I have a bit of experience on working with people that are experiencing depression.  As a therapist, it can be somewhat dismaying on a personal level to feel the frustration of being unable to "cure" a client of the ills associated with depression.  Especially when there are techniques that I KNOW will do a great deal of good.  But a study came out recently that Jeanette Maw was kind enough to post on her blog,www.thegoodvibeblog.com
about the prospect of using one's imagination to "fix" the past as per a post made by Lynne McTaggert on her blog.
Apparently, through the breakthrough of functional MRIs , scientists have been able to identify activity in the brain that is responsible for recalling events, as well as imagining future events.  Now what is so exciting about that? Well, a lot!!  For one thing, this "new" insight will help us to learn ways to re-understand our pasts, making repairs in the "future"/now that were needed in the past.  In an effort to get the point across to you best (or, more to the point-to hear it from the horse's proverbial mouth!) let me re-post McTaggert's post vis a vis Jeannette Maw's post (talk about six degrees of separation!):
In the brain, time does not exist. Extraordinary new evidence shows that the brain cannot distinguish between the recall of our own past (called ‘episodic memory’) and imagination of our future events. Indeed, the same areas of the brain are activated for both activities and are somehow intertwined.

The first clue to this came when researchers at University College London discovered that people with memory problems also have difficulties in imagining their future in any detail.

Patients suffering from amnesia, who could not recall specific information from their own life history, were able to conjure up only a fragmentary design of their future.

In other studies, people suffering from depression who routinely suffer lapses in memory have difficulty imagining their future.

One reason that depression may persist is that the sufferer has a problem imagining that life will ever get better for him.

Past and future come together

Recently researchers at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, studied patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this study, people were asked to both recall and imagine common events, such as a birthday party or the experience of getting lost. To the surprise of the researchers, identical areas of the brain were activated whether the participants were recalling or imagining.

As was noted in a recent issue of New Scientist: Not only is our personal past and future tightly ‘linked’ in the brain, but both are handled by a ‘universal module for mental time travel’. Even more fascinating, when the brain is not focused on anything in particular, researchers have discovered that the very same mental time-travel ‘network’ is still operating.

These findings pose many interesting questions regarding time and our relationship with it.

If the brain is simply an antenna and transducer of quantum information and it doesn’t distinguish between past and future, imagination and recall may well be interchangeable. Imagination could be used to ‘fix’ those past events that are still unsettling you.

Experiment with some of the following ‘retro-intentions’ with your partner or loved one. But first, make sure to ‘power up’ before you begin these exercises.

* If you’ve had a large bust up or disagreement of some sort that was never resolved, try having the two of you cast your minds back to the point where the event started. Carry out an intention for it to resolve itself at that time. See if it now feels resolved for you both.

* If you are still not getting along with someone, have both of you cast your minds back to the point where you first had the disagreement, and send your intention to change it there. Remember to be very specific.

* If you and your children argue frequently, try casting your mind back to a specific time when you were getting along. Imagine the same event with them at the age they are now. Try this frequently and see if it stimulates you to get along with them better in the present.

* If you cannot get along with someone at your place of work, imagine future events in which you are both working together harmoniously. See if that helps to resolve past issues.

* If you and a parent have unresolved conflicts from your childhood, go back to a really difficult moment. Imagine the same event in the future, with you and the parent as you are now, but ending up harmoniously. See if this alters your negative memories.

Now, I don't know about you, but this just really excites me.  So I started to use this technique right away.  I went back in my mind to situations that either made me feel miserably unhappy, or to-the-core embarrassed!  I went back in my memories and instead of being caught in the middle of that food fight in 8th grade...I reworked my "memories" and instead, I was showered in a cascade of rose petals!  (That was just a joke...)    :-D