Beat Your Depression

This is a question that was asked on Yahoo Answers. [The name of the person asking the question has been omitted.] My answer to this question appears below.

Question:

i’m a firm believer in prayer. i pray to God that he heals my wounds of all the pain and abuse i’ve been thru this past 7 years.
there are times when i get into a zone about my pass and i feel stuck in that moment. any ideas on how to stop thinking of my ex striking me?

Answer:

Johnny
Best Answer – Chosen By Voters

There are several ways of overcoming depression. The first is to take medication prescribed by doctors to counter a shortfall in a substance called seratonin that occurs naturally within our bodies and helps to maintain good moods.

Another way is to use a naturally occuring substance found in a herb called St Johns Wort. However, there are some concerns that using this may result in some unpleasant side effects and also that it may not work as well as some people say.

In many cases, people will come out of depression over time without medication of any sort. The old adage that “Time heals all wounds,” appears to hold true. I believe that this is often very true but also feel that it is best to beat depression as soon as practical so that we can enjoy life to the fullest as it is meant to be.

What I have found personally, is that taking active steps, just as you are by praying, to program my mind to look for positives, certainly helps a lot in beating depression.

I also put on soothing, pleasant, music and watch comedy TV shows or DVDs to encourage my body to produce another hormone called endorphin. Endorphins produce good moods and natural “highs”.

Depression can be the result of a poor self image and so I look in the mirror in the mornings when doing my ablutions and tell myself, with a smile on my face, that I love myself. I then sing a small, 2 verse, ditty that brightens up my day and gets me off to a good start.

I would like to make a short comment on the manner in which you indulge in self talk. Always ensure that, even when you pray, you do so by focusing on positive outcomes rather than avoiding negative outcomes. I am a great believer in the Law of Attraction and that what you put out into the universe, either good or bad, manifests itself just as you think or talk about.

The easiest way to stop thinking about your ex striking you is EXACTLY that. Do not think about it! Think about more pleasant thoughts instead whenever the unpleasant thoughts start to creep in, as they will from time to time, until you become so adept at blocking them out that they will seldom bother you.

I cannot go on much longer here and so I suggest that you look at the post on “choices“.

You can learn how to overcome negative self-talk, as I did, together with many positive tips, from the package entitled Total Success Library

It is interesting that some sufferers of depression do respond favorably to placebos. This suggests that with many sufferers the problem is associated with emotions and low self esteem rather than a chemical imbalance. See the article below:-

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – It cannot be assumed that an antidepressant has lost its effectiveness if a patient relapses while continuing on the medication, because the medication may never have been effective in the first place, according to study findings reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

In the study, the majority of relapses occurred in patients who had never been true responders, Dr. Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, told Reuters Health.

Some patients with major depressive disorder, similar to other medical disorders, respond to placebo, Zimmerman explained. In clinical practice, everyone is given an active drug, so it’s not clear if a patient who responds has improve because of the drug or because of “nonspecific” effects, such as the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is a sort of “power of suggestion” response in which a patient begins to feel better because he thinks he has received treatment (and doesn’t know he has been given a placebo). These responses are usually short-term.

Similarly, relapses that occur during a continuation phase of treatment could be because of a true loss of response or they could be because an initial placebo response has worn off.

To investigate, Zimmerman collaborated with Dr. Tavi Thongy on a review of four studies involving 750 patients. These were continuation studies of new generation antidepressants.

Using two different methods of estimating relapse, the researchers found that the majority of relapses occurred because the patients were never true responders to the drugs.

This suggests, Zimmerman told Reuters Health, “that a message can be conveyed to patients who have repeatedly improved on medication and then lost its benefit that perhaps they are more capable than they think in bringing their own resources to bear to improve their depression.”

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, August 2007.

I firmly believe that the information and guidance that I gleaned from the package entitled Total Success Library helped me far more than the medication that was prescribed for me. It also helped me in other areas of my life.

   I have been suffering from depression since my early teens although I didn’t discover it until I was almost 50.  Also around this time, my marriage was falling apart. Its hard to know if one caused or affected the other but they were both “happening” at the same time. Treatment between then ( approx 2000) and last year was sporadic and only partially effective. Last fall, I hit bottom and ended up in the hospital and luckily the doctors were able to stabilize me and find the right combination of medicines for me. Seem to be doing very well now!

    You asked about my ideas on depression. First, I am not a medical person. I am a Linux/Unix Systems Administrator (or a geek as my daughters say). I am a science junkie and try to understand the world as best I can.  That being said, here’s my take on depression.

     Our brain sits in and regulates a soup of chemicals and electric energy For the brain to function properly, its environment must be kept within a certain range. This environment is in reality a self-organizing chaotic system. Like most “systems” in the natural world, they appear to be organized but are inherently chaotic at lower levels. Hurricanes are a very good example of this type of system. If you are inside a hurricane, all you can see is chaos. Yet, at a macro level, you can see the organization of the storm. The energy flows from the sun, water and atmosphere are the feedback loops that keep the hurricane stable. There is a wide range in which this will all work but outside those bounds, the storm begins to collapse.

     Our brain operates much like this. There is NO normal operating mode. Just a range of stable environments. When the environment exceeds those boundaries, mental illness sets in. Now,destabilization can be caused by many factors from illness, physical injury, chemical imbalances and “maybe” even BAD thinking, but I believe they eventually affect the chemical or electrical feedback loops in the brain. I like to think of it as brain arrhythmia.

     Although I am not a huge fan of talk therapy, I do recognize that we can create new connections in our brains by thinking/talking about things and that this may help in re stabilizing the system. However, and this is an opinion only, this will only really work if the system is only slightly out of whack.  Also (personal biases ahead!), I feel that talk therapy is too vulnerable to incompetents, unscrupulous people, quack therapies and cures and charlatans. I hope I wasn’t too subtle there?

    Ok, enough rantings. The RedSox just won!  🙂

This is another golden oldie that found its way into my email inbox on a couple of occasions.

I have included it here as I feel that it is good for us all to have a reality checkup from time to time. Reading this certainly makes me sit up and take notice of some of the negative self-talk that I bombard myself with occasionally and encourages me to eliminate such negativity from my thought processes.

Ten Rules for Being Human

By Cherie Carter-Scott

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

————————

When I was overcoming a bout of severe depression, I found that, in addition to learning as much as I could from books such as Understanding and Curing Depression, I also gained extremely valuable insights into my outlook on life, and how my attitude plays such an important role, from the package entitled Total Success Library.

Most of us suffer from being depressed from time to time. However, there is a difference between being depressed and having depression. Being depressed is normal just like being happy or angry or sad etc. No one is “happy” all the time. The problem comes when one of these emotions or states of mind tend to dominate our lives to an extreme.

Being depressed can be any low mood, which may be relatively short-lived and perhaps due to something of even a minor nature, even though it may seem to be much greater at the time.

With the exception of bereavement, which can last for quite some time, many of the causal factors such as being overlooked for promotion, a relationship break up, a loss of money, or an unfair slight on your character, will often soon fade away. Even a rainy day can promote depression in some individuals. An illness, such as a bout of influenza, often brings about a state of depression, especially during its onset. The old adage that “Time cures all ills” is often very true.

This differs from Clinical Depression which is a “state of mind” disease that manifests itself in a condition of intense sadness, or despair that impinges on an individual’s activities and daily living. Clinical Depression is generally more serious than normal depressed feelings and can be the result of many factors; either individual factors, or a conglomeration of factors that can have a tendency to snowball.

Some of these factors are low self-esteem, constant negative thinking, pessimistic views of life, and sometimes substance abuse. In many cases an imbalance of certain hormones and vitamins in the body is linked to the condition. The medical profession tends to treat the problem in most cases by rectifying the imbalance.

Some diseases such as Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Schizophrenia tend to be accompanied by clinical depression.

Extreme depression can result in sufferers inflicting self-harm, or attempting or committing suicide.
Find out how to distinguish between “the blues” and a real episode of depression – to overcome depression it is vital that you be able to identify it as soon as possible when it strikes!

According to Australian Government statistics, “Everyone will, at some time in their life, be affected by depression; either their own, or someone else in their family.”

Statistics for depression in Australia are comparable with those of the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

15% of the population of most developed countries suffers from severe depression.

Depression disorders affect 9.5% of the population aged 18 and older in any given year. This includes major disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder.

Pre-schoolers are the fastest growing market for anti-depressants. At least 4% of pre-schoolers are clinically depressed.

The rate of increase of depression among children is an outstanding 23% per year.

30% of women are depressed. Men’s figures were thought to be half of that of women but new estimates are higher.

54% of people believe that depression is a sign of weakness. This is despite the fact that many famous people, including Abraham Lincoln and Sir Winston Churchill, were known to suffer from depression. [Sign up for the free mini-course about famous people and their depression.]

41% of women are too embarrassed to seek help.

80% of depressed people are currently not having any treatment.

15% of depressed people commit suicide.

Depression will be the second largest killer, after heart disease, by 2020.

Studies show that depression is a contributory factor to fatal coronary disease.

What effect does this disorder have upon our productivity as well as our working, social, and family environment?  It must be HUGE!

What can we do to help ourselves and our love ones to overcome the misery of depression and lead a happy and contented life?  There are some very useful resources that have helped me, listed in the sidebar.  Plus we could start off with some “healthy hugs”.

HEALTHY HUGS

Did you know that some people consider hugs to be the ultimate anti-depressant? The good thing is that it is hard to give a hug without getting one back. 🙂

Learn how to overcome and cure depression here.

By Francie Baltazar-Schwartz

[I have had this article sent to me as an email attachment on several occasions. It has a very strong and pertinent message that compliments the article below entitled, “Choices”. I hope that you enjoy it and appreciate the message that it conveys.]

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious and so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.” I reflected on what Jerry said.

Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man. “I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything.’Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

————————

When I was overcoming a bout of severe depression, I found that, in addition to learning as much as I could from books such as Understanding and Curing Depression, I also gained extremely valuable insights into my outlook on life, and how my attitude plays such an important role, from the package entitled Total Success Library. In fact, I firmly believe the Total Success Library to be exceptional value for money.