Overcoming Depression

  1. There are many effective ways to overcome depression. Fortunately, we can control our thoughts and feelings much more than most people realize. With enough work and effort, you can change habitual thoughts and feelings. First, however, if you are on any medicines, check with your doctor to see if a medicine may be causing your depression. A surprising number of medicines can do this, including many tranquilizers or sleeping pills, many high blood pressure medicines, hormones such as oral contraceptives, some anti-inflammatory or anti-infection drugs, some ulcer medicines, etc. Changing your prescribed medications may be all you need to eliminate depression.
Develop Interests, Participate in Activites
  1. Perhaps one of the most common reasons for depression is not having enough interests and activities. A small number of them tends to become routine and often boring. Interests and activities are very important in mental health, contributing to self-esteem and happiness. They give satisfaction, help make you feel good about yourself, and keep your mind off problems and negative thoughts and emotions. Simply cultivating them can sometimes cure depression, grief, addiction, explosive anger, anxiety, excessive worrying, or guilt, especially if you do the activities whenever you feel the negative emotion. They are also important social skills that give you pleasant and interesting things to talk about, improving your conversation skills and helping in making and keeping friends. Children with many interests and activities are less likely to have behavior problems, including alcohol or drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence, and crime later on. Their wide variety of interests keep them busy and out of trouble and naturally build different circles of friends, so they are less likely to be influenced by the wrong kind of friend.
  2. There are three main kinds of helpful interests and activities: pleasurable, constructive, and altruistic. Of course, pleasurable activities give us enjoyment. We may do them just for fun or relaxation. Constructive activities produce or accomplish something and give a sense of pride. Examples include getting things done around the house, working on a project, practicing a skill, or studying a subject that interests you. Altruistic activities help other people. Examples include teaching a friend a craft, helping sick or old people, or volunteer work. Altruistic activities give companionship, gratitude from other people, and a sense of pride. Helping others is one of the best ways to lift yourself spiritually. Helping less fortunate people can also give a healthy sense of perspective. For example, your personal problems may appear unimportant after a day volunteering with mental patients or dying cancer patients.
  3. Of course, depressed people often find it very difficult to motivate themselves and often reject new interests and activities without trying them or after one attempt. But even happy people don't enjoy interests without first cultivating them. We often don't enjoy a new activity right away. Instead, it may take time to become accustomed to a new activity and for interest and pleasure to grow. You may need to learn to relax in the new situation or to develop some expertise or skill before you can learn to enjoy it. Don't reject new activities before giving them a chance. Try any new activity at least several times, with an open mind. Motivate yourself with rewards for engaging in new activities and getting things done. If you smoke cigarettes, you might avoid smoking until you try a new activity or accomplish something. Ask friends and family members to help motivate you, too.
Keep A Positive Attitude
  1. Negative thinking habits play a very important role in depression. Research shows depressed people tend to minimize their accomplishments, talents, and qualities. They tend to see themselves as inferior and incompetent, despite being comparable to other people in qualities and skills. Their thinking habits focus on or exaggerate problems and faults and minimize or fail to see the good things in their lives. They tend to recall negative things more often than positive things, and they tend to minimize, overlook, or forget feelings of pleasure in their lives. They may feel preoccupied with loss or personal problems, perhaps wallowing in thoughts about self-pity, inability to cope, or escaping their problems.
  2. Happy people experience failure, disappointment, rejection, negative emotions, pain, and great sorrows, too, just like depressed people. But happy people keep a positive attitude by accepting sadness and suffering as normal parts of life, while doing what they can about their problems. This also makes them more pleasant to be around and improves their social lives. Part of happiness is a courageous choice of loving life in the face of suffering, a chosen position or view of things.
  1. Expecting dissatisfaction and failure, depressed people often give up easily and thereby bring on failure. Happy people know that every failure is a learning experience that can lead to success if they refuse to give up. Starting a successful business, for example, may take many years of learning what doesn't work. After causing their own failure by giving up, depressed people often blame their problems on fate, bad luck, other people, circumstances, or their incompetence. They may passively resign themselves to problem situations and let the problems continue. Their pessimistic thinking leads them to reject many enjoyable activities. Sometimes their lack of motivation involves not knowing what to do to improve things or fear of making the needed changes.
Develop Friendships and Relationships
  1. Marital relationships are often important in depression. An appreciative, complimentary, supportive marital relationship can protect you from depression despite life stresses. Work on increasing the positive behaviors in your marriage. Perhaps your marriage lacks a confiding relationship of sharing feelings and receiving acceptance, understanding, and emotional support from each other? Sharing feelings is much more important than simply sharing facts with your spouse. Ask your spouse to compliment you more and to say many of the things normally taken for granted, to show appreciation for the routine things you do every day. Learn about good marital skills and put them to use in your life.
  2. Research shows depressed people are more likely than other people to interact with their spouses and children in hostile or angry ways. Do you yell, sulk, bring up old resentments from the past, nag, insult or use negative labels, make demands or ultimatums, or criticize with overgeneralizations? Do you alienate other people with communication problems such as avoiding important issues, blaming, or assuming you know what another person thinks? Another communication problem is bringing up too many problem issues without focusing on solutions, one at a time. Of course, everyone does these things at times, but bad habits in these areas increase stress and can destroy intimacy with your loved ones. Learn about and practice good communications skills.
  3. Looking for a romance to save you from your loneliness and unhappiness is a rather desperate, needy search that alienates other people. Your personality cannot sparkle with this kind of focus in your life. Instead, focus on enjoying the single life, meeting people, and making friends. Accept you may be single for a long time and get on with your life. You need a wide variety of interests and activities, and you need to enjoy and value your friendships. Having these priorities will make you more pleasant, give you practice in socializing, and increase your chances of finding romance. With interests and activities and a good network of friends and acquaintances, your painful longing will cease.
  4. A common, very painful mistake in dating is to become completely involvedwith a person who shows little true concern for your needs and feelings. Perhaps your partner only wants to see you occasionally or when other relationships end. Perhaps your partner is selfish and repeatedly inconsiderate of your feelings or needs. Staying in any unfulfilling relationship ties up much of your time and deepest emotions. The danger in staying in an unfulfilling relationship is you become accustomed to unhappy situations, making you an easy target for people who will use you. Unfortunately, plenty of people will use you if you let them. Your time and emotional energy are better spent developing interests, activities, ways of meeting people, and a more suitable love relationship. Never settle for less in a relationship-hold out for what you really want.
Balance in Your Life
  1. People need a healthy balance between pleasure and work. A few depressed and overwhelmed people need to quit pushing themselves so hard, relax more, and eliminate some work activities, but most depressed people need more interests and activities. Empty time often leads to negative thinking and depression. Choose more interests and activities, including those you once enjoyed and could resume, and ask yourself which ones you might do if you didn't feel depressed. As you develop interests, share them with other people.
  2. Many doctors and psychologists recommend regular exercise for depression and note it improves the mood. Exercise invigorates you, giving you more energy. Deep relaxation also helps combat depression and especially helps anxious depressed people. Relaxation helps people find peace within themselves. Learn about different kinds of relaxation techniques and meditation and put them to use in your life.
Final Words….
  1. Don't worry about whether you are happy. Develop interests, activities, and friendships, be kind, help other people, accept emotional pain, work on conquering your personal problems, and improve your thinking habits. These things will lead to happiness. Conquering your depression may take months or years, depending on its severity, how long you have had negative thinking habits, your personal problems, and how much effort you put into it.

Source: Chuck T. Falcon. © copyright 2002