A Personal Study of the Pursuit of Happiness
My cure for depression written by a 4-year-old trapped in a 27-year-old’s body
Howdy y’alllllll
After living with depression for about two years, I wanted to find out (my) universal solution to it given any circumstance. Because depression is onset by a multitude of reasons, this wasn’t just the “I’ll go work out and feel better” temporary solution I was looking for, sure an endorphin release yadda yadda, but exercise doesn’t cure my depression. It is only short-term relief for deep-rooted problems. I had to get down to what was making me sad in the first place and change my mind about how to handle it.
Earlier I posted this (below) as kind of a high level view of what I think life is. Of course it’s much more complex, but everyone can gain a little bit of perspective if we take a step outside of our day-to-day, and realize this is all we get:

Through little science experiments on myself /cough/ acid (I don’t read much), I observed that our daily, yearly, and entire existence mimics energy wavelengths (because we are just energy). We become happy and sad, we open and we close like the sun rises and sets (the lotus flower). We are high or mid or low, all the time. Our energy depletes and needs to be restored, just like our emotions. Our life span is much like the four seasons in a year; our feelings are as colorful as a rainbow. Everything is modeled after everything else. Nature is fucking lit.
So, knowing that life is obviously way more complicated than that little squiggle, I’ll tackle human ~emoootionnnsss~ (ghost arms)
NOTE: I am nothing close to a philosopher or psychology professional. I just like to solve logic puzzles and craft things. I maintain that the way us Westerners live life (chasing money/things instead of peace) is reflected in modern advertising psychology. If we studied that to understand why we’re all so goddamn miserable, we could probably reverse the damage done to our own minds. 🙃 (It’s 2017, we could be enjoying the sunshine every moment we get, we just don’t for some reason.)
Let’s take this cross section, the part of human existence that takes us out of happiness and sends us on an all-inclusive non-consensual staycation to Rock Bottom AKA sadness/depression:

I did a teeny bit of research around “DABDA” Denial — Anger — Bargaining — Depression — Acceptance, but I couldn’t find anything *after* you find Acceptance. There seems to be no skyrocketing back into happiness, you just have to “cope with the change” and let a lot of time pass before you are happy again.
A few things: Pre me being 26-years-old, I was never a philosophical person. I didn’t read much of any old philosophers, I never questioned life, I just happily made art and worked on my career. After that all somehow ended up making me miserable, I started questioning things (full disclosure: this was after a wild edible trip). I’m pretty much back to square 1, just with a deeper understanding of why making art makes me happy.
After seeing that there was no “cure” for depression (except anti-depressants or time >:( ), I thought that was bullshit, we are smart, there’s gotta be a way (with all the technologies at our disposal) to exist in happiness way longer than ever before if you want to (yanno, without the drugs).
So, there is, I think. It takes a ton of hard work in terms of mind training, you have to rewire the way that you think, and as someone who used to be depressed, I understand how hopeless that sounds. But, it works.
What gets us down into depression is swimming in our past thoughts and disappointed expectations of life. If I wanted to start breaking out of that and back into happy, I had to seek the best of the current treatments and stitch them together. No one was a cure-all. That’s where the 12-steps to alcohol recovery and studying Buddhism overlapped quite nicely with DABDA in my little experiment (aka personal hell for 3 months).
First of all, I think it’s natural to be depressed (life is full of “suffering”, especially when we don’t manage our expectations). If you expect you’re going to be happy today, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Secondly, the degree to which you’re depressed will be different than others, but it would be wise to stop comparing your experiences to another.
Addiction recovery should be a staple in our education system, everyone is addicted to something AKA really wants to the point of not having self control over: A substance, a person (relationship), an insecurity, having expectations, their phone, video games, power, money, sweets, caffeine, buying shit, etc. And we can kind of see where Buddhism fits nicely as it dives deeply in how to live a life of non-suffering via getting rid of attachments (EG addictions). Acceptance on a macro scale is the same when you’re dealing with problems of yourself or problems with others.
When you combine the bunch, you get a path way to understand how to get back on track to happiness :) (that is, only if you want to)
#collaboration

Let’s try it out.
The Event: Say you get broken up with. It came out of nowhere and you really put energy and time into this relationship. Your ex just didn’t appreciate you and left you hanging in the dust.
Denial, Anger, and Bargaining will probably happen during the break up in a messy combination of those, with you trying to justify or deal with the soon-to-be-ex that maybe if you give them some space, you guys can work things out (bargaining), and eventually things won’t work out anyway and you’ll get to live in Rock Bottom for a few months.
So you can be sad or angry (for however long you want; a day, a week, 3 years, is up to you) and when you’re ready to move on aka Acceptance, you can move forward with the chart.
Admittance/Observation: Getting broken up with sucks. Why? We have to get to the root of the issue and attachment here in order to figure out next steps: I thought we’d get married and have a few kids, really invested my time in this one. We said I love you to each other and I thought they’d be with me for the rest of my life. The feeling of rejection sucks, especially when spending so much time and energy toward that goal and I had way too high expectations of someone else.
Acceptance: I *am ready* to move on (Can’t do this until you’re a willing participant)
Forgiveness: I’m sorry that we didn’t work out. I’m sorry if I was a bad partner.
Finding Peace: I am okay. They will be okay. It just didn’t work out, and that’s okay. I should thank them for not wasting any more of my time. I am not going to hold any expectations that anyone owes me anything just because I choose to give them my attention.
Finding Purpose: I’m going to practice some things to make myself a better person, and perhaps, when I’m ready again, to be a better partner. *writes list of good personality traits to have*
Action: Go practice those traits.
Repeat the Stages of Recovery as often as you need to until you fully believe for yourself that you can let go (and manage the expectation that it will still take some time depending on how often you want to revisit Rock Bottom).
Yay :)
If you want to get really good at the whole “giving no fucks” lifestyle of happiness, follow the fast track, and practice it every chance you get. :D

If you get a tad annoyed at something, start getting sad at a past memory, or get anxious about the future, remember this chart. Be mindful and acknowledge the emotions (constantly ask yourself how am I doing. You do it to everyone else, do it to yourself too), focus on how you’re feeling for a few seconds, reaaaallly feel the emotions to make sure, ask yourself why you’re feeling like that. And then when you’re ready, go through the steps, and continue on with your day.
10,000 hours of practice will make you a master of being happy.
E(?)APFA
Event: Someone pissed you off. Why? Either they or I are having a bad day.
Acceptance: Bad days happen to everyone.
Peace: What can I do about it, it’s in the past? “My inner peace shant be fucked with” /breathe/ What is the expectation here? How would I like to be treated if I had a bad day? Still they pissed me off.. Rationalize and react strategically.
Find a purpose: I need to go calm down and resolve the situation because it would make me feel better.
Action: Take a breather. Communicate (if you can) to the person your interpretation of the situation calmly, and, most importantly, don’t expect an apology (you can’t control someone else). Speak your peace and move on. After, go watch a YouTube video on something you’ve always wanted to learn.
Event: I started thinking about my ex
Why?: We dated for 5 years and I got dumped. Apparently, it still hurts.
Acceptance: Nothing I can do about it.
Peace: “My inner peace shant be fucked with” /breathe/ Rationalize and react strategically. Why is my energy going toward a person who is no longer in my life right now? How long should I spend thinking about this? Do I need to cry about it to help get over it?
Find a purpose: It would help if I cried about it because I still have emotions for them.
Action: Go hyper-focus on crying. Cry your guts out. The more you hold in, the less you can let go. Then go do something productive.
Channel the anger/emotions into a healthy activity like learning a new skill or exercise.
~The best revenge is living a better life~ (not a life full of fake happiness)
The more you practice this, the faster you will get over things. And who said you couldn’t streamline self-help? (Oh was that me? heh)
Note: This is my own personal way of dealing with shit. This might not be your cup of tea. I don’t particularly like being mad or sad, so I try to get out of that mindset as fast as humanly possible. I had about 30 panic attacks large and small over the last six months in order to figure this out and see a pattern for myself. (A precautionary tale to not microdose edibles)
Additionally, this has not been tested with larger traumatic events such as death or ongoing abuse, so please err on the side of caution.
And, please, always seek professional help and don’t rely on internet strangers to give you good advice.
With love & mediocre advice at best,
~Jess
