September 17, 2013
When we are depressed we have an immense amount of emotional energy within us that just wants to find its way out of our body. I wrote previously about writing your way out of depression and that is one way we can choose to release some of our emotional energy. However, not everyone likes to write and it can be a challenging and tedious exercise if you have no interest in doing that regardless of how beneficial it might be. However writing is not the only way to release our emotional energy. We can also talk and, like writing, you do not have to share your words with anyone in order to experience a sense of relief. You can talk to a tape recorder and listen to yourself after recording your description of what it is that you are feeling. You can yell, scream, and cry when you are describing your feelings to the tape recorder. After you listen to yourself you may find that your screams or the things that you yelled or cried about do not really describe what you are feeling or perhaps you realize that you were acting irrational. If that is the case keep rewording and record your statements again. Yell and scream or cry if you need to until you experience a sense of relief for having defined your feelings. Once you have achieved that level of understanding, about your feelings, continue to replay your tape recorder at least once or twice daily. You may find that when you are feeling in a better mood, those statements you made when you were feeling down do not feel accurate or perhaps feel wrong. If that is the case, record yourself again and try to define your feelings again about your current emotions and continue to reword your statements in your recordings until you have achieved a sense of satisfaction.
After you have done that, listen to your recordings on a daily basis and continue to record any modifications you feel are necessary to achieve that level of understanding that you wish to have about your feelings. You may find that every time you can clearly describe what it is you are feeling depressed about you experience a sense of peace.
Talking into a tape recorder is not the only option though. If you have someone that you really trust and has the ability to listen then by all means do that. He or she must have the ability to listen because if that person is opinionated and inundates you with his or her comments then you are not releasing a lot of emotional energy that way. I always found it more useful to have someone, whether a therapist or a personal friend to simply ask me open ended questions like how or why because those types of questions challenged me to understand myself more.
If you have a pet, you can also talk to your pet about your feelings. The main objective is to release all the emotional energy that you are experiencing in the form of words. The goal of course is to experience a sense of emotional peace.