Mental Health, Mindfulness, Mice, and Mazes

In 2012, I stumbled upon a book that changed my life. It was/is called The Mindful Way Through Depression. A good friend, Amy Nelson, was the person who allowed me to borrow it for a bit. Since then, I’ve purchased my own copy, and I believe many of my friends, because of my blabbering mouth, have copies of their own as well.

Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of one’s internal state and surroundings. I learned that there is formal mindfulness practice, which often looks like meditation, and informal mindfulness practice, which is a way – quite incredibly – of experiencing the world in the moment-to-moment. I am more deeply connected with myself, with God, and with other individuals because of what I’ve learned through mindfulness.

I’m also less depressed. 

2012 sucked. A new mother of our third kiddo, Anderson, my mental health was in the dumps. It seemed that this kept happening; I would do well for a while, and then I would plummet back into impairing anxiety, darkness, and confusion. There are multiple contributing factors to my low mental health in 2012 (well, in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2020). To read more about how I pieced it all together, see My ADHD Was Hidden Beneath Layers of Success, Until It Wasn't. 

I cannot say that I am “cured” even to this very minute (The book’s title is not lost on me: the way through depression, not the end of depression - even the title smells like mindfulness!). What I can say with certainty is that I am better equipped to handle my depression if (rather when) it shows back up at my doorstep. Because of mindfulness. 

There is an image that sticks out to me from the book. Of all things, it is of a mouse in a maze. The authors explain this scientific phenomenon: when a mouse is tasked with completing a maze, getting to the desired end, it is markedly more successful when it is positively motivated rather than negatively motivated. The book goes on to explain how this was tested. In one test study, researchers used an image of a looming predator, a hawk if I remember correctly, overhead of the mouse to scare it into racing to the desired end of the maze. In the other case, there is instead the reward of cheese luring the mouse to the maze’s end. 

The mouse, let’s call her Minnie, achieves the desired goal in both scenarios. Yet the cheese, time and time again, gets Minnie there faster than the hawk. 

I rather like that this discovery is science. 

Because I use it on my kids All. The. Time. (I promise, I’m not likening my offspring to Minnie) (OK, I am) (But just a little bit)

Punitive parenting, which almost always involves fear, typically gets desired results (ever read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom?), at least in the short term. But guess what gets those same desired results “more successfully” - more permanently and with less harm? Generous parenting. A disciplinarian style that positively motivates instead of negatively motivates.

The science of Minnie and mindfulness helps frame my views on God, as well, and Her opposing force, evil. 

[Quick context on my view of evil: Evil is not represented by Satan as an entity with horns and a pitchfork. Evil is simply that which is not of God. I like to think of God as love/belonging and “Satan” as fear/shame.]

When the Bible promises that light will always conquer darkness, that life will always defeat death, that God will always triumph over Satan, I believe it is talking about the science of Minnie and mindfulness.

We humans, mice, and the world around us are hardwired to be drawn to the stuff of positivity: love, belonging, kindness, compassion, empathy, God, (and cheese).

God woos us.

In contrast, Evil scares us into getting what it wants. It is loud and pushy and forceful and loomy and looks a lot like a hawk, or predator, going after a mouse, its prey. And it never gets the world to do what it wants as successfully as love would. 

Forces of Satan are strong. Forces of God are stronger. 

I’m my deepest depression, when my mind was being pushed into dark thoughts and confusion, mindfulness taught me to create some distance  from those thoughts, getting nonjudgmentally curious about them. Instead of “go away,” I trained myself to say “Hi. I see you.” 

Immediately, their power lessened. 

See? Even my own strategies to improve my depression worked better when I viewed the depression benignly, perhaps even positively, instead of pushily demanding that it go away. I used cheese to travel through my depression, not a hawk. 

You attract more bees with honey. You get to the end of a maze faster with cheese than a hawk. You respond better to an empathetic parent than a punitive one. And you will always, always, always experience God as the great wooer; fear comes from the something else entirely, specifically that which is not of God.

Turns out, The Mindful Way Through Depression really is the mindful way through life.