetually very low, much change is needed. Therefore, the first thing is simply to focus on this most fundamental fact, and allow it to happen. As has often been said, unhappiness and absence of change is usually the result of some kind of emotional resistance or other. Also simply not realizing that it is possible, i.e. Viewing oneself as one has been told one is by others, as a fixed, known quantity & ‘essence’. As we grow up, our parents, teachers, Dr.s etc, place various labels upon us, which we erroneously, in our innocence, take to be something deep, when in fact they are just meaningless words that have nothing to do with what we really are. It is crucial to comprehend that, at bottom, we are not ‘schizophrenic’, ‘depressed’, bipolar’, ‘ADHD’, etc., etc., etc…. at bottom, we are merely energy, & we can manifest in almost anyway we like, & we are defined simply by how we manifest, in the phenomenon that we make up from moment to moment, not according to some ‘essence’ that we don’t properly understand but that is supposed to be revealed to us in the words that other people put upon us. Again, as I have said earlier in this book, a phenomenological approach to ourselves & the world is the beginning of wisdom; simply observing phenomenon, ‘the surface’, & recognizing that that is perhaps the most important thing. Inattention to the surface, to the phenomenon itself, & prioritization of the opinions of ‘experts’ over it seems to be the root of much, perhaps most, ignorance & suffering, especially of younger people. Once we begin to pay attention to the actual phenomenon itself, to what is, according to a more Heideggerian method, we can soon begin to work on it & change it for the better, & sift the truly real from the fabricating lies. There is in fact, in some sense, an underlying nature different from the surface as it appears to others, (hence why the behaviorists are so wrong-headed), but that nature is more akin to a realm of untapped possibility & freedom, thru’ judicious use of the imagination & learning to rationalize one’s existence more, rather than a realm of terrible circumscribed limitation as supposedly revealed by psychiatric diagnosis. (In this sense, the LGBTQ community have some truth to their position, in that freedom is at least as essential to our nature – to human nature – as even our sexual nature, so the ability to define or create one’s own sexual orientation/ gender is in many respects a legitimate part of that. But if we can define & create our very sex, surely we should at least be able to define & create our own personality as well, which by definition is largely a product of & co-extensive with our own long series of decisions, (i.e. at least partly willful actions ) without being unduly limited by psuedo- medical quackery ‘diagnoses’!) When one becomes very mentally ill, due to heavy external pressure, one becomes like a machine obeying certain rules that one doesn’t understand. One is constantly panicking, & acting in such a way as to supposedly avoid the potential threat, even if the actual threatening object has been largely removed & now only exists in one’s imagination. I imagine this might be called PTSD (Post-traumatic-stress-disorder), or a form of it. It is what psychiatry caused me to have for 12 whole years. The way that I eventually solved & dealt with it was by an immensely difficult, laborious, & slow process of defining what the heck I was doing & learning to re-imagine alternatives, i.e. Elaborating the ‘axioms’ on which my machine-like action was running. In general, it is only by making explicit our own assumptions that we can begin to revise them & change them for the better, so this is an absolutely crucial part of improving one’s mental health. For example, a person who has always been depressed, or been depressed for a very long time, may simply assume ‘this is how life is’. In order to begin to heal, the first thing they have to do is begin to question that assumption and entertain the possibility that life can be immensely joyful. Another example would be someone who believed or who had got into the habit that the opposite sex was just for sex, & that the possibility of finding a real soul mate or emotional union did not exist. Until they address this fundamental assumption that has somehow protruded into their consciousness due to our vulgar popular culture, their relations with the opposite sex (& their sex life) are always going to be extremely limited compared to the potentially sublime feelings of love & deeper relief of which human beings are eminently capable, but often suppress. There are many other common examples which it could be very beneficial to go into, but probably far too many; so always question your assumptions, & try to work out what they might be, & how they might be limiting you unnecessarily. Recognize the ability for and embrace change (express and evaluate the axioms of behavior and belief that have carried you this far)