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

   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!  🙂

Hi! I am John and part of the beatyourdepression.com team

WELCOME TO THE FIRST ISSUE OF BEAT YOUR DEPRESSION!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

First of all, I’d like to thank you all for visiting this site and I hope that you can gain some valuable insights, or share some with other visitors.

You may be suffering from depression personally, think that you may be suffering from depression, or have a friend or relative that may be suffering from depression and you are trying to understand how you can help them or yourself. In any case I’m going to do my best to provide you with the most informative articles, facts, and tips in each issue of Beat Your Depression.

Why would I do this, you may ask?

The answer is that I, too, have had this affliction for most of my life and know how debilitating it can be, especially if others do not understand the problems that you are facing.

The good thing is that I finally realized that I was,indeed, suffering from depression and took steps to control it. Until then, I thought that I was just a moody person who could sometimes be the life of the party, and on other occasions a pain in the butt. Often I had so many negative thoughts that tended to snow ball that I would think that life was pointless and hopeless, and I can understand how some people would wish to harm themselves.

The bad thing is that it was not until I was in my early sixties that I finally realized my problem, even though I can remember times in my early teens when, for no apparent reason, I felt depressed or glum.

When I finally realized that my condition was causing awkward problems for friends and family, especially for my long-suffering wife, I decided to seek advice from my medical practitioner. She provided me with some basic information about depression, in the form of pamphlets, took some blood tests that showed that I was low in a particular chemical and a vitamin, and put me on a course of pills and a series of injections of vitamins to counter my fatigue and lack of motivation.

I am pleased to say that I had a remarkable turn around in my life and quickly regained a zest for living. However, I attributed much of this to the fact that, at the time, I was also reading various self help books and listening to certain relaxation/self hypnosis audios.

In fact, I was so pleased that I wanted to cease the medication as I felt that I was cured. This alarmed my doctor, and probably my wife, and so I agreed to continue taking the minimum dosage of medication until I was weaned from it after the recommended nine months. I did not wish to cause my lovely wife any more grief.

I have had several more bouts of depression since then but now I can recognize it and generally nip it in the bud without the need for medication. It is not always easy though and this is one reason for establishing this blog. I believe that I may be able to contribute to others overcoming their depression or understanding how to assist their loved ones, who may be suffering.

In later posts I will share with you some of my thoughts that most literature on the subject either fails to address, or brushes over.

I may even record and share with you a two verse ditty that I sing to myself in front of the mirror in the mornings to prepare me for the coming day. It is something that I learnt about fifty five years ago.

So my memory is not too bad.

Nobody is immune and there should be no stigma attached to this condition as many famous people also suffered from depression in one of the several forms. Abraham Lincoln called his sad spells, “the shadow of madness” and Winston Churchill referred to his depression as, “the black dog.” [Learn more about some of these famous people here]

I welcome anybody to use this blog to share their experiences, insights, or knowledge so that we all may benefit and enjoy life to the full as we deserve.

———–

I contribute my speedy recovery to reading self-help books such as Overcoming and Curing Depression and a package entitled Total Success Library, containing eight e-books, a ten minute audio MP3 that I copied to a CD and listen to frequently, and a software package that streams positive affirmations across my computer screen in accordance with Dr Anthony’s Power of Intention e-book. This package represents true value-for-money and I have no hesitation about referring it to anybody.  It assisted me to revive my sense of humor that staved off depression on many occasions.