How To Deal With Depression
I’ve had depression before. You can see my face, this is my website, you can see who I am. I admit i’ve had depression. This is the first thing you have to do in order to figure out how to deal with depression. You have to let your ego take the hit and admit you have a problem. This is a very difficult thing to do, especially if you consider yourself to be a strong and successful person. But it’s okay, you can get through this.
Because i’m a risk taker, I have lived a very eventful life (as you’ve no doubt found by reading
my website). In 29 years i’ve packed in what most think to be more than a complete lifetime worth of experience. Let me tell you the most important thing that has kept me resilient and as a beacon of positivity to those around me… My belief that there is always light at the end of the tunnel.
In your battle to learn how to deal with depression, knowing that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how long and dark that tunnel is, is going to be the thing that gives you the power to beat depression.
Your Thoughts are Powerful
In order to learn how to overcome depression you are going to have to learn how to control your thoughts. Your thoughts are the single most powerful thing you can create, and if you learn to control them you will be able to use them to attract what you want from life. Your thoughts are literally the precursors to the life you make for yourself. You are in control of your destiny. What you want out of life, no one can make it happen except for you. No matter what circumstances you were born into, no matter what negative situation you are unfortunate to be in. Getting what you want out of life starts with your thoughts.
Thoughts are like magic. You can imagine things you want, what you want to get out of life, and those thoughts can lead to actions that turn them into realities.
This sounds a bit too good to be true but take a moment to consider that every invention started as a thought, it was a thought created in someone’s imagination and they then did what was necessary to turn that thought into something real that they could touch and feel.
Consider that everyone who made something of themselves, whether that was inventing something, being the president of the united states, a professional athlete, an artist, a big businessman, or just living a simple happy life, they first started creating those realities with a thought.
I want you to do an experiment right now. Think about a time in your life that you had an injury or got hurt badly. Try to really hold that memory in your imagination and bring back the feelings you had in that moment. How do you feel now? Not incredible huh.
Now, I want you to think of and hold a happy thought in your mind’s consciousness. Yes like tinker bell says from peter pan. It sounds ridiculous, but thinking your happy thought is truth. It will dictate how you feel and balance you. Think hard. Imagine your happy thought. One of my happy thoughts i like to imagine to make me feel good and give me strength for perserverance, positivity, and emotional resilience is think back to when I was 15 years old and I was obsessed with skateboarding. I imagine what it felt like outside late at night with my buddy on our skateboards learning tricks and doing board slides on rails. This was a time in my life when I was 100% content with how I was spending my time. There were no doubts in my mind. The only thoughts I had were how stoked I was to be on my skateboard and hanging out with my best friend. There was nothing else I would rather be doing. I think on this thought really hard and imagine what I felt during those moments and the feelings come back to me in the present. It affects the way I feel. My thoughts affect the way I feel.
When I think of negative things I feel negative and like shit. When I think of positive things I feel great and like a million bucks.
Self Talk
A critical part of learning how to deal with depression is taking an inventory of your self talk. Self Talk consists of the silent conversation you have with yourself throughout the day. The ideas and beliefs that you allow to inhabit your conscious mind. Because you did the happy thought/negative thought experiment, now that you know how much power your thoughts have in controlling the way you feel.
As you are going throughout the day keep a list with you and write down what you are thinking about. Are your thoughts about things like;
“that person is so stupid, they are wrong. That person doesn’t look as good as me, I wish i had a cooler car like that guy. I wish I had that guys body, I wish I was born into wealthy powerful family, why was I born into such a shitty situation? this traffic is horrendous, i feel like shit! these idiots don’t know how to drive, people are so stupid, i can’t wait to finish what i’m doing and get the fuck out of here. i hate my job, i hate the people i work with, my boss is an asshole”
or are they thoughts like
“I’m happy to be alive and get this opportunity to live another day today! I wonder what cool things might happen today. I’m going to put on some of my favorite music on the way to work. I’m glad there are people I know who care about me, I’m going to let them know how much I appreciate having them in my life by treating them like they are important to me. I believe my actions speak louder than my words. Work is really tough but i’m going to make the best of it and i’m going to concentrate on positive thoughts and not let doubt or negativity invade my brain while I am at work. I may not be in the best situation financially, in my relationships, or with the way i’ve treated my body with my diet and how i eat but today is an opportunity to do things the right way and do things that will lead me down the path that leads to the life I want to live, i’m not a victim and i’m going to follow the path to the light at the end of this long tunnel.”
You have a choice what you decide to think about. If you let your conscious mind dwell on negativity you will feel the fruits of negativity, which is darkness and evil.
If you make the effort to only let positive and uplifting thoughts occupy your consciousness and you have a “go to happy thought” ready to combat any shitty ugly thoughts you can control the way that you feel.
How To Deal with Depression Pharmacologically
In my opinion depression is not an option, and if you have it, you need to take whatever actions are necessary in order to fix it immediately. This may include visiting a psychiatrist. This can be very intimidating and hard on your ego but they can absolutely help you if your problem is an imbalance of brain chemicals. Your consciousness and brain are made of elements and chemicals, if they are not functioning correctly you need to get medical help.
A situation where a doctor could be necessary to help you beat depression would be when there literally is no light at the end of your minds tunnel. There are no happy thoughts, and the ability to feel good no longer exists within you. These symptoms show a chemical imbalance and a psychiatrist can arm you with psychological drugs like anti-depressants that you can take temporarily while you dig yourself out of the hole of depression.
Drugs to combat depression usually involve the SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class of drugs. These include medications you may have heard of before like “zoloft, prozac, lexapro, celexa, and paxil.” If you have a medical problem causing your depression these medications can be of great value.
SSRI drugs cause neurotransmitters to stay in the receptor site of the nerve cells in your brain for longer and communicate their message for longer. Neurotransmitters such as serotonin are responsible for feeling peaceful and satisfied. If for some reason you are not producing enough of these neurotransmitters or they are being metabolized too quickly before they can transmit their intended messages to your brain then you will be fighting an uphill battle in figuring out how to deal with depression.
At the same time consider that these drugs were produced by pharmaceutical companies for the purpose of making money and they are very addictive, while being some of the most prescribed drugs in the world. It may be shocking to learn but about 15% of Americans in the USA take SSRI anti depressants. Part of this is because of the negative culture we live in and the difficulty in maintaining a positive mindset while another reason they are over prescribed is because of the evil and greed of big pharma and doctors.
In fact there is a natural plant that works in clinical scientific studies and anecdotally among users EQUALLY as good if not better at boosting serotonin levels in the brain and alleviating symptoms of depression than SSRI drugs.
This example with St John’s Wort is not the first time big pharma and big brother have been caught with their “hand in the cookie jar”.
The criminalization and listing of Cannabis as a schedule 1 drug worldwide meaning it has “no accepted medical use” is a complete scam. Cannabis has MASSIVE medical effects such as anti-depressant, anti-cancer, anti-epileptic, anti-nausea, anti-anorexic, and pain relieving properties to name a few. Yet because Cannabis is a natural plant that cannot be patented it has no utility to big pharmaceutical companies and actually competes with the drugs they produce to treat those medical same symptoms. This is a problem for pharmaceutical companies, but they are very powerful and have incredibly pervasive influence in world politics and among law makers to conceal the benefits of natural compounds and their effects from the general public. Controlling law makers through money has allowed psychiatric drug producing companies to lobby for the making of natural un-patentable chemicals and plants to be criminalized in order to corner the market and do away wish competition. They’ve used their power to suppress the distribution of information on natural remedies and to make the people who take matters into their own hands criminals.
This information may be shocking. When I started learning about this stuff it was like discovering a whole world that i didn’t know exists.
Reality is a simulation created by your senses
You remember the movie the matrix? In a way it is real. We are living in a simulation of reality, and subject to the forces of society, culture, corporate interests and mind control.
Your eyes do not see. They are tools your brain uses to capture light and then create a picture of the outside world around your body. All of your physical senses touch, sight, sound, smell were formed through billions of years of evolution as tools for the brain to interact with the environment, form images of it, and interact with it. Your nose is a tool your brain uses to analyze chemicals in the air. Your ears a tool to gather information to alert you to what may be nearby or what may be approaching. Your skin a tool to touch, learn the texture of, and interact with the environment outside your body. Your skin transmits information to your brain so that it can make decisions about what you will do within that environment.
Realizing that this reality is a simulation will help to arm you with the knowledge to take control of your situation and learn how to deal with depression.
I sincerely hope that reading this article helped stimulate your mind, and points you in the right direction in your journey to learn how to deal with depression.
