zoozla

I absolutely agree with this, especially with being kind with ourselves and with shopping around. And don't limit the shopping around to only people with important sounding diplomas on their walls. Some are awesome, some aren't. The person who helped me the most on my path had no formal qualifications, just deep innate wisdom and compassion.

That's a very thorough exploration of the topic, thanks. There definitely seems to be a two way street between chemistry and consciousness both affecting each other allowing us to tackle the problem of depression from both ends. I'm very excited about the result coming out of psychedelic research which seem to chemically trigger and stable improvement in thought patterns.

I'll look into that. Feels a little too loose for me. I want people to only pay when they want to, but I also believe people value things more when they commit something to it. "Buy one for you, gift one to someone else" is a model I really like both for financials and for virality.

Absolutely. I already am charging a monthly fee for a simpler version of the app + coaching and was waiting for validation that the app works without my guidance to move to the next stage. Payment structure is TBD, but I really want to balance my need for sustainable income with removing barriers of entry for everyone. Likely going to charge more from those who can afford it and grant free licenses to those who can't.

Acceptance doesn't mean we stop fighting for justice. It just means we accept the current situation as the starting point from which we begin our fight. Releasing our hold on the anger doesn't mean we stop caring. It means we can use the anger to fuel our good fight and not remain stuck fuming on the sidelines.

Also, kickstarter? Haven't considered that, but I'll see if this makes sense.

Yes, I think these are related concepts. I read a whole host of books that are related and have been influential. Off the top of my head (on top of HSP):

The Big Leap The Sedona Method The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership Hold Me Tight The Four Tendencies

That is the best feedback I've gotten so far, thank you thank you thank you!

I definitely am planning to make a serious business out of it. I started out with a coaching + app mix when the app was a lot more bare and didn't really work without me walking people through it.

I'll get the email, marketing site and the rest of it in order, you're right, Twitter isn't everyone's cup of tea (although I am focused on buildign an audience there because my style of writing seems to work well in short bursts).

I'm not going to hire a female actress to do the narration because I want my soul to be in the app. I might hire a speach coach though to get this to a higher level, so thanks for for pointing it out. I've actually gotten way better feedback on the narration given that I'm not a native English speaker and this is my first time recording my voice for anything.

Again, thanks so much. I'm now going to use this motivation that you granted me to go get this thing in front of many more people!

I'm not hurt at all by this comment and it's true. I didn't create the app in the depths of my most intense depression episode (two months in bed, couldn't even get myself to watch a TV show). Medication helped me out of that. I've also actively working on methods to improve myself for about a decade and by the time I started working on the app about two years ago I was mostly stable with occasional bouts of depression and rage that lasted for a few days to a week.

The first version of the app took a couple of weeks to build and I was flying on a good streak at that point, but it's prevented me from spiraling down ever since.

I don't know if the app could have helped me in my deepest depressive state. I don't know if it can help other people in even deeper states. I think it might.

You're right (and I say so in the About section), it is based on the Sedona Method. I found the method to be quite tedious to do on paper and I couldn't focus long enough to do it in my head, which was the original reason I built the app.

However, the app works for people who don't know the method, haven't read the book, didn't watch the full DVD from 1992 and didn't attend the weeklong seminar. I think it could bring this to a much wider audience.

Thanks for the bug report, yes, there's a lot more I need to fix in it before hitting the big leagues.

I haven't considered open sourcing it because I want to make a living off it. But I will think about it. There's a more limited version, without narration or the deeper content, that I use for myself and I think I might open source that.

Yes, I do think what I've built is the beginning of a solution applicable to many other people. Not that the wave is over, the site is back up and you can see for yourself.

My take on depression is that it's an internal fight between an emotion (usually fear, anger or guilt) and a thought that says we shouldn't be feeling it (because there's no logical reason for it, etc.). The conflict gets so intense that the whole emotional system shuts down resulting in full on apathy, which is the cause of most of the symptoms of depression.

Apathy, in my case, felt like the flu. I didn't have energy, didn't want to do anything, felt weak and soulless.

This is not the official definition, but it's a workable description that also points to a solution - process the apathy and then the underlying emotions and the depression should lift. That's what the app I built helps with. But as usual, YMMV.

Warms my heart to hear that, I'm so happy it helped you!

The first and simplest thing you could do is head to the app, and work through the Apathy section. It should give you a better clue about what's going in your mind and make the difference between what you're body is doing (maybe fighting a virus) and what your mind is doing (fighting repressed emotions).

Also, ping me on Twitter @finereli. Let talk.

There's a lot we don't undestand about mental illness, but I think the brain chemistry theory doesn't hold water anymore. Otherwise we would have been able to take a blood test and say - oh, your serotonin levels are out of wack.

I'm really happy you found a combination of meds that work for you, sounds like it was a long and rough road to get there. There's still things you can do to improve your condition beyond what the meds can do. I have some anecdotal evidence that the app helps people taking meds, but nothing conclusive yet.

So much this! That's why I decided I needed to get off that train and start looking for other ways. It took a ffing decade to find something that finally worked, but I'm glad I started the journey.

I'm doing my damnest to get this out to as many people as I can and not worry about perfectionism that killed many of my projects in the past. I did use my laptop mic for the recording and I did get better gear but didn't get a chance to re-record the narration.

It's interesting to hear that the lo-finess is actually helpful. Yes, I'm just a dude (with a bit of an accent to boot!) :)

I usually use the app without my narration - I find it distracting. Most people using the app over the long term tend to turn it off to, and listen deeper to their inner guidance (which is the whole point - the app is helping you to become your own therapist, not me being yours).

Holy crap, being compared to Mr. Watts is spiking up my imposter syndrom :) Thank you so much!

Thanks for your honesty. Yes, I am going out on a limb creating a product that is based on non-standard methods, and there is some risk to people using it - we all have different and complex responses to events. I've given a lot of thought to the question what would happen if someone killed themselves because of the app? It still keeps me up at night. But I won't stop looking for better answers because the current state of the art in dealing with this isn't enough.

Having a clear goal helps with depression, but leaving my job and trying to start a business around it makes it worse. I'm pretty sure using the app is what's keeping me sane these days, while building it is trying to bury me.

You are absolutely right that these things are the true solution to not have depression. However, they don't really work when you are already in it though. It's like telling a drowning man to start practicing his strokes or someone falling out of a plane to invent a parachute.

Depression is a self sustaining problem. The depression prevents you from seeking social activities, taking care of your body and mind and being creative, This obviously makes the depression worse. Paradoxically, forcing yourself to do any of these activities makes the depression worse as well due to the internal resistance to get better.

We definitely do need innovation. We need something that works, is scalable, doesn't cost $1k per month in therapy fees and doesn't have any adverse side effects.

My current best guess about the future in this space is a combination of microdosing and supportive apps like mine.

The only thing I can currently measure in the app is the intensity of an emotional experience - before the process and after the process. I'm still compiling the stats, but I think the average reduction in intensity of the experience of e.g. apathy is about 40%.

I really like the idea of incorporating a standard depression symptoms test into the app and then taking another test at a later stage to see the longer term change. It still won't be conclusive proof, but it would help.

This is a really powerful comment. I am trying to create a sustainable income from this app so I can keep on doing what I love, and every marketing guru on the planet is trying to push me into charging as much as possible as early as possible. I have an intuitive resistance to that, but you put it in way better words than I could have.

I'm not sure how to fix this and still make a living out of it yet, but I'm going to keep looking.

Thanks for your thoughts!

It's part of it, but I only built the app after realizing the method (which is based on something called The Sedona Method) really worked for me. I just found it super tedious to do on paper and over time added more features that help to get into a mental state where emotional release is possible.

I'm now building a business around the app and that path has multiple emotional pitfalls per day. I tried to do this a few times before and always succumbed to my fear, guilt and worthlessnes.

This time, I'm using the app on a daily basis and snap out of my funk (usually) in a matter of minutes.

So I'd say the app is helping me feel better which is allowing me to keep building it - not the other way around.

It was debunked and reaffirmed within a narrower context and in general is a pretty controversial concept. Many people however have the personal experience of a limit to their willpower and that's what I'm referring to in the article. I'll actually edit it to remove the reference to Ego Depletion, thanks for poking me.

Acceptance is a bit of a misleading term. We can't directly accept anything, especially if we're trying to force it, because we'll be fighting against not being able to accept the fact that we aren't accepting our circumstances. It's quite recursive.

Thanks! I think I got the server sorted out.

Holy smokes guys, I went to sleep after posting this and woke up to the tiny server running my blog dead and about a 100 comments here. I'll get my kid to school and then sort everything out.

Thanks!

I like to have a liberal amount of asserts in my code, especially when I'm interfacing with some external component, just to make sure I've got my assumptions correctly. The Python assert errors are pretty useless, so I made a small library to make them (slightly) better. Hopefully other people can use it too.