How to deal with depression?

How do you know when a person is depressed? What are the signs of depression? The most common signs of depression are feeling sad, hopeless and unmotivated to do anything. For example, a depressed person could easily lose her enthusiasm to do the things she used to do with passion. But, just talking about the signs of depression is not the main focus of this article and does not really help anybody! But, why do you think some people get depressed? And, what are the main reasons of depression? These are the most important questions that we should find a way to answer them, and then some solutions to cope with depression? In our previous articles about life values and hope, we somehow opened up the doors to the current topic.

Alright. Let’s start talking about the reasons of depression in people. Everybody has his/her own story and dreams for life. Someone thinks that life is difficult and you have to be tough and strong to deal with it. Someone think about life as a war of power & competition that you have to fight for yourself. Someone else thinks that life is beautiful and it is a gift given to you by god to celebrate it. Someone thinks life is just fun and it’s supposed to be enjoyed as much as possible. Someone else thinks that life is about helping and giving to each others. These are just a few examples of blueprints or life stories that people could build in their own mind. These life stories could be gradually created in your subconscious mind during your lifespan. Of course, most of your beliefs about life would be shaped during your childhood, however, these beliefs could sometimes be modified or even changed based on your life experiences (especially the most extreme life experiences that you’ve had). For instance, a terrible near-death car accident could change a person’s entire belief system about life. You could have an awful heart-breaking relationship that could change your view about being in a relationship.

Usually if you ask someone that: what do you want from life, most of them would immediately start saying that I want a nice car, a big home and so on. But, the important thing is that these are just superficial stuff right on the edge! You have to dig harder to find what you really want in life. I would strongly suggest you to read the previous articles about your life goals, life values, life rules and hope. If you have read those articles, then you should get the difference between your goals and life values. In a nutshell, you will set your goals based on your life values which are deeply rooted beliefs in your subconscious mind. Your life values are somehow coming from the different needs in human beings. For instance, all the human beings have the needs of love, security, success, fun, adventure, contribution, growth, freedom, etc. However, the order of the life values in each person plays a significant role in the eyes of that person of how seeing the world. Someone might have “love” as her first life value and has a desired life story in her mind about being loved, getting married, having kids and so on. Her desired life story could be very different from a person who, for example, has success at the top of his life values. To him, he might have to be the most creative and productive person in the science or industry to feel successful. Someone with the values of contribution and freedom at the top of her list might want to help as many people as possible to bring freedom for all around the world.

The most important thing to remember is that your life values are deeply rooted values in your belief system which are originating from the basic human needs such as love, security, power, and so on. However, your life goals are somehow the tools that you set them up to reach to your ultimate life values. It is also worth to mention that your life goals are easily shaped based on the influences you get from your external circumstances. For example, having a nice car, having a big house, and so on are the things we’ve seen around us and have pulled toward them by linking pleasurable feelings to them. I would put the labels of external influences on top of our life goals because they’re not usually the ultimate desires that we’re seeking.

For example, our primitive ancestors in hundred thousand years ago had a totally different life goals than us. For sure, they didn’t know anything about a nice car, a penthouse, a boat, a private jet and so on. They had their own life goals of having probably an arrow, sword, a shelter, a big hunt to eat, being the leader of the tribe, conquering the rival’s territory and so on. So, you can see how extremely different could be our life goals based on the environment and era which we are living in. On the other hand, the human needs for love, security, success, power, contribution, adventure, fun, freedom, growth, etc. have always been intact. In other words, people seek love as our ancestors were seeking it thousand years ago. People still seek for power as our grandfathers were seeking it. They just might have different ways to achieve it. That’s why I would like to draw a line of internal & external desires between our life values and life goals. Of course, we might also have some spiritual life goals for ourselves. For example, you could say that I want to learn a new thing each day so that I grow and progress continuously. Obviously, this is not a materialistic goal, but in the end it bridges back (serves) to one of your life values which was the need of growth in this case. If I want to put the words in a simpler way, I would say your goals either materialistic or spiritual are the ways you establish by yourself to achieve your desired life values which are somehow the basic human needs throughout the history.

In addition to that, our life rules are a kind of frame lines that we set in our own mind to judge ourselves. We could all have different standards for our lives. For example, two persons could both have success and financial security at the top of their life values list and both want to be a millionaire. But, one will be satisfied with 1 million dollars, the other one see himself as a millionaire once he has achieved 100 million dollars. They both have the same desire, but have a totally different set of rules and standards for their intention.

Depression comes into play, when you say that I wanted to be something, but I’m not there at all! You already had some dreams and life stories about your desired life, but you’re far away from reaching it. In this kind of situation, what choices do we have? You could blame anyone or anything that it may or may not be the reason of you not being where you wanted to be. But, this approach is the worst kind of reaction that you could show because it does nothing but to make you more furious and frustrated. A better approach is to always seek for a solution instead of just blaming and focusing on the problem itself. Training your mind to think about the solutions is one of the best ways that could help you to quickly shift your mind’s attention from the problem to a productive & creative level. So, what is the solution in the case you feel you’re not in the place you dreamed to be?

You can either change your life and current situation to reach where you want to be, or you can work on your beliefs and blueprints about life to change or at least modify your life stories to become closer to your dreams and reality. Usually, there should be combination of both of changing your life and your beliefs. But, the worst case of depression happens when the person realizes that he is far away from his dreams and has no control over it to change the situation. In other words, you feel hopeless to change your life. I would call this stage an inside death! Feeling hopeless is equal to death in my eyes. Just take a look at our article about hope here. Then, you notice that having hope for a better day in the future is in the essence of human beings. Losing your hope means losing everything. I believe that in our soul we could die a couple of times during our lifespan whenever we lose our hope to reach one of our dreams. And when the person lose his hope in everything, he feels there’s nothing to live for. That’s when the final death of the person arrives! Suicide, sickness or something else. Nowadays, so many people are dying because of cancer or some other types of sickness. But, the certain death comes when the person loses his hope in healing and passing the sickness. There are a lot of examples that have beaten up the cancer and some other types of fatal sickness, and those are the ones who always had hope for a better day in the future and never imagined themselves defeated and hopeless against the sickness.

Do not let anyone or anything take your dreams away from you. Nothing is impossible, there’s always a way.

So, up to now you should clearly understand the signs and causes of depression and the role of our beliefs and hope about life to overcome the depression.

To wrap this up, I would suggest you to brainstorm about what you really want in life. If you’re feeling a bit frustrated or depressed in your life, try to remember your desired life story and dreams. You could easily find the answers by asking yourself the questions about your life values, life goals, life rules (standards). Then if you don’t see yourself where you wanted to be, there could be different scenarios: 1. If you’re just a bit far from your dreams, you’re highly likely not a depressed person. Then, you just need to work on your actions and strategies to change your current situation and pass the obstacles to reach your ultimate dreams. 2. If you’re far away from your dreams, but you’re trying to be where you want to be and know that for sure that you will achieve your dreams in the future, you’re still fine. You may just need to work on your strategies and standards to facilitate and speed up the process of reaching your goals. 3. But if you’re far away from your dreams and you’re feeling hopeless about it to change anything, then that’s a critical point to take care of it immediately. You can still set some new strategies and standards for your dreams. Make new plans and goals for yourself to reach your desired life story. If your dreamed life story seem a bit unrealistic, you may adjust it a little bit and work on your beliefs and standards to reach there easier. You could easily get on track by lowering down your expectations and setting up some smaller goals. Then, you will fulfill them much faster and easier than before. And, you could gradually increase your standards (life rules) and set some new goals for reaching your ultimate life story.

I sincerely hope this article would help you to kill any kind of depression inside you. And, never lose hope for getting where you wanted to be.