Dressed up like a Wagnerian opera singer AND covered in mashed potatoes?
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who makes altars to pills: I just started one to my active B12s this morning! And not just because they're helping my energy level physically, although that is a miracle.
It's because, over on the B12 thread, I found out that depression may well be (at least partly) a symptom of active B12 deficiency. Now this goes against everything I've ever believed about depression, but when I first started taking sublingual adenosylB12 (one of the two active forms), its effects made me wonder if it could be that simple. I posted that, and Freddd (deviser of this protocol) said that in his case, taking the active B12s rolled away a lifelong depression. Rich, who has a protocol of his own and has also done a lot of research on this, followed up by saying there is actually a pharmaceutical antidepressant based on different type of B vitamins and cofactors. So, if you don't have any sensitivities to the fillers in sublinguals, I think active B12s + might well be worth a try. If you want to try it, go over to the B12 thread: which brands you buy, how you titrate them, and the reactions you may have are a long complicated road. I'm only a few weeks down it and even with the nausea and dizziness being temporarily exacerbated I'm...cheerful. It's bizarre. I'm not even naturally cheerful!
I've had depression all my life; I think sometimes it's just natural (I mean if you're in pain or depressing circumstances or you've lost someone or something dear to you, it seems inhuman not to grieve) but when it goes on too long I do the distraction thing, get involved in a project that really engages me, watch or listen to or read something that makes me laugh or that touches me; be in touch with friends.
I also do the woo woo stuff: EFT (kind of off and on with that, but every time I do it I wonder why I don't do it more often), and I also use InnerTalk CDs, subliminals which really are more effective than other hypno-tapes I've used. I also find beauty to be an incredible healer of the soul, however you define that: getting out in nature does a lot for me. So do baths. I've also played with color-in-the-aura meditations from *Change Your Aura, Change Your Life* (by Barbara Y. Martin). And I do less ethereal stuff, such as binge on trashy books (or videos) and eat a lot of sweets (or at least as much as my digestion can handle).
Aromatherapy, too: lavender and orange and geranium oils are good for depression and inexpensive; rose and jasmine are also good but expensive (unless they're fake, in which case they're useless). But aromatherapy is also making sure there are scents in your environment that you love, whatever they may be, (baking bread, leather, reed mats, herbs). This affects our stem brains, the ones we share with lizards - that must surely be the part that holds depression. Feels like it.
One of the best things I've discovered recently? Not being so damn hard on myself and not expecting me (or anyone else) to reach perfection. Not only is it depressing, it's also stupid. It doesn't work.
Now I'll have to try the mashed potatoes.
