Facing Depression
Steve Pavlina just pushed out another good article, Overcoming Depression. In short, the article says depression is caused by the fact that we dwelling our thoughts on the things we don't like and don't want, and to overcome depression, we need move our thoughts away and think about things we want and like, thus feeling better. It all reads very reasonable, and being such a successful person, it all sounds very convincing. However, I am afraid his approach will not work.
I agree with his reason of the cause of depression and I agree with his reason that we have freedom in our mental world and can imagin good stuff thus stop depression. But that is easy to be said than actually to manage. Say you are fired and you don't have money to pay the mortgage tomorrow, how difficult would it be to just go watch a comedy movie and shift your thoughts away from the fact? It is very difficult. Even you are such a mentally strong person that can forge your mind to a much better world than what the cruel reality is, I suspect that will be good at all. Many people in mental institution do just that -- creating a better world in their mind and thus feeling happy. I admit there is significant difference between mentally ill and conciously manipulating our mood as Steve Pavlina suggests, but I don't see much difference in the methodology itself.
Mentally creating a drastically different world than the reality only creates what I call pseudo-happiness. Our true happiness roots in our ability of survival, pseudo-happiness is not fit to survive at all.
I think to recover from depression, we need dig a little deeper to the cause of depression. Yes, from the surface, we feel depression because we are dwelling our thoughts on things we don't want and don't like. But tring to turn our thoughts away from it is in fact, an acknowlegement of that we let the fact depress us. Conciously, we try to think something happy so we get away from depression; but subconciously, we confirms to ourself whatever cause us depressed will continue to derpress us unless the fact is gone. Unfortunately, the reality and facts often do not change as easily as we would like it to and our acknowledgement doomed us to be under the mercy of depression for a long period. It is like curing a skin cancer with a bandaid: it seems we are tring to cure the symptons, but in fact we made sure that sympton will not disappear.
The root of depression is not the situations, and it is not because we dwelling our thoughts on what we don't want and don't like. The root of depression is the very reason that we don't want and don't like such situations. By taking such a narrow view to an unchangeable situation, we let it to depress ourselves. The root of depression is HOW we think on the reality and facts. We see our current situation from an angle or window that renders it as bad, but fail to see there are plenty of other aspects that we still can draw joys from; we fail to realize that anything, if really is bad, it can only turn better and better; and we fail to realize that our situation probably is not bad at all, because there are plenty of situations that are much worse and amazingly there are plenty of joyful people that lives happily despite their much worse situations ... ... What is the worst could happen?
Say I currently is earning a mediocre salary and living in a small apartment. But thinking on how much I earn and how I don't have a house doesn't depress me. It probably will not depress you either depending on where you come from. But if Bill Gates suddenly be ordered to surrender all his estates, it is likely he would be very depressed even though he still can draw a much higher salary and live in a much better house than I am. The depression is caused by how we think about situation, not by the situation itself.
So to cure from depression, we need face whatever depressing, and realize it is not necessarily bad, and ultimately, start to enjoy the fact. Only by this, we can ensure the depression does not come back after the 30-minute walk or 2-hour movie.
Like cancer, there are all different situations that lead us to depression. And like we know how to cure cancer, we know how to cure depression, which is to change our view of facts and start to enjoy our life. And like curing cancer, there are all kinds of situations lead us to depression and curing depression is not easy. But not like cancer, we know all the depression is curable. Why? Because just look around, your depressing situation is not yours alone, and not every one in your shoes are depressed, and many of them are actually joyful, so why not you?
It is all mental. But mentally forging a conflicting happiness will never be as happy if we mentally draw joys from the the same reality. Just open your inner eyes :)
I agree with his reason of the cause of depression and I agree with his reason that we have freedom in our mental world and can imagin good stuff thus stop depression. But that is easy to be said than actually to manage. Say you are fired and you don't have money to pay the mortgage tomorrow, how difficult would it be to just go watch a comedy movie and shift your thoughts away from the fact? It is very difficult. Even you are such a mentally strong person that can forge your mind to a much better world than what the cruel reality is, I suspect that will be good at all. Many people in mental institution do just that -- creating a better world in their mind and thus feeling happy. I admit there is significant difference between mentally ill and conciously manipulating our mood as Steve Pavlina suggests, but I don't see much difference in the methodology itself.
Mentally creating a drastically different world than the reality only creates what I call pseudo-happiness. Our true happiness roots in our ability of survival, pseudo-happiness is not fit to survive at all.
I think to recover from depression, we need dig a little deeper to the cause of depression. Yes, from the surface, we feel depression because we are dwelling our thoughts on things we don't want and don't like. But tring to turn our thoughts away from it is in fact, an acknowlegement of that we let the fact depress us. Conciously, we try to think something happy so we get away from depression; but subconciously, we confirms to ourself whatever cause us depressed will continue to derpress us unless the fact is gone. Unfortunately, the reality and facts often do not change as easily as we would like it to and our acknowledgement doomed us to be under the mercy of depression for a long period. It is like curing a skin cancer with a bandaid: it seems we are tring to cure the symptons, but in fact we made sure that sympton will not disappear.
The root of depression is not the situations, and it is not because we dwelling our thoughts on what we don't want and don't like. The root of depression is the very reason that we don't want and don't like such situations. By taking such a narrow view to an unchangeable situation, we let it to depress ourselves. The root of depression is HOW we think on the reality and facts. We see our current situation from an angle or window that renders it as bad, but fail to see there are plenty of other aspects that we still can draw joys from; we fail to realize that anything, if really is bad, it can only turn better and better; and we fail to realize that our situation probably is not bad at all, because there are plenty of situations that are much worse and amazingly there are plenty of joyful people that lives happily despite their much worse situations ... ... What is the worst could happen?
Say I currently is earning a mediocre salary and living in a small apartment. But thinking on how much I earn and how I don't have a house doesn't depress me. It probably will not depress you either depending on where you come from. But if Bill Gates suddenly be ordered to surrender all his estates, it is likely he would be very depressed even though he still can draw a much higher salary and live in a much better house than I am. The depression is caused by how we think about situation, not by the situation itself.
So to cure from depression, we need face whatever depressing, and realize it is not necessarily bad, and ultimately, start to enjoy the fact. Only by this, we can ensure the depression does not come back after the 30-minute walk or 2-hour movie.
Like cancer, there are all different situations that lead us to depression. And like we know how to cure cancer, we know how to cure depression, which is to change our view of facts and start to enjoy our life. And like curing cancer, there are all kinds of situations lead us to depression and curing depression is not easy. But not like cancer, we know all the depression is curable. Why? Because just look around, your depressing situation is not yours alone, and not every one in your shoes are depressed, and many of them are actually joyful, so why not you?
It is all mental. But mentally forging a conflicting happiness will never be as happy if we mentally draw joys from the the same reality. Just open your inner eyes :)
posted by Hui Zhou at 8:00 AM
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