An Open Letter About Depression (From Someone Who Thought They’d Never Experience It)
From: Pacific Beach
Dear Friend,
Today, we’re diving into a serious topic — depression.
It’s an issue that appears to be on the rise amongst the population and its one that needs to be addressed more these days in my opinion.
I’ll be sharing my personal experience with depression, how I worked on getting out of that state, and what I think needs to happen for fewer people to have to go through it unnecessarily. You’ll understand what I mean by that later on.
With all that’s going on in the world today and having social media constantly bombarding us with videos and images of false realities, it’s too easy to let your mind go down a road of self-hate, self-pity, jealousy, and inadequacy.
It’s easy to see doom and gloom because that’s essentially all that news is (even though it’s not a true picture of the world) . It’s easy to constantly compare your life to others and focus on what you lack instead of what you have. It’s way too easy.
When you’re depressed, you experience the world through a darker lens...
Food doesn’t taste as flavorful. Colors don’t seem to be as bright. Every experience becomes dull. Your outlook on life becomes jaded.
You’re more easily agitated. You just don’t give a shit about anything anymore. And everything that anyone says to you just goes into one ear and out the other. You just don’t want to hear it.
Life. Just. Sucks.
You see, we weren’t given an owner’s manual when we were born about how to control our thoughts and behaviors that could potentially lead to depression.
But that begs the question: what is depression anyway?
Is it a feeling? A state? A personality? Is it caused by thoughts? How about an imbalance of the microbiome? Is it genetic? Can foods cause it? How do you know if you really have it? How long does it last?
There are so many factors that can lead someone into a depressive state. And someone who’s depressed can’t easily be “fixed” by simply thinking positively.
And despite what some of the gurus say, it’s NOT just about…
…Jumping up and down to change your state.
…Changing your posture to change your physiology.
…Smiling in the mirror to ”trick” your body into thinking it’s happy when it’s not.
It’s much more complex than that.
Depression doesn’t discriminate
Depression doesn’t care if you’re white, black, brown, yellow, etc. It doesn’t care if you’re young or old. Tall or short. Male or female.
It doesn’t care if you’re loaded with fame and wealth or if you have nothing to your name. It doesn’t matter if your parents were amazing or awful to you growing up.
Don’t get me wrong — they may all be factors to a degree.
But depression doesn’t single out any group and it doesn’t discriminate against a certain part of the population.
Anyone can find themselves spiraling into a path of depression no matter who they are, what they have, and what status they have in life.
Are some personalities more prone to it than others? Sure.
But someone’s whose generally happy can also shift into a depressive state given the “right” circumstances.
That’s why you should never judge someone who says they’re depressed even if you think they have nothing to be depressed about.
Ignorant people read headlines about celebrities who are depressed or are experiencing challenges in their lives are quick to call them out and mock them because they believe “they have nothing to be sad about. They have everything anyone could ever want.”
But people forget that they too are humans first and foremost. Not some mythical figure that has it all and can do no wrong.
These “high-status” people who are often put in another realm also experience pain, pleasure, doubts, fears, temptations, desires, and they too have their vices.
They experience all the emotions that everyone else does. And that means they’re not immune to depression.
You can never truly know what is happening in someone’s life or in their mind despite how they carry themselves in public — even to those closest to them.
Just because someone appears to have “everything” one can possibly want in life doesn’t mean that they’re happy or fulfilled.
Often times, people will mask their struggles and pain behind a facade of joy and manufactured happiness.
What can cause depression…
There’s not one root cause for why someone becomes depressed. Sometimes it’s a melting pot of things.
It’s not just about being negative or angry all the time that cause depression— although those don’t help if you’re trying to avoid it.
It could result from an event from the past or it could also be brought on by having a grim outlook on the future.
If you’ve made mistakes that you deeply regret or did something that violated your values and core being, you can certainly begin feeling negative about yourself and who you are.
If you foresee an uninspiring future for yourself where you feel like there’s no other option or that you’re headed for a life of pain and suffering, that too can also bring in negative thoughts and patterns leading to depression.
And it’s not just the past or the future. You could feel depressed because of the situation you’re currently in. Whether that be a job or business you’re in, the people that you're surrounded by, where you live, or even having to do something each day that sucks the soul out of you.
Maybe it’s a combination of all three — regrettable things in the past leading to a poor situation today that you feel will be the reality for the rest of your life. And this is likely the case for most people.
Because what we do today sets us up for the next day and so on. If you’re focused on all the wrong or bad that’s already happened in life, it’s going to affect how you approach this day. And what you do this day is going to affect the days the lie ahead. It becomes a pattern that makes up your life and the results you experience.
Although you cannot change the events that happened in the past, you can change how you perceive it and the meaning you assign to it.
People can become depressed from losing a loved one, ending a serious relationship, being let go from their job, failing in their business, or not being where they thought or wanted to be in life at this stage.
Shit happens to all of us in life and we all make mistakes at some point or another.
How you choose to perceive it or handle it is what makes the difference. These events and mistakes in your life will either make you better or make you bitter —but it’s your choice.
And that’s a concept that you have to understand. It’s one that I didn’t quite get until recently.
Whether you realize or not, you have the ability to alter the past — at least how you perceive it.
If you assign negative means to the things that happened “to” you, you’ll likely carry a negative emotion to it for eternity.
The goal is understanding how you perceive the events you’ve experienced as well as the circumstances you currently live in.
Perception is where you need to focus your energy if you want to control the meaning of what you assign to everything in life.
How you perceive is extremely unique to all of us. Two people going through the same exact experience will perceive it and completely different ways. They could have completely opposite experiences.
I‘ll write a more in-depth story about how emotions are created and what we need to understand in order to master them. It’s a fairly long process that deserves its own story in itself.
It’s such an important topic that I wish I had known many many years ago. It would have likely helped me before I reached some truly dark times in my life.
I also believe that understanding our emotions should be a topic that should be taught to us at a young age and repeated year-after-year.
It would save so many people from mental, emotional, and even physical pain and suffering.
My downward spiral…
After taking the time to look back into my own history and experiences to pinpoint where I started to go into a depressive state, I narrowed it down to a few key things.
First, back around 2011, I was prescribed antibiotics that upset the balance of my microbiome. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, I’ll try to share with you my basic and limited understanding of it.
Basically, you have a system of good and bad bacteria that requires a balance in order for your body to be healthy and carry out its normal functions for operations such as digestion.
When you take antibiotics, you’re risking the balance of your system which can lead to a plethora of potential health problems.
Think about the word — antibiotic. “Anti” being against and “bio” refers to living and life.
When you take these medications, they’re not able to single out only the bacteria they’re targeting. They’re bound to take out the “good guys” too and that’s what throws your system out of whack. And that’s why you’ll see a long list of potential side effects for virtually every antibiotic on the market.
Anyway, soon after taking my prescribed meds, I started noticing a decline in my health. I started getting headaches, body aches, fatigue, and many other symptoms. And really not feeling like myself. My thoughts were disturbed which just amplified my already-low self-esteem and negative thoughts about myself. So that certainly didn’t help matters.
I didn’t understand what was happening at the time because I didn’t realize the adverse effects of taking something that was supposed to “help” me. I was just young and naive at that time.
Now, on top of taking those antibiotics, I was in a job that I didn’t enjoy and surrounded by people I didn’t feel comfortable with. Within a couple years of graduating college, I started working full-time with what appeared to be a cushy, safe government job.
Everyone thought that I had it made and that I was “successful”. But little did they know that it was far from the truth.
You see, success is subjective and differs for everyone. How I define success is likely completely different than how you define success for yourself.
Anyway, I had just graduated college with thousands of dollars in student loans but knew within a couple short years that I had chosen the wrong career. And that is what destroyed me.
How was I to tell my family I had made a mistake and chose the wrong career? How was I to tell them I wasn’t happy and that I actually felt terrified going into work every day? Especially when they all thought I was happy and successful.
I didn’t know what to do with my careering seeing as how I just invested 4 years into my degree and that’s all I knew.
So just kept this debilitating secret to my self. And then, I lied to myself by justifying my situation and that it was okay to be unhappy with my job — most people are.
And when my friends and family asked how life and work was, I lied. I’d tell them (just like I told myself) that everything was good.
Note: That is something that you shouldn’t do to yourself or them.
But I’m glad to report that I recently left that career (after 9 long years). I even wrote a story about it…
Anyway, I didn’t really have much going on in my life — or at least I thought I didn’t and that’s how I perceived my own situation.
My work and career have always been something that I prided myself on and took seriously. But when I got into a position where I just felt like I didn’t belong or I wasn’t as smart as my co-workers, I was devastated.
I knew I had chosen the wrong career for me and kicked myself up, down, left and right for it. And I did that for years.
What I should have done was take the time to come up with a game plan to get myself out of that situation.
But again, I was fresh out of college and didn't really knew what else I could or should do. So each day, I went into work dreading it because not only did I not enjoy the work but I just felt like I didn’t belong.
I felt lonelier going into that office each day surrounded by unlike-minded people than I did when I was actually alone.
So imagine what that feeling does to your psyche over time and your general attitude towards yourself and life. Not good.
So between the physical effects and the symptoms I was experiencing from the antibiotics on top of the resentment and hate I was feeling towards myself about my career and other things in life, I had a recipe for depression.
Years and years of constant negative self-talk, looking negatively about the past AND having an uninspiring outlook on the future all contributed to me living with dangerous thoughts.
And that’s the scary thing. What seems to but unimportant or insignificant meanings and thoughts in your mind can quickly escalate to surprisingly become more serious and frightening thought patterns.
Even thoughts of harming oneself.
You see, there aren’t boundaries or rules of what your mind will think given a pattern that it’s been set on. If you start thinking negatively and create a habit of it, your mind will take that pattern and run with it — even into dangerous and alarming territories.
That’s why it’s so important that you set up your own boundaries and rules of what you should think and say to and about yourself.
At least that’s what I believe and what I’ve done personally to help me avoid those dangerous thought patterns.
Looking back, there were so many mornings where I’d wake up and wish I didn’t. Days where I just didn’t want to talk to or face anyone.
Why couldn’t I just be happy? My life wasn’t even that bad. But that goes to show that it doesn’t matter what you actually have in your life.
Money. Fame. Fortune. Security. Friends. It doesn’t make you immune.
One can have it “all” and still experience depression. Like I said — it doesn’t discriminate and can happen to people who’d you least likely expect it to.
Mental strength becomes my weakness…
You see, as a kid. I didn’t quite understand depression. I thought that I would never find myself in that state because I was too “mentally strong”. I believed that depression was for “weaker” minded individuals.
Well, needless to say, life sure has a way of humbling you and keeping you grounded.
But what I that was my power — my mental strength — was actually a major fault.
Here’s why: I tend to be someone who dives deep into a topic of interest. I take a lot of time and exude a lot of my energy into whatever it is that I’m focused on at the moment.
But because I was putting my thoughts on the wrong things, my habit of extreme focus actually made things much worse than they should have been.
I took the negative self-talk, self-hatred, and the negative perceptions I created and ran with them full steam ahead. I focused so hard on them that it was all I could think about. 24/7.
I created a pattern and it consumed me for years.
How I personally got “out” of a depressive state
It’s quite strange how we can easily go into a pattern of negative and depressive thoughts and allow it to consume your entire being without ever stopping to think about why we’re heading in that direction and what to do to stop it before it reaches the danger zone.
One day of negative thoughts about oneself, life, or this world can lead to 2 days, then 3. Then before you know it, weeks and months go by and the pattern compounds and gets significantly worse.
Remember, once you’ve set a pattern for your mind to follow, it’s just going to take that pattern and subconsciously do it for you without you ever having to try any more.
It’s kind of like when you first learn a new skill. You put in some initial effort to get the ball rolling but once you become somewhat proficient, your mind says “I know what to do, I’ll take it from here”.
So it doesn’t matter what you’re feeding into your mind — good or bad. Either way, it’s going to develop a pattern and run on autopilot which is why it’s crucial to control what you input into your mind and body each day.
On top of that, you have to train yourself to perceive experiences in a way that helps you rather than hurts you.
I talked before about creating rules and boundaries for what you can and should think. Understanding and being aware of your thoughts is the first component to being able to control your emotions and your state each day.
Now, I don’t believe it’s necessary (or even possible) to stop all negative and toxic thoughts. We’re humans — it’s natural.
Nobody sees everything as sunshine and rainbows and you don’t have to.
But like your microbiome being in a balance and having bad bacteria is actually necessary, keeping your positive and negative thoughts in a healthy balance is what you should focus on.
I don’t have a ratio of good-to-bad thoughts to aim for but let’s just say you definitely don’t want to have more negative thoughts going on more often than positive.
The game-changer for me was really diving into the personal development world and learning how to shift my view about myself, life, and the world around me.
The 2 books that helped me the most to this day are NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming and The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World.
I tell people that the NLP book is for the mind and “The Book of Joy” is good for the heart and soul.
After reading those books, I had to really take the time and reflect on what was truly ailing me. Why did I have those thoughts of resentment and anger towards myself? Why was I so hard on myself when it was literally making me sick mentally and physically?
Like I said, once you start down the pattern, you almost never stop to think and ask yourself these types of questions that can really help you pivot and avoid going down a depressive path. It’s such a “simple” yet overlooked concept.
It might be because we just aren’t prepared with the tools and knowledge throughout life to handle our thoughts and emotions. We aren’t taught the basics of human psychology and how we generate our emotions and behaviors even though every single person in the world experiences them.
Thanks a lot education system for teaching us a whole lot of stuff we don’t need while neglecting some of the most important topics of all — our psychology, mental health, and overall well-being.
What to do if you feel like you’re depressed…
Now, I’m no doctor. I don’t have a psychology degree. And I’m not a therapist.
I don’t know who you are or what you’re going through and I will never pretend as if I do. Every person is unique and everyone’s situation is completely different.
People go through different experiences and perceive them in different ways.
But I’ve come up with a list of questions that may help (hopefully) at least guide you in the right direction to where you can start working your way out of your current state and into a more positive one so that you can live a higher quality of life.
These questions come from an interactive guide that I’ve put together that you can download and type your answers directly right into the PDF.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE FULL GUIDE.
But I’ll list them out here so you can get a preview…
— Describe your typical day from when you wake up until the time you go to bed? What thoughts and actions do you have every day?
— Why do you feel the emotions of sadness that you do today? Is it from events of the past, bad present circumstances, sad future outlook? Get clear on the root cause of why you feel the way that you do.
— Why do you think you’ve experienced this sadness for an extended period of time? Was it the lack of help, unsure of what to do or who to turn to?
— How has being in depression or a saddened state affected your life up until now?
— What is your current outlook on life? Do you believe the state you’re in will continue for the rest of your life? It’s important to understand that it doesn’t have to be permanent — bad times will pass and good times will come with consistent and conscious effort.
— Can you reframe events of your past to reduce the negative meaning/interpretation you may have assigned to it? We can often associate negative stories to experiences of the past that cause sadness and pain. Whether it be something you did (or didn’t do) or things someone may have done onto you.
— Create a future where you don’t have feelings of depression or extreme sadness. What would life be like? Think about things such as who you’d have in your life, where you live, what you’re doing on a daily basis (work, fun, activities), what reasons you have to live the way you want, what places you’d like to visit, what you’d like to do, and so on.
— What are solutions or courses of action you can take that will lead to the future you created from the previous question?
— What will you do starting TODAY that will move you in that direction of your brighter future? Focus on single days at a time and making the most that you can of it.
— What will you stop doing or eliminate from your life that will reduce your feelings of sadness and move you towards where you want to go? Examples could include making the same choices that led to your sadness, staying away from certain people, reducing/eliminating thought patterns.
— Who can you talk or reach out to for help? It’s important to not go at this alone if you can. Some may be able to but if you need help, don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Now, it can be hard when you’re in a state of depression to think of what life is like outside of it. Especially if you’ve been feeling sad or depressed for quite some time.
But just like many people gradually go into that state (but not always), you can work your way out.
It’s not easy but it’s possible. Focus on how you can make the next 10 minutes the best that you can. Then do it again and again and again. Before you know it, you’ve made the day the best you can. Then rinse and repeat.
If you continue with this intentional effort, you will start to create a new pattern for your mind to carry out for you.
Feed your mind with the right stuff daily. Learn to control your thoughts and perceptions (refer to the 2 books I mentioned). Focus on creating a life that you want and make a plan for how to achieve it.
You need to “distract” yourself from what’s been ailing you with something to look forward to. Something that you can get excited about. It’ll keep your mind focused on the good that’s coming instead of the bad that’s happened or will happen.
This has been quite the journey and I hope my insight and experience can shed some light and guidance onto your own story and path forward.
Until next time…
Sincere wishes for a great life,
Dan Lu
