My perspective on depression, and what you can do about it
Today, I’d like to share my perspective on depression, where it comes from and what I think works to tackle it. I’m talking as somebody who’s been there, as somebody who’s supported clients suffering from it, and as somebody whose life is dedicated to understanding people: I’ve learned all sorts of things about depression from all sorts of different angles.So this is MY knowledge. But there is always more to learn. If things occur to you as you read, especially if you have a particular knowledge or insight, please leave it in the comments to help other readers.
According to Uncommon Knowledge LLP:
People of all ages, backgrounds, lifestyles, and nationalities suffer from major depression...
10 times more people suffer from major depression now than in 1945
And if you want a clear definition of depression, there’s a medical perspective here: http://patient.info/doctor/depression-pro
I’d like to add to that:
Depression affects both genders
It can impact your life significantly: removing motivation, confidence, and creating a false perspective of helplessness and hopelessness
Depression is real - and it’s an illness which requires unorthodox treatment
In my experience, depression has one of three sources:
Depression can be a learned response, passed on from parents to children.
What I mean is, children see their parents being depressed and they learn that it’s normal. They copy the behaviour, and they end up feeling the emotions. They become stuck in this sad, disempowered place.Treating this kind of depression involves investigating our parents, what we saw as children, and beginning to recondition ourselves by replacing negative, sad, hopeless responses to situations with positive, hopeful, trusting responses. It’s a long road, and you should get the reading material and support you need. But it’s quite possible.
Depression can be a response to physical illness, shock, stress or overwhelm.
When we’re ill, shocked, injured or going through heightened stress, the brain can respond in all sorts of unexpected ways. One of these is to enter into a depressive state.Treating this form of depression mostly involves treating the original illness, wound or state of shock. Even if the obvious injuries are all healed, or the trigger state has passed, have you gone through a process to shed the stress held in your mind and your body? I’ll talk about this more below.
Depression can be a result of environmental factors
This, as I understand it, is the reason there’s been such a significant rise in depression over the last 50 years. If you compare the way your body and mind behave, compared to the historical or “natural” way a body and mind behave, what would you notice as different? Well, you’d certainly notice:
Less physical movement
More constraint of physical expression
More emotional constraint, both in terms of what you feel and how you express it
Much less unprocessed food, fibre, raw enzymes and trace minerals in your diet
Much higher intake of carbohydrates and sugars
Loss of a sense of community and belonging
Much greater access to information, without any particular use for that information
Constant mental stimulation - less quiet time to yourself, without entertainment or distraction
A great deal of this information is telling you how to think, what to feel, what choices to make and what it means to be happy and successful
You’re less likely to be comfortable with your appearance, and you’re more likely to feel shame or failure about it
A higher degree of feeling monitored, watched, timed and recorded
Generally higher levels of toxic chemicals in your environment
So the things that you mind and your body are handling are radically different from what they were “designed” to do. What we’re seeing (in all sorts of behaviour) is the modern human trying to find a way to manage these unhealthy conditions. But one common result is depression - exactly the same response that an abused animal eventually reaches after enough time and enough suffering - resignation, hopelessness, despair, frustration and surrender.
So, what do we do about this?
I think the most important thing to realise is that depression is an unusual kind of disease. We’re used to straight-line-thinking when we try to make ourselves feel better (we disinfect a cut or we take medicine for a condition) and that works for a lot of things.
But this is a holistic condition, and we must learn to think holistically about our health in order to treat it. Any one treatment is likely to impact your feelings for a while, simply because it’s positive movement and a statement of intention to get better. But my experience has been that we need to be open to radical change when we try to tackle depression...simply because the modern world can be so hostile to mental health.
You are depressed because you are unwell.
You are unwell because certain things have happened to you, or continue to happen to you.
To become well, you need to heal from things in the past and change things in the present.
If you don’t, you’re likely to remain depressed.
So what I’m going to do is list things that I’ve seen have a significant impact on depression. Some of these will apply to you. But none of them will work on their own. You’ll need to blend them together into your own, tailored treatment package…
Move your body
Your body is more than just the vehicle that moves your mind around. The mind and the body are one, and affect each other in all sorts of obvious and subtle ways.
You need to take care of your body so it can take care of you.
You’ve got two goals here:
Build up fitness
On a mechanical level, you need to keep your body fit and healthy, and to do that it needs to be stretched, pushed and tested. You need to sweat, pant, feel physically drained and sometimes you’re going to wake up sore and stiff. Focus on your cardio fitness, because working on this will help other things to improve along the way. Running, rowing, cycling, cross-trainer, fitness classes, zumba...whatever works for you. If you’re daunted and don’t know where to start, try working through the couch to 5k programme. Or take the plunge and go to a local exercise class. You’ll get fit and you’ll be forced to spend time with other people, and that’ll help too!
Love your body
You are the owner of a remarkable gift: a body that has endured and carried you through everything to this moment. It’s waiting for you to notice it, it wants to be known and used and loved. So moving your body is as much about learning as it is about fitness. Get to know your body, see what it likes and what it doesn’t. See what it wants. Learn to hear what it is trying to tell you. Often we’ve grown up to think of the body as a lumpen thing that we command. But it’s not like that. You’re a partnership, a beautiful union of the physical and the non-physical. I recommend yoga, especially one-to-one lessons with a good teacher who will take you through breathing and connecting. As a wise yoga teacher once said to me, “breath in the connection between the mind and the body”.
And part of love is fun, so have fun with your body and go on adventures with it. Be silly, jump around, dance. These kind of movements serve us on so many levels: the release of tension; the new thoughts we can have when we move in new ways; the opening of our eyes to a new world.
So much of depression is about closing down our perspective to the immediate, the rational and the negative. A lot of things I’ll say in this article are about shifting you into a bigger perspective so that what’s happening right now isn’t so overwhelming. Physical embodiment is part of this.
Drink more water
It sounds small but it’s not. Many of us live in a dehydrated state, which impacts us in all sorts of ways, from our ability to handle strong emotions to our histamine responses. Returning to being fully hydrated takes time - it can take up to three days to recover from temporary dehydration, and if it’s been a lifetime practice then it can take longer still. Once you get there you’ll find that you’re calmer, more physically comfortable, more focused and you’ll get better sleep.
My recommendation is to make sure you drink at least 2.5 litres of water per day, and also to make sure that you don’t live in a flood-and-drought way. Drink slowly and consistently throughout the day. Fill a bottle or a large glass to keep track of your drinking and sip throughout the day.
Get to know your feelings
My greatest frustration is that a lot of people live their lives as rookies, and they never learn - or even realise that there is anything to learn. My coaching and mentoring is all based around self-knowledge. The more you know yourself, the more power you have to choose what happens in your life.
Your emotions are telling you things. Each emotion has a message for you. Persistent emotions are doggedly bringing you the same message over and over again.
At the same time, your emotions are perhaps not as big a deal as you think. When we spend a lot of time with our feelings, we can learn to focus on them in particular ways. They become all-consuming, overwhelming, deafening and deadening.
So there is a twin-trail to walk here: knowing your emotional landscape, the meaning and origin of each of your feelings; and the self-awareness that lets you realise that you have the power to choose: you are not your emotions. There are all these feelings that happen around you, but you are the separate, rational witness who can choose what actions to take.
To learn about the messages in your emotions, read The Language of Emotions by Karla Mclaren
To learn about internal boundaries and holding onto your power amid the maelstrom, read How to be an Adult by David Richo
Achieve something
This is part of the life coaching way of doing things:
We stretch ourselves and do things outside of our comfort zone
We succeed
We have evidence that we can do more than we thought we could
We feel good
This feedback encourages us to take the next step
These steps can be really small to begin with. They are just beyond what feels comfortable and possible for you right now. For some of us, it might be just getting out of bed, or cooking a proper meal, or calling a friend. Some of us might be ready for the next steps, and the next...
So begin small, but be relentless. Be brave. Take positive steps. Sometimes it can really help to keep a journal that is solely dedicated to the things you’ve achieved and succeeded at. Every time you do something that felt good, that was a positive step towards the life you want, write it down. When you feel crappy, go through the journal. You can feel all sorts of things, but you can’t argue with evidence.
Be with people
The depressive instinct often seeks solitude: you want to be alone with your bad feelings. Sometimes, this is a really positive and healthy step. But having some kind of network of friends, family or community is part of a healthy lifestyle and will help you to stay mentally healthy.
Find your people: people who can understand you and who encourage the best in your (sometimes we want to talk to other depressed people...but unless you’re both trying to get better this may well just encourage you to stay depressed).
But a strong word of advice: an impulse for anybody who is suffering is to find a person who will “fix” you, “solve” your problems or “rescue” you. You may bring strong, unconscious needs to every conversation: needs for love, acceptance, reassurance or salvation. This will turn people off and drive them away. People want to be related to and connected with: they don’t want to be used for the things you need from them. And anybody who responds positively to your expression of need won’t be trying to help you, they’ll be using you to meet their own needs. Real connection between people isn’t about using, it’s about connecting.
I recommend you read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. This’ll help you learn about healthy vulnerability and strong connection building.
Learn about diet and put it into action
Diet is much more a habit than it is a list of do’s and dont’s.
Let me explain what I mean…
Your body needs specific foods and specific nutrition. The exact ratios of carbs, protein, fat, fibre, vitamins, minerals and enzymes that you need will be unique to you, but we all need these things. You should learn as much as you can, from reputable sources, about good diet and nutrition.
But what your body really needs is a regular, dependable, healthy diet. And that means finding the time in your busy day to prepare the right foods at the right time. That’s where a lot of people fail. How do you get enough protein for your physical training regime? How do you find the time to soak your grains before you eat them?
So that’s where you should focus your attention. Over time, work step-by-step to make your diet healthier and healthier. I suggest you begin with simple steps like:
Stop drinking any liquid with your meals
Eat something raw (homemade coleslaw, fruit, sprouted beans) with every meal
Swap all your white carbs for brown carbs, particularly short-grain brown rice
Find ways to eat a lot more fruit and veg in a way that brings you happiness and joy (for example, I eat a lot of stir fry’s, so I use packets of tasty stir fry sauce to liven them up).
There are a lot of great books out there on diet and nutrition, and on ways to make it practical and achievable. Please leave any suggestions you have in the comments.
Meditation
I’m particularly talking about Mindfulness here, although other forms of meditation (from zazen to sufi turning) can be effective. The thing to avoid is meditation-as-entertainment, which is common. There are plenty of uses for guided meditation or reflective meditation, but I’m not talking about those here.
Just as I’m encouraging you to meet the extraordinary gift that is your body, and to meet the richness and reality of your emotions, meditation is the tool for getting to know your mind.
And just as you are not your emotions, you are not your mind.
Your mind is a thing that is available to you. But it often tries to run the show (just as your feelings do). The modern world is built around strengthening and facilitating the development of the mind, and there can be a prejudice that the mind is better than other aspects of you.
It isn’t. It’s just a thing that does certain jobs for you. It must be understood, and you need to keep it under control.
Meditation gives you the opportunity, for a while, to escape from mentally-focused work and entertainment, and to return to you. It gives you the opportunity to witness your mind in action, and begin distinguishing yourself from it. It gives you the opportunity for peace and tranquility amongst the toxic bustle of the modern world.
Begin with some audiobooks by Jon Kabat-Zinn, or some mindfulness videos of YouTube that you like, or some books that have been recommended to you, or find yourself a local mindfulness class.
I strongly recommend that you avoid meditation taught by a particular religious doctrine. This isn’t because I don’t like buddhism, sufism, paganism etc. My degree was in theology and I know that religion has a great deal to offer. But we’re after self-knowledge, and that can be difficult when the meditation is blended with a particular approach or prejudice.
Spend time in nature
A lot of evidence (and experience from most people’s lives!) shows how beneficial it can be to spend time in the wild. Nature teaches us all sorts of things at level of body and soul, things that can’t be found in books or lessons. Some ways to do this are:
Gardening
Walks aimlessly in the woods, in a park or by the sea
Get a dog and go for long walks with it (also good for meeting people!)
Ask for help
We are not taught how to be truly, deeply healthy.
There are so many aspects of our daily lives that are unhealthy. The more we understand ourselves and our true health, the less we tolerate those things and the more we take back our power.
So there is a huge incentive to seek help from everywhere you can. If your pride gets in the way then find a way to manage it (I speak particularly to men here - we can let our pride become a massive barrier to learning). Find people you can trust and learn everything you can about physical health, mental health, emotional health and spiritual health. If you find truths that conflict, learn both. Work out later on which is the truth for you, don’t let your fears, longings or prejudices blind you to learning things that might be vital for you. If things are uncomfortable to learn, pay great attention to that discomfort - there’s probably something really important for you to learn from it.
Health experts I particularly recommend:
Your doctor. At the end of the day, in the UK, your GP is going to be the best qualified generalist you’ll find. They’ll also be the most over-worked, so only go to them if you feel your condition is really affecting your life...but also don’t hesitate to speak to them if you really feel like you can’t cope. They may refer you to a CBT therapist or counsellor, or they may offer you a course of antidepressants. If things really are bad, take the medication for the short-term (usually minimum of 6 months) and begin taking the steps above to get your life in order - and take any and all sources of support that are offered to you. The worst that can happen is that you’ll have more information.
A good craniosacral therapist. This therapy isn’t regulated yet, so you need to make sure you pick a good therapist. Mine is Upledger trained and has a superb ability to release the tensions and traumas in my body that cause my depressive episodes.
A good nutritionist, who you can trust, who comes recommended and who will help you build a diet plan that works for you.
A personal trainer who motivates you and inspires you to push hard, and who teaches you about your body along the way
Find a mentor or guide: somebody you trust, who you can talk freely to, who will help you take meaningful steps and support and motivate you to build the life you want. Ideally should be a person who’s already achieved what you want to achieve (this is called “modelling”).
Audiobooks or CD’s by Anthony Robbins. He’ll help you get into a more successful, positive mindset and this’ll help with everything else.
Find a reputable psychotherapist, ideally one recommended to you.