HOW TO OVERCOME DEPRESSION

My Depression Story — What You Can Learn

a simple guide that no one tells

Photo by Jill Heyer on Unsplash

We don’t need depression ambassadors. We need simple solutions.

I hope no one suffers from this. It feels like a never-ending pit. You keep going down, and you think there is no one to help you.

I am writing this after seeing some YouTube videos where celebrities are telling people to talk about depression and how therapists helped them overcome their depression.

I don’t know if anyone has profited from this advice or not, but for me, this advice created more problems than it helped.

YouTube Videos are filled with all kinds of depression stories. During my days, I have tried them, but none have worked. Watching endless motivational videos, buying motivational books on depression (don’t do this!), and then talking about this to your family and making matters worse.

It’s been a few years since therapy. I am writing this because many writers on Medium are talking about their depression problems. And I think maybe my life story can help you get through this.

Many people advise therapists. I did get one, but that turned out to be a scam. I was charged $100 (my parent’s hard-earned money). I was in my first year of college at that time. My experience with the therapist wasn’t good.

So if you are suffering from these problems, I’ll advise you to try them out first before giving away your hard-earned money to any random therapist. I got one of mine online. If you have a therapist you know personally or through someone close to you, then it’s okay, but for the rest who are thinking of booking some random one and aren’t confident enough, then try these out first. Watch your mood and behavior for the next few days.

I hope this will work for you as it did for me.

But first…what doesn’t work?

Many of the articles and YouTube channels state the same solutions for depression. The content is repetitive and sometimes makes me feel that only a few are written from personal experience while the rest is copy-paste.

I am listing here those tips that didn’t work for me. But are really famous on the Internet. The only way to find out is to try it.

1. Watching motivational videos — Watching, reading, or listening to motivational content is not a bad thing. I have been inspired by many of them. But when you are depressed, these things hardly work. When listening, I used to feel at the top of the world, and the moment the song ended, I was thrown back to reality.
2. Talking about depression is again the most common suggestion. I did the same. I started trying to be open to my friends and family. The family won’t take you seriously, and it’s hardly their fault. They had never heard about depression before. When you visit a village, people hardly know these two things: insurance and Depression. The more I talked, the more it got worse. Friends started giving me random suggestions that didn’t work out. In reality, no one was listening to me.
3. Travel — All those people in my life (mostly friends) who said that traveling would improve my mental health, but in reality, I was running away from my present condition. My childhood friend advised me to travel. I did as he said. The result? When I came back, it felt like the doors of the dam had been accidentally opened. Traveling only helps as long as you are on the road, far away from reality.
4. Do what you love — When you are depressed, your brain is hardly working. In that state, you don’t like to bathe, you hardly care for all the mess around the house, and you don’t have the energy to wash dishes that have been piling up for days. So doing what you love is not going to work — at this very moment.
5. Go on a date — If you are single and have ever suffered from depression, people will tell you to go on random dates. People don’t understand that if I am not enjoying my own company, then who would?

Now, what worked for me? My as-it-is list -

Many people think that depression is caused when someone has problems in their personal life. But in reality, it’s really hard to point out. If someone asks me why I was depressed during my teens? I still don’t know. I was like any normal person.

I want to say that instead of trying to do a Ph.D. in depression, try to just improve your life. A little each day, or maybe each week. Make small changes and see how they’re impacting you. We don’t have to go in-depth on how depression occurs or what happens in our bodies when we suffer from it.

Let’s see some simple tricks that helped me during my worst days -

1. Learn to stay alone — I cried when I started living alone. It was really painful at the start. All the voices in your head and all the insecurities just pop up in front of you out of nowhere. But slowly, it calms down. Once you have seen the storm, it won’t bother you again.
2. Mediation — I used to do yoga and Meditation during my school days. But stopped when I got into college because my friends were all gym lovers, and I started copying them as well. I never liked lifting dumbbells or running on a treadmill. After doing all those gym exercises, which I never enjoyed, I came back to my older ways of meditation and Yoga (my mom forced me to).
3. Cut your friends off for a few weeks — Many say to talk and be out with your friends. But seeing them happy makes you worse. My mind would turn me against anyone whom I see to be happier than me. It was due to the dissatisfaction I had in my life.
4. Eat home-cooked meals — Veggies, fruits, and nuts make me active. while the white floor, cheese, and spicy food make me irritable and lazy. If the above seems too much for you, then try changing your eating habits. Home-cooked meals and eats mostly veggies. It helps calm our minds. This is the reason why cows are more peaceful than lions.
5. I stopped talking about depression — I heard a celebrity say, “You need to be open about depression”. But in my case, my problem got solved gradually and peacefully when I stopped talking about it. When you stop talking, you pay more attention to improving it. In my case, this worked.

Conclusion

We are all individuals. We live in different environments. I don’t know you personally. I don’t know about your hardships. But there is one thing: if this has worked for me, then it will work for you as well. I don’t remember how long it took me to get out of this problem. But I hope that this will help you take your life back to how it was before you knew the word DEPRESSION.

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