Hi Ramelec,
Despite it's name, Calm-abiding can be anything but calm! The idea as I understand and experience it is that we sit and feel ourselves breathing. We will have thoughts and feelings come and go like they do all day. We aren't to try and calm down or change them at all. If you panic, watch and see what it is like with the minimum of 'i have to change this this' 'i'm doing it wrong' ' why is my life like this?' type thoughts. Just panic and breath, watching the sensations in the body.
Where do you feel it?
You might say in your mind 'hot burning feeling', don't say 'I'm panicking!!' If you must call it that say 'panic', and that's all. Notice things like 'burning in chest' 'upset belly' 'pickly feeling in neck'. If you can stand this for 15mins, you have gained the very same thing that therapy provides -perspective and awareness.
At the moment I mostly feel anger, frustration, and restlessness when I sit. I know however that only 3 things are important. 1) I keep sitting 2) I see only what is there. 3) I keep breathing and feeling myself breathing.
For me, I understand that most of my life I have been driven by these feelings blindly, interpreting them and running of to try and calm them or satisfy them. The time is now to see them as they are without this layer of interpretation.
Everything else is time, skill and living my life and philosophies with conviction. There is no use thinking this is a magic pill. You just never know how much good you have done yourself facing things as they are for 5 minutes despite feeling 'the same' afterward. One last thing, because of this no session is 'bad'; just ones we enjoy and those we don't!!

love
andy
p.s. for the record, I have suffered depression before. 3 years ago went to see a clinical psychologist for anger. There was no 'delving into the past' or any of that. Just a bit of hypnosis and asserting some perspective and awareness..for 6 months once per week. I was lucky in that he was very much into the eastern way of dealing with things, no analysis or 'tell me about your childhood', just get in there and fix what really matters, out
thoughts about it!!! I would say I realized that most of my issues were in how I interpreted them, not in the feelings themselves. For this reason, I don't disagree with the previous advice about therapy, as I have no way of knowing if I would be here talking to you without it!!