““In The Depression Cure, Ilardi writes: There’s evidence that depression can leave a toxic imprint on the brain. It can etch its way into our neural circuitry—including the brain’s stress response system—and make it much easier for the brain to fall back into another episode of depression down the road. This helps explain a puzzling fact: It normally takes a high level of life stress to trigger someone’s first episode of depression, but later relapse episodes sometimes come totally out of the blue. It seems that once the brain has learned how to operate in depression mode, it can find its way back there with much less prompting. Fortunately, though, we can heal from the damage of depression. All it takes is several months of complete recovery for much of the toxic imprint on the brain to be erased [or overridden].[88] In brainswitching, you choose a new thought that’s neutral or nonsense. This thought doesn’t trigger the same emotional, and resulting chemical, responses in the brain. Instead, the new thought actually creates activity in the neocortex—the thinking part of the brain. Depressive thoughts activate the subcortex, the feeling part of the brain. We have the choice of using either the subcortex (feeling portion) or the neocortex (thinking portion) region of our brain. Remember, your mind will move in the direction of the most current and dominant thought. You can make a thought dominant by saying it over and over again. Even repeatedly saying, “I am depressed” has an effect upon your depression. And when you’re depressed you tend to act in a way that reinforces your depression. You may look depressed. You think defeatist, depressive thoughts. When you’re depressed you’re letting your mind tell you what to feel, think, and do. The author of BrainSwitch Out of Depression suggests””
