HOW TO HANDLE DEPRESSION UNTIL IT GIVES UP ON HANDLING YOU

(these thoughts are added to three times each week)

Do you wish to do damage to depression when it comes to call. Then force yourself to chuckle or even laugh out loud as you diligently search for ways to avoid becoming a cynic. Meet a smiling person first thing every morning. Who? Yourself! That’s right. Grin at the mirror. You will feel foolish because you don’t feel like smiling. Smile anyway. Got some doubts. Go to the mirror every morning and frown at yourself. Does that work better?

When down days, bad hair days, don’t feel like myself days come…attack them in all the ways you can. Maybe even with a few silly thoughts. Such as popping some popcorn in a container with no lid or creating a new language and then using it to ask for directions from some poor unsuspecting soul. This kind of thing isn’t a solution. It’s really only a band-aide, but band-aides have their place too in the healing of wounds.

A dear friend of mine was slowly dying of congestive heart failure, but she was so busy talking to and helping another friend who was dying of cancer, and several others with multiple problems, that she had less time to worry about herself. Depression takes time and effort, and reaching out to help others rather than reaching in to feel sorry for oneself really does work.

Seek an accepting spirit. If something is broke and you can’t fix it, stop worrying yourself to death as if worry were an answer. Whether of the body or the spirit, if there is nothing that you can do about it... take one good long last look at the problem and file it away for good. Trouble is, some people have pop up files. They file their problem away and then keep going back to see if anything has changed – serving up a plate of rehashed worries over and over again.

We human beings do sometimes need an addition to our stiff upper lip and/or deep spiritual prayer. There comes a time when we need some medicines to aid in our recovery, just as we need a doctor and an operation to do the same.

Anyone should be able to take Prozac, or Effexor or Paxil with no more of a sense of guilt than taking chemo, or havinga knee operation. And why not? Do not most people take insulin for diabetes, or aspirin for a headache, or anesthesia before the surgeon applies his knife?

Sometimes the best thing to remember is that most people in real depression recover within six months; therefore “Yes” the odds are in your favor. Meanwhile, when the weight of your negative thoughts weigh a thousand pounds and seem to be growing heavier by the minute; give such thoughts some muted silence. Seek an emotional whiteout. Just let the soft breeze of nothingness blow for a while.

Get on the other side of the window. Open the door and go for a walk. Don’t close the door and sag for a sit. Movement has its own power of persuasion. . Turn up some music and dance to the tune. An elevated pulse count can make you feel better, not well and happy necessarily, but better.

Don’t do drugs. Cut out or cut down on alcohol. Stimulants are no friends either. You are looking for good health…not ways to lessen it.

Donate yourself to some worthy causes. Selflessness is by its very nature an upper.

Eliminate the word depression from your vocabulary. If you can’t eliminate thinking the word or even saying it, cut down on the repetitions. Repeating over and over again “I am depressed” can only make you more so.