The Hungry River: Understanding the True Nature of Anxiety and Depression

Shravani, a resident of China, had been in India for quite some time and we had spoken on multiple occasions. However, this particular call seemed to be different. When my young niece started talking, I could hear genuine distress in her voice. She wanted some guidance with a new found companion, 'Anxiety,' which had become a part of her life after COVID.

"About five years back, when I was in Guangzhou," she began, "I went to a medical facility. I was admitted to the clinic, and while I was there, I took a few selfies."

She paused, and I could feel the weight of what was coming next.

"Now I can't stop thinking about it. It's illegal to take photos in a hospital setting. I know that now. But I took those selfies, and they had surveillance cameras everywhere. What if they find them? What if they take legal action against me? They could do this, they could do that..."

Her voice trailed off into a landscape of imagined consequences.

I listened carefully, then asked her a simple question: "Why would they find them now?"

Her answer was the anxiety talking, not logic. "Because they could. Because then they could come after me."

I tried to offer perspective from my own world. "I work in IT. Data is expensive to keep. Most CCTV footage cycles out in one or two weeks. If a facility is really invested, really professional, maybe they keep it a month, two months, perhaps three if it's a high-security zone. Four or five months maximum, because that's the window for reviewing footage and deciding if action is needed. But five years? Who keeps data for five years? And even if they did, who has the time to sit and watch five years of footage, looking for someone taking a selfie?"

She felt a little better after that. But then came the words that so many of us know too well: "But what if?"

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Here is what I needed her to understand, and what I believe all of us need to understand about anxiety and depression.

You are not anxious because of what you did. You are looking at what you did because you are anxious.

There is a difference, and that difference matters enormously.

Depression and anxiety, especially when they become chronic, have a particular nature. We tell ourselves stories. We think, "I am anxious because of that thing that happened five years ago." Or, "I am depressed because of how someone spoke to me yesterday." But this gets it backwards.

What is actually happening is this: anxiety and depression involve overactive circuits in the brain. When those circuits start firing, they need something to survive. They need food.

Think about it. Everything in life needs food to exist. A dog needs food. A cat needs food. An ant needs food. Even a river needs food. A river survives because water keeps coming from the skies, because it keeps expanding its footprint. If a pond stops receiving water, it dries up. If a river stops receiving water, it disappears.

The same principle applies to these mental states. If something is to exist, it must be continuously supplied with what sustains it. If you stop supplying food, it starves and eventually dies.

So where does anxiety find its food? Where does depression go to be fed?

Your memories.

Anxiety needs logic to exist. It needs reason, or at least, it needs what feels like reason. Without something that seems like a logical justification, without a "good reason" to be afraid, anxiety cannot survive. So it goes digging. It goes back into your brain, it starts sifting through your past, and it looks for something that will keep it alive. It finds a memory and says, "Ah, this one. This will work. This will keep me going."

The thing you did, the selfie you took five years ago, the conversation you had last week, the mistake you made at work. These are not the causes of your anxiety. They are the food your anxiety has chosen.

The anxiety is not happening because of the memory. The memory is being used because the anxiety is happening.

This is the crucial insight. It is not what you have done that is causing your distress. It is the distress that is making you look differently at what you have done.

The same is true for depression. It is not that Sri did something, and that is why Das is depressed. No. Das is depressed, and because he is depressed, he is looking at every interaction through a lens that justifies his depression. He will replay a conversation and think, "See how Sri spoke to me? That is why I feel this way."

And all of us have experienced this from the other side. We have said something, spoken in our normal way, and suddenly the person we are talking to is in tears, or angry, or storming out. And we think, "What did I do wrong?" But that person has a complete justification. They say, "You never think about my emotional state." And we might even reflect and think, "Yes, maybe I didn't consider how they were feeling." But the key thing is this: we had no intention of causing harm. So why did they perceive it that way?

Because the depression was already setting in. The depression needed a reason. It needed food to survive, food to vibrate, food to sustain its existence. And that food can only come when the depression is given a reason, when it finds a perception that matches its needs.

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I have seen this transformation happen with my own eyes. Shiva mama, who was on medication for bipolar disorder and borderline OCD, went through something similar. Anxiety seemed to be his constant companion too.

When it came to his depression, he believed it was caused by things his wife did or did not do. He perceived her actions in a certain way, and those perceptions made his depression worse.

When he started exploring this "Prehealing" approach, looking at depression and anxiety as circuits that feed on memories, he decided to work on his outlook.

As he observed the nature of his anxiety and depression during various stages of his emotional ups and downs, mania and depression, he realized that his wife was not the cause. She was not doing things to make him depressed. He was depressed, and that depression was coloring his perception of her. The depression was making him see her actions through a filter that would allow the depression to continue existing.

Once he understood this, everything changed. Every time he felt depression rising, he would recognize it. He would tell himself, "I am looking at her that way because I am depressed. The problem is not her. The problem is the filter I am seeing her through."

He started cutting off the food source. Just as the river stops flowing when the water supply ends, he stopped feeding memories and perceptions to the hungry depression circuits. And gradually, the depression starved.

One and a half years later, Shiva mama is on zero medications.

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Now, I want to be clear about something. This is not an argument against medication. Medications have their place, and they can be incredibly helpful. What medications do is they blunt or weaken the connection between the depression circuits and your memories. They make it harder for those circuits to access the food they need. They create distance.

But what Shiva mama did was address the root cause directly. Instead of relying on medication to cut that link for him, he learned to cut it himself. He learned to stop feeding the hungry circuits. And in doing so, he saved himself not only from the depression itself but also from the potential side effects of long-term medication.

This is what I wanted my niece to understand. The selfie was not the problem. The surveillance cameras were not the problem. The problem was that her anxiety had found a memory that looked like food, and it was gorging itself on the fear and the "what ifs" that came with it.

If she can learn to see this, if she can recognize when her anxiety is digging for reasons to exist and simply refuse to hand over the food, then she can begin to starve it. And over time, like Shiva mama, she can find herself free.

The river only flows as long as water keeps coming from the skies. Stop the supply, and the river dries up. Anxiety only lives as long as you keep feeding it memories. Stop feeding it, and eventually, it has no choice but to die.