I cured my depression
some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul — Ezra Taft Benson
It has almost been a year since I wrote anything here. These 12 months has been really tough on me as I was finding out ways on making my brain shutdown when I really wanted it to and in the end the solution turned out to be right with me all along.
Everyone that has been suffering from depression, insomnia, anxiety and other disorders or have experienced them at some point in their lives can agree with me that it is a no joke when it comes to such things and having to deal with them and the feeling of constantly keep fighting with yourself.
Let’s agree that you would do anything to get out of that deep dark hole that you have fallen into with no signs of getting out.
From experiencing it myself I can tell you that it felt like someone was trying to push me into a small amount of space and every time that I wanted to come out of it, I would get pushed again into that little space until I felt like that I don’t want to come out cause I have got no hope left and all my attempts are futile.
All I could think of is this is my life now and I just have to keep living this.
Well this is not another blog post on how you can get out of it.
Because the getting out part can only be done and accomplished by you. What I am going to tell you instead is, a series of steps that I took to cure my depression and insomnia and will continue doing not just for not going into that state again but also for a better and healthy lifestyle.
If you want to, then you can incorporate these steps into your lifestyle and follow along with me on my journey to become a better person altogether.
How do we fall in and how to get out of it?
You see some events of the past resemble a huge black hole with all the bad things coalesced to form a singularity. The more you keep remembering it the closer you will get to that hole and the next thing you know you are at the event horizon of the black hole or the point of no return and you can slowly feel it engulfing you into its vast space of nothingness as you reach towards the singularity.
What we can do instead is to admire it from a safe distance and study it or in our case remember how it happened, the mistakes that we did and how we could avoid them in the future.
For example instead of focusing on how you would like to go into the past and change the mistakes that you did which you obviously can’t, focus on ways to not repeat them.
A year ago due to some unfortunate events which I would not like to remember more other than that it happened and it put me into a state of depression, made me an insomniac, took away all reasons to be happy because I kept thinking about it and it was like that for quite a good amount of time as I forced myself to work and kept a fake smile and laugh with friends and colleagues.
Now to the part on how I pulled myself out of the black hole.
A couple of months ago I stumbled across a video ad on YouTube about meditation and how the more effort we put into stuff sometimes the least we get out of it. For example the more we try to sleep the more restless and sleepless we become.
The ad was an app called Headspace. Now this post is not about the app nor they have sponsored me or anything. In fact you don’t even need that particular app as long as you can find other ways to do the same. I just happen to stumble across the video and decided to use it and found out it to be really useful.
I started with basic focusing exercises where I had to focus on my body and my breathing along with removing all the unnecessary thoughts on my mind. This was a game changer for me. Let me explain why.
The majority of my depression was due to the fact that I think too much, like a really lot and specially about old bad memories. This caused my brain to focus on those past memories and like before I knew. BANG!! I was sucked into the black hole. Well it was not exactly like a BANG but more like a ZOOOP!! You know what I mean.
Being an introvert didn’t help me either cause obviously I am not going to share with anyone the state that I am in nor I am going to tell anyone that I would really like to talk about it. So I meditated.
Focusing for just 10 -15 mins on a particular thing like our breaths does help to eliminate the conglomeration of useless and bad thoughts and helps focus on the useful ones. It takes all those bad thoughts and keeps it in the background while keeping the useful ones on the foreground.Don’t think of it as an exercise which you dread about but rather think of it like a preparation to a big day and that big day can be your everyday lifestyle.
Personally I find it really calming as it prepares my body both for an energetic day or for a restful night.
Another reason why I decided to write this post is cause I think this way I could get a way to express myself. I am a better writer than I am a speaker. If you think my writing is horrible then I have no hope for my speaking but I am working on both of them.
If you are like me who keeps everything to themselves and you think you should express more then try writing sometimes. If not here then maybe in a personal diary. Write down what made you happy and unhappy each day. Look down on it and reflect on what change you can make avoid the unhappiness next time the same happens.
Now don’t get me wrong happiness and unhappiness are both an important part of our lives but when your unhappiness outweighs your happiness then it’s time to bring a change.
If you have made it this far into the post then I would assume that you do want to bring a change and the one thing that I would want you to take away from this post is be in the present, focus on your present and future.
Go complete that book that you have forgot about, go take that trip that you have always wanted to, go make some cookies and offer some to the old lady next door. Still have 4 days left of your gym membership even though you only went once in the last 6 months? Cool. I only see 4 days of absolute gainzz.
Remember you can do absolutely nothing to change your past so stop letting yourself fall into that black hole.
As kids we were told not to have invisible friends because that was considered as not sane. But look around you, you do have an invisible friend all along with you whom you were ignoring all these years but they are still there and their name is HAPPINESS.
This post is a part of a series that I am writing on my journey make some changes, to adopt better lifestyles and to become a better person altogether. You can read about the next one here Eating without a blue screen.
Thanks for reading! :) If you enjoyed this post, please click the 👏button and I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread. It would mean a lot to me and it will help other people see the story.
