We’re continuing the series on Dr. Steve Peters’ book, “A Path Through the Jungle.” This one focuses on Depression, how to gain perspective, how to recognize depressive thoughts, and how to take care of your Chimp so that it doesn’t get worse. Dr. Liz talks about different paths you can take with different thoughts and the importance of action.

*** Suicide is mentioned around RT 24:00 min.

“Helpful Autopilots” phrases are given throughout this episode.

“A Path through the Jungle” can be purchased on Amazon:  https://a.co/d/4hx7M7M

See more about Dr. Peters at https://chimpmanagement.com

Previous episodes in this series are at:

Stop your Chimp’s Panic Attacks >>>>https://drlizhypnosis.com/hm316-stop-your-chimps-panic-attacks-with-dr-liz

Manage your Anxiety by Managing your Chimp >>>> https://drlizhypnosis.com/hm315-manage-your-anxiety-by-managing-your-chimp

Your Chimp vs your Human >>>>https://drlizhypnosis.com/hm313-from-inner-chaos-to-inner-peace

 

About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

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Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter

Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast

Help yourself with Hypnosis Downloads by Dr. Liz! http://bit.ly/HypnosisMP3Downloads

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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work

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Transcript

Hey everyone. Dr Liz, here we are doing an episode on A Path Through the Jungle by Dr Steve Peters. This one is on depression. I did one laying the groundwork in Chimp versus human. One on anxiety, one on panic attacks and this one is on depression. This is a hard one, I’ll tell you, because I find it very easy to be an anxiety specialist. I find it fun actually to help people decrease anxiety, get rid of their panic attacks, face phobias, fears that are coming up, you know, when people stop driving places and then they’re able to drive again very satisfying.

Depression is harder for me because I really can relate to the thoughts going on that the world is awful and it’s pointless and why do anything. These are all depression thoughts. They’re also all messages from the chimp, not the human, and it’s like, yeah, I get it, I’ve been there.

I used to struggle myself with cyclical depression. I would say so every couple of years I’d go into a depressive episode. I had severe postpartum depression with both of my kids after they were born, so I had been in therapy for years, which was helpful, absolutely. Talk therapy. Then I did what’s called core healing hypnosis with a mentor of mine who really looked at the underlying beliefs of what’s causing this depression, because we often have this default of depression or anxiety. Sometimes both that happens and gets established when we’re really young. She did some really deep hypnosis work with me to knock that depression belief that’s driving the depression out, and it was very effective. That was probably, that was 2018. And it is 2025 that I’m recording this and I have not had a depressive episode since and that feels somewhat like a miracle to me because we did go through the pandemic. We have been through a major move to Jacksonville. Sometimes I find it creeping in and I will move into action before it gets worse. So I think that was part of that hypnotic work. I also trained in that technique myself and I’ve helped many, many people with it. So if you have been to talk therapy a long time and you’re like, why can’t I get rid of my depression, maybe hypnosis is for you, whether it’s with me or somebody else.

Anyway, let’s see what Dr Peter says about depression and how it’s coming about. According to Dr Peter’s, depression occurs when the chimp takes over. Remember, the chimp is the one that sends emotional messages to us, so emotional messages like it’s hopeless, you’re worthless, there’s nothing you can do, everything’s just going to remain awful. That would be a chimp depression message.

And then sometimes, often past experiences, internal thoughts that we tell ourselves, sometimes unresolved trauma, feed these negative thought cycles that the chimp is throwing at us. Now, remember it’s the human that comes in and has to solve the problem. The chimp can’t do it. And the human is that logical, rational part of our brains. It’s informed by our computer, that storage system for beliefs and habits, and helpful autopilots, or unhelpful autopilots, those gremlins and goblins that come in. That’s where subconscious beliefs come in as well. So these unhelpful thought processes, these gremlins and goblins, come in and feed the depression.

Instead of telling the chimp, hey, go take a hike, we’ve got this  they decide to like go on the playground or, let’s say, swing from tree to tree with the chimp. Then the chimp starts to dominate and take over. You’re likely to get stuck unless we move into human mode to find a solution, unless we exercise the chimp as well, unless we recognize like, hey, the chimp needs some attention here and we need to go into action to make sure the chimp doesn’t take over.

There’s another episode I ran called depression prevention plan that would be going into action. Like, oh, the chimp is coming up and saying all kinds of bullshit. Let’s say right, and I’ve got to get a handle on this, I’ve got to get those helpful autopilots going. And this is really hard. I am not pretending it’s easy. It’s very difficult. Sometimes it takes a lot of energy to go into action.

And depression is a lack of energy you really do want to sleep more. You’re more tired, you’re more fatigued. Thinking about getting out and taking even a brief walk or something like that feels overwhelming often, depending on what level that depression is at. So not saying this is easy, but I am saying it is helpful to get out of the depression or to not let the depression get worse.

So what do we do?

Sometimes it’s finding just a very small, manageable action that you can take like, okay, I’m just going to do this one thing today. For example, I moved from South Florida, where I had been living over 30 years, to North Florida in February of this year, 2025.

And so my practice, which was well-established down in South Florida, I always had lots of referrals, often full. My practice took a hit when I moved because nobody knows me here. The doctors don’t know me here yet, the other therapists that live here don’t know me yet. And so this fear came up and with a tiny bit of depression, I would say it’s like, oh my God, how am I going to support myself? I did have savings planning for the move. I knew, okay, often when you move, your practice goes down some. So I’ve got to have enough to cover that. The feeling that I’m giving the example of is actually fear and sometimes helplessness.

Fear will create anxiety, helplessness will create depression. Like there’s nothing I can do about. This is depression. If I had worthlessness on top of that, which I don’t, it’d be worse. Like, oh my gosh, I’m never going to succeed would be some worthlessness in there. I don’t have what it takes to build a new practice. That would be some worthlessness in there. That’s not the case for me, but that’s an example of depressive thoughts.

It’s okay to talk these out, write them down, express them in what Peter says, a healthy, contained way. He calls this like exercising the chimp, like the chimps got to speak. It’s going to tell you what it needs to tell you. But then, once we do that, we move into solutions. So we don’t stay with the chimp. We don’t let the chimp take over and just continue to tell us these awful things. Instead, we start to move to our truths of life or helpful autopilots.

A helpful autopilot for me is I’ve built several businesses in my life. I’ve moved to new areas before I can do this again. I know how to reach out and build connections with people. Those are all helpful autopilots.

I know I’m a good therapist. I’ve got to let other people know that I’m a good therapist and have them directly experience that. Not that they’re going to become clients if they’re a doctor and I’m getting referrals from them, I mean sometimes, but more like, oh, they get to meet me and just get my vibe and see that I’m a professional and those type of things.

But everyone has their own truths of life that help them through. There’s a couple he gives in the book of

There are always good people around to lean on.

I can always create my own sunshine. That’s a cute one, huh.

People are unlikely to change, but I can change my approach towards them. That’s a really interesting one. If your experience is that people stay the same they don’t change no matter what I do, you still have control over your own self. I can change how I approach them. So I like that one.

Effort and results don’t always go hand in hand. He says this might be useful if you always try very hard, but things don’t always work out. Again interesting A very American thought is if you put in enough effort, you’ll get the result. Sometimes it’s the type of effort. Sometimes it takes stepping back and seeing am I making the effort in the right place? I’ve learned that through being a business owner Some things end up being completely irrelevant to building your business. You don’t know at the time. You can only know afterwards. You can look around at other businesses, you can listen to business podcasts, you can look at different ideas. You can make business plans. You can look at others’ business plans, you can read a lot of books, but at some point you’ve got to take the step to get the experience, to try the different things and get the information back.

Another one he says is sometimes the bad guys win. Man, that one’s hard for me. He says this could be relevant if injustice has happened to you and it’s like yeah, man, clearly sometimes the bad guys win. Just because someone’s successful does not mean that they’re a good person or doing good things in the world or the reverse, that you’re a good person, that you’re going to win.

So if we use that to get out of depression instead of be depressed, it’s very different. We could easily use that and say, well, sometimes the bad guys win, so there’s no point in trying Like that would be a depressive thought that leads you down to hang out with the chimp versus sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes the bad guys win and that is a fact of life. But that doesn’t mean that my efforts don’t make a difference in the world, that I can’t help other people and create meaning and take steps to do that, take steps to make myself feel better and win in my own ways. Those would be out of depression kind of thoughts. So you’ve got to be careful. You can’t just take it and lead it down the negative path. You really have to take them and say, okay, let’s say this one to help myself feel better.

Another one he gives is there will always be good times ahead. Now you could again take this one and say, okay, yeah, occasionally I get five minutes of relief. I watch a funny show, or I read a book that I like, or I go out in nature and get some relief. I see a beautiful tree or some flowers. You have to find what works for you.

I’m going to talk a little bit about quilting here. I hand quilt and so it’ll often take me nine months to a year to make a quilt and there are sometimes years in between me starting another quilt. They’re floating around in my head. I see them all the time because I’m in those social media circles. Like oh, that’s a beautiful quilt, oh, I’d love to do this. Or a newsletter comes, or I buy quilting magazines.

It would be easy to get down on myself to say why haven’t you started a new quilt? You’re so lazy, you’re not being productive. Those are messages from my childhood. I wasn’t ever called lazy, but definitely productivity was prioritized in my family, and so when I feel like I’m not being productive, sometimes the chimp comes up and starts doing this little dance. I have to say, well, I’m percolating. When the time is right to start a new quilt, I will. Related to this there’s always good times ahead. Be like well, if I really want to feel better, I can start a quilt. Like I know that that helps me feel better, even though the effort seems very large at the beginning, because I know it’s a long-term project. But that’s an example of you find something that you really like to do. You may not start it, but you can say, well, I could probably do that in the future and I know that will make me feel good.

There’s always a beautiful flower to see. I’m seeing all kinds of new flowers and plants up here that they don’t have in South Florida. It’s too warm. I saw a beautiful little wildflower called the powder puff yesterday. It’s like it looks like a little purple dandelion. It’s so pretty. It was just outside the office of the dentist that I was going to, so I stopped and took a picture and sent it to my girls and said look at this beautiful little purple flowers. They’re so pretty. So it’s like, ok, there’s always a beautiful flower to see. I can take myself to the art museum or I can take myself just on a walk down the street. I can take myself on an excursion to help me feel better.

So you want to do these things so that you’re tapping into some of your own truths of life, not buying into the chimp’s message. Dr Peters calls it. You got to box the chimp. You can’t let the chimp take over. Let the feelings express, then move to your truths, your helpful autopilots to combat the depressive thoughts that the chimp is throwing at you.

Now he doesn’t say to make this like pie in the sky. We are addressing reality. And he calls these building the stone of life, like a strong inner foundation, and what that is addressing what life actually is like, not what we wish it was like. Sometimes life really does suck. Sometimes things don’t happen the way we want them to, in very small ways and in much larger ways. Sometimes the checkout line at the grocery store is much longer than we thought it was going to be and now we’re running late. Or sometimes people get elected to office that we don’t appreciate and it didn’t work out like we wanted it to. Sometimes people are not nice to us and we want them to be. Sometimes our partner’s not in a good mood. Sometimes we have to face these realities and this is a constant state of flux for most people.

Like even a partner, you’re negotiating things that you like and you don’t like, things that are annoying. There’s an older author. I have no idea if he’s published something recent, but his name was Dr Harley. Like the motorcycle Dr Harley, he had all these books about couples and he had this whole list of what he called love busters like annoying things that your partner does that certainly don’t build love and can certainly break down love if they’re too severe, and his advice was to negotiate some of them. Negotiate as many as you could Like hey, do you mind not picking your nose while I’m around? It’s annoying to me. If that partner says, yeah, that’s cool, I’ll just do it in private you’re good to go. If they say, no, I really like to pick my nose all the time. I don’t care if you’re around. Then you got to say okay, let’s, you know, let’s talk about this. You understand that that makes me feel like you’re disgusting and then I’m less attracted to you and then, if I’m less attracted to you, we have sex less. We have sex less than we lose some of our connection and that might lead to divorce.

It’s like people don’t think about it that way. Let’s just say a lot of people don’t like to think about divorce Probably not a great thing to say to your partner, so let me take that back. I don’t know how you want to put it to them. Some people just don’t take it down the path, and so don’t take it down the path. And so once you take it down the path for them, they’re much more likely to change if you really know the reason underneath.

There’s some things people can’t change, and in coupleship that’s part of acceptance. There’s all these wonderful things about my partner and there are some not so wonderful things. They’re not a perfect person, and so I have to decide. Am I going to let these things depress and annoy me and create anxiety and that’s where the chimp, would you know, start doing their dance and a little hoo-haas or am I going to box that and say, yep, that’s one of the realities of life. Our partners don’t always do what we want them to do. As part of truths of life, people can disappoint us. Life is uncertain, feelings change all the time.

And then he also talks about personal values. I talk about this a lot in my practice of acting in a way that’s consistent with our own personal values, and these are decisions we make. Yes, our parents help instill values into us, and then, as adults, we make the decision about the values we want to live by and act in accordance. All of this, when we go through these types of things and when we even talk out the problem, get ideas, builds resilience, which we also like to call grit now. It gives us the ability to get through difficult times.

So the feelings of depression is often a message. I believe that you do need to make some adjustments. They’re not just to be ignored, just like the anxiety message, like something needs to be adjusted here. We need to go into some kind of action. The chimp needs to be taken care of in some way.

When it’s depression we don’t just come up with a helpful thought, we also do actions. So in the morning you can check in with yourself how am I feeling right now? And then you can ask is this my chimp speaking or my human? If you notice an emotional trigger, you can pause and ask is this my chimp reacting? Do I need to vent my emotions, talk them out, write them down, voice note, talk it through and then can I now either reframe it with a helpful thought, with one of my core beliefs, with a helpful thought, with one of my core beliefs, or can I set a core value intention at that moment or for the day that can sound like I’ll practice kindness to myself. Today, I’ll go out and do one thing outside of the house. Perhaps it’s acknowledging. This feeling won’t last forever. I’ve handled tough days before. I’ve handled tough times before.

If you want to go more to the spiritual, it may be there’s reasons that I’m here in this life. It may be difficult, but I’m still here. There’s a reason for that.

For me. I’ve had several bouts of suicidal thoughts in my life, but I was unwilling to act on it because I had children. It’s like nope, my children need me, they need me to stick around. Now, sometimes, when someone becomes severely suicidal, they think that their kids are better off, or their loved ones are better off without them, like they truly begin to believe that their very presence is hurting their children or their loved ones. Depending on your own beliefs, you may think that suicide is a legitimate out, or you may believe okay, they need some help. To put things more in perspective, to come back to reality that their children or loved ones very much need them and love them. Maybe that’s not the case, though, you know. And so they decide to check out. You know, and so they decide to check out.

You can focus more on the small helpful thoughts, like I got out of bed today. I answered a message, I checked my email, I read a page in a book, I took a brief walk, I stepped outside and just let the sunshine hit my skin. So these are actions that you can take. It’s not just all thought work. Particularly with depression, I think action is really important.

Anxiety too. Often when someone’s in a really difficult anxiety spiral, the advice is take one small action to help solve your problem. You could say the same thing with depression Take one small action to help solve your problem. Like maybe you can’t do 30 minutes of exercise but you could do a five minute workout and maybe you just half-ass it but you get through it. You say okay, I did five minutes, good enough, that’s good enough for today.

Now Peters has some interesting advice about gaining perspective. He says that you’ve got to program your computer to recognize when you’re losing perspective, because once you’ve lost perspective it’s very difficult to get it back without some outside help. Let’s say he says to program the computer to see the bigger picture, make bigger picture statements, like problems do eventually get solved. Solutions can be found. We never know what is around the corner. Everything we experience in life will change with time. Those are bigger picture kind of statements. These run around as memes these days that people pass to each other.

Another way is to think of deathbed advice. People are on their deathbed and you know they’re always saying eat more ice cream, spend more time with your family that type of thing. You find your own deathbed advice. Focus on what really matters for me. Service Volunteering always helps me feel good. If one place doesn’t work out, I try a different place. Kittens, people it’s all about kittens. Man, kittens always make you feel really good. You know, I could combat that if I want. The chimp could come up and say oh no, kittens don’t always make you feel better. What about all the sick and hurt kittens in the world, ones that don’t have homes? That’s a chimp thought. The human thought is it’s helpful to go take care of animals and help them feel more comfortable in this life, help them feel loved, help them find homes. That’s more of the human thought. So you start to develop these bigger picture and deathbed advice kinds of things to get you through hard times.

You program yourself to catch yourself when you’re losing perspective, like, oh no, here it comes. Here are depressive feelings coming around. I need to go into action. That’s a programming statement. I need to make sure I do things that help me feel better. That’s a programming statement. And for me that was put there by a very good therapist that I had many years ago.

Don’t wait till it’s worse. You need to catch it early and also look at the underlying belief that’s driving it, and once we do that, the depression can begin to lift. That’s not an overnight thing. That’s not a boom in a snap Maybe for some people, not for me. Not that you don’t hear about cases like that, where an insight came to them and suddenly, yes, they felt better, they proceeded with their life. Sometimes you hear about people just leaving their jobs, like that was it. They reached a breaking point and they say I quit. I found a huge sense of relief. I hadn’t planned anything, but I moved across the country or the world and everything changed for the better. And now I’m here to share my experience. They’re making meaning of that experience. That must be their own value of helping other people know that there are possibilities for change, that you’re not always stuck, that there’s ways out, because, remember, depression is a feeling of stuckness, helplessness, so you come up with things to combat that, to get out of it.

All right, everyone. I’m going to end here. I will most likely do another one from this book, again called A Path Through the Jungle, by Professor Steve Peters, wonderful book. Highly recommend it, so much so that I’m doing a podcast series on it. With his permission, I’ll probably do another one, though, on managing stress. So he has a great unit on recognizing the stress stages, managing them and then preventing them. It’s like that’s awesome. Can we prevent the stress stages? Apparently we can. Well, some of them at least. If we don’t manage the stress, then sometimes we do go into more severe depression or anxiety. So it’s important to manage it.

All right, I hope that this was helpful to you. It’s one of my own values to help as many people as I can while I’m here on this planet. I’ll talk to you soon. I hope you’re healthy and safe Peace.

Transcribed by https://podium.page