Posted by Fergus Duniho on January 03, 2001 at 16:43:18:
In Reply to: depressed fives? posted by bilo on December 29, 2000 at 07:03:16:
I've learned that depression is about not feeling anything at all, as distinguished from feeling sad. Fives can be especially prone to depression, because they are normally more numb to their feelings than other types are. The key to overcoming depression is to let yourself feel, even if it is to let yourself feel sad, because that's an improvement over being depressed. Some things which can help are comedy, music, meditation, exercise, and standing with your knees bent.
Let me explain that last one. According to bioenergetic theory, feelings flow through the body but get blocked at some points. The usual way of standing is to sort of lock your knees so that your legs are completely straight, but this blocks the flow of feelings in the legs. By standing with your legs slightly bent, you can get in better touch with the feelings in your legs. For more information on bioenergetics, I recommend books by Alexander Lowen, especially "Depression and the Body" and "Betrayal of the Body," which are about the oral and schizoid body types respectively. If bioenergetic theory is right about correlations between personality and body type, then many fives may have the body types described by these two books.
Meditation is useful for letting yourself feel in a safe place without censoring your feelings.
Here are some more tips that have worked for me. Intellectual activity can stimulate the brain in ways that fight depression. When I turned 30, I got depressed over no longer being in my 20's, and I overcame the depression by getting an electronic Chess set on which I played Chess.
Also, I've found one good thing in Scientology, that silly religion made up by a sci-fi author. It provides a map of emotional states, which it calls the Emotional Tone Scale. From bottom to top, these are death, apathy, making amends, grief, propitiation (appeasement), sympathy, fear, covert hostility, no sympathy, anger, pain, antagonism (overt hostility), boredom, conservatism (contentment), interest (amusement), and enthusiasm (cheerfulness). This emotional map is useful, because it is easier to move myself up by one notch in the tone scale than it is to jump from depression to enthusiasm. By identifying my present mood, I can use this map to identify what sort of music I should play to raise my mood up one notch. I can then use music to slowly (but surely) raise my mood to where I want it. I neglect to use this method regularly, but when I do use it, it does work.