Depression: How it starts? How to get out? How not to fallback?
Depression, Anxiety, Stress, etc.; there are so many of these undesired dominant states in our life that we want to avoid. I am writing all these states together here, but by no means, they are all the same. Our aim here is not to be pedantic about differences among them, so I would be referring to all such states as unpleasant states. An unpleasant state is any such state that you might be facing currently but doesn’t want to.
Whatever I am writing here may not be a recognized subjective theory on the topic. It is instead something that I discovered out of my own experience and a lot of thinking about it.
There are three critical questions that I want to answer here. Reading, acknowledging and reflecting on answers to these questions might help your own situation.
- How does it start?
- How to get out?
- How not to fall back?
The article has three sections, each dedicated to one of the above three questions.
1. How does it start?
This question is essential because we cannot rectify a problem until we know its origins. So, we should first understand how these unpleasant states begin in the first place. And only after, we can discuss getting out of these states.
We cannot rectify a problem until we know its origins.
We all have many moments in our lives when we fancied something but couldn’t own it like a dream job. Or, moments when we didn’t want something to occur, but it did anyway like losing a loved one. All such experiences in life that occur against our intentions, small or big, create something that we would call a void. Some voids are small like losing a game that you don’t much care about. And, some voids are large, like losing a loved one.
I am sure that every person on this planet has some voids in their life. Even Bill Gates, one of the most successful and wealthiest people on the planet, would have something to miss/regret in his life. The only difference is that some people have more voids in their life and some have bigger voids than others. Over time we keep experiencing both happy and sad moments and keep accumulating these voids. Every void that we accumulate could lower our threshold of breakdown depending on how much we care about that void.
These voids are not much of a problem as long as they are below our threshold of breakdown. The actual problem starts when we encounter a Breakdown Void in life. This void is above our threshold of breakdown. It causes a mental collapse and takes us to one of the unpleasant states. Such a collapse lowers our threshold of breakdown resulting in most of the voids in life coalescing to form one Big Void and trapping us. Trapping inside starts a negative feedback loop where we start thinking of every void we have ever begotten in life. This negative feedback loop lowers our threshold of breakdown, coalescing more voids and widening the Big Void. And we further get trapped inside the Big Void.
Such a state leads us into thinking of everything that we never got in life, everything that has ever happened to us against our wishes. We start feeling like a victim in our own life. And, when our mind gets squandered in this perpetual negative cycle, we ask ourselves the most popular of questions of mankind: Why me? Why is it always me? What did I do? I never did anything wrong to anyone then why unto me?
That’s how we get trapped in these unpleasant states in life. Let’s move on to the next section now to understand how we can get out of this trap.
2. How to get out?
There are two categories of solutions that can help us to get out of these unpleasant states. These are Temporary Solutions and Permanent Solutions.
Temporary solutions are distractions in life that help you shift your attention from the real problem. Hence, creating an illusion of getting out of the trap. Permanent solutions are the mental tools that can help target the root problem. Let’s discuss them both in detail.
Temporary Solutions
Temporary solutions are not solutions per se but distractions that distract you from the root problem. There can be many kinds of temporary solutions like filling yourself with negative feelings. For example, if our Breakdown Void was a breakup then the first thing we do to counter the pain is to fill ourselves with negative feelings against the other person. This is not a solution but a distraction as it distracts us from the actual painful feeling of separation. Or, we do things that we don’t usually do like scrolling YouTube.
Temporary solutions are like painkillers, they don’t cure the ailment but help with the pain in the short term. The duration of the effect of these solutions depends on many factors like us, our voids and the solutions that we are using. Sometimes it can only be a few minutes, a few hours or even a few years.
If temporary solutions work then why not use them every time we get trapped in these voids?
There are two main problems with these temporary solutions. First, these are like painkillers and so have side effects. If we are living our whole life under the effects of a painkiller then we are not living it to the fullest. Our emotions will be blurred by the side effect of these painkillers. Another important reason is that every successive breakdown in our life would be bigger than the last one if we use a temporary solution to get out. Let’s take an example. Suppose we lost a loved one and we used some temporary solution to get ourselves occupied and get distracted from the actual emotion of pain. It might work for some time until we again get reminded about the loved one we lost. If we have a breakdown now then the void will be bigger than the last one. Because this time we would also have a guilty feeling for the time lost in keeping ourselves occupied and not remembering our loved one. This is the worst problem with getting out using a temporary solution.
It doesn’t mean that the temporary solutions are not useful. But using only temporary solutions is not so useful. The actual remedy is using a permanent solution to get out of the trap. The only catch here is that permanent solutions take time. It could only be a few months to a few years depending upon many factors like us, our voids and the solutions. That’s where temporary solutions come into play. Because to get benefits in the long term we should be able to survive to that long term. Remember that getting out of this trap is like a fight except that we cannot afford to lose this fight. That’s why we need both temporary and permanent solutions. It’s like how we cure any physical illness where we take painkillers to ease the pain and other medicines to cure the ailment. So, we should keep using temporary solutions but also keep working with permanent solutions every day. It’s not important how much time we spend every day with permanent solutions but that we do so daily.
Permanent Solutions
The notion of permanent solutions is subtle and is not as straightforward as temporary solutions. It would be easier to understand permanent solutions through three key aspects that make them up. These are:
I) Realization
II) Appreciation
III) Acceptance
Let’s talk about them one by one.
I) Realization
The first thing to cure an ailment is to understand its causes. So far, we know why we fall into these unpleasant states and that’s the first realization that we needed.
There are a few more things that we should realize to set up our minds for permanent solutions. I am stating them here but only knowing them won’t help so much. Consider them as food for thought and It’s okay if you don’t agree with the realizations listed below. But it’s important to ponder about following aspects and make your own realizations.
a) You are never alone: One of the common feelings we develop when we are in these unpleasant states is that every bad thing happens to us only. That’s not true at all. It’s important to understand that no matter how worse our conditions are, millions of people have already been through similar circumstances. Millions of people are going through similar circumstances now. And, millions of people would face similar circumstances in future. So you see you are never alone. It’s comforting to know that you are not alone and there are other people going through similar circumstances. For example, imagine how horrifying a simple fever could be if you know that you are the only one who got it.
b) You are the luckiest person to ever walk this planet: I mean it when I say it. It may seem absurd to hear it when we are in an unpleasant state. But let’s think about the following simple question.
Who do you think is more lucky: You or Bill Gates?
For many of you, the answer could be Bill Gates. But, I want to stop you right there, go back to the original question and answer it again. Only this time, observe all your thought processes and reasoning to confirm your answer. I suspect, your reasoning might have been like this: He got ‘X’ but I didn’t. He got ‘Y’ but I didn’t and so on. He could afford ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ but I couldn’t. He looks happy and satisfied but I am not and so on.
We tend to compare ourselves with others but we never make a fair comparison. If your reasoning was something like the above, you are comparing things that Bill Gates has got in his life with things that you haven’t. It’s like comparing apples to oranges and so doesn’t make a fair comparison. A fair comparison would be to compare things that you have got in your life vs what someone else has got in their life. Here’s an exercise for you that I came across in one of the articles by author and blogger Darius Foroux. You can repeat this exercise every morning as the first thing of your day or every week or month or even once in a while. But I recommend you do it at least once. You can do this exercise mentally but if you are doing this for the first time, I recommend that you do it by writing.
Take a sheet of paper and start writing everything that you think you have got in life. If you have got parents, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, friends, write all their names down. Don’t forget to write about your house, all the times that you got to enjoy a pizza, your smartphone, school, democracy, liberty, hands, eyes, wisdom etc.
I am sorry if you don’t have something/someone from the above list. Keep writing everything you could think of until you get tired of writing or you get a sense of where we are going with this. The point is that your list goes to infinity, like that of Bill Gates. And, that makes you no less lucky than him or any other person who has ever walked/would walk this planet. There are infinite possible things that one could have but if we look only at things that we didn’t get in life, it would take us nowhere. Thus start looking at your list of infinite things that you already have. You can even put your list on your Bulletin board to have a look at it every day to remind you how lucky you have been in life.
c) There’s nothing better you could have done in life: I came across this idea in one of the articles by Darius Foroux and it hit me.
Much of our time, we keep thinking about our past decisions and denounce ourselves for making them. But, when we took these decisions in the past, we never knew what’s gonna happen in future. It’s only in the future, with the benefit of hindsight, that we could figure out if our decision worked for us. There is no way we could ever have had that benefit of hindsight in the past. And so we could never have done anything better than we did. It doesn’t mean that we should not think of our past decisions. But, we should think about them only to learn from our mistakes and not denounce our choices.
II) Appreciation
Appreciation is related to the exercise that we did above in the Realization section. When we made a list of things that we have got in life, we already started to appreciate them.
Think for a moment, when was the last time when we held something in our hand and appreciated how lucky we have been to hold it? We take pretty much everything we already have in our lives for granted. We only appreciate their importance once we lose them or we keep appreciating the things that we never got.
Let’s do a simple exercise the next time we hold the chocolate in our hands. Take a moment to look at it and remind yourself that so many people had been forced into slavery to bring out chocolate as a product. So many kids have to work in those fields to earn their daily bread. And how lucky we are to enjoy it. Next time you feel lonely, tell yourself that there are roughly 153 million orphans worldwide and how lucky it is to have some family. Next time you leave food at your table, tell yourself that around 9 million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year.
The point here is not to embarrass ourselves or to develop guilt. Because we are not responsible for all these horrors that people have suffered or are suffering from. But, to appreciate the fact how lucky we are if you are not one of them. Even if we are going through some horror in life, there’s still so much to thank for what we already have. Like there’s no limit to what one can have in life, there’s no limit to what one can lose. And so we should cherish the moments when we have them, or when we had them.
III) Acceptance
Acceptance forms the most important part of the permanent solutions to get out of these unpleasant states. But it’s time-consuming and painful. As we learnt earlier, temporary solutions and permanent solutions go hand in hand. The former is like a painkiller providing us with more time to heal and the latter is the actual healer.
The sentiments that we developed in the Realization and Appreciation sections above make it easy to work with Acceptance. I would also recommend you read at least one self-help book before starting with Acceptance. I liked ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson.
Life has different overlapping spheres. There is a part of us concerned with business/finance. There’s a part concerned with personal life/relationships. There’s a part concerned with health, and so on. All these spheres have certain intersections that decide how much one part can affect the other one. For example, we can be happy if we have right finance, but only to the extent of intersection of our financial and personal happiness spheres. Each sphere affects every other sphere in part. So, making one part better helps making all parts better. If we are doing good in some spheres, it’s best to keep them that way. It will help us in overcoming our situation. For example, if you have a spouse, it’s best to be honest with them about your condition and seek their support. It will help you in avoiding feelings like distrust in your relationship and maintaining a good relationship. It will keep your personal relationship sphere healthy and give you a sense of satisfaction about what you already have in life.
It’s fine if you want to read a business book, but the self-help genre would help you the most at this point. Apart from reading books, you can also start following some blogs. My favorite is by Darius Foroux as he keeps things simple and straight. You can try Meditation as it’s related to all three of Realization, Appreciation, and Acceptance. I discovered Meditation after emerging from my Big Void. But, it would have been more beneficial to have it discovered earlier. You can check out Headspace website for the same.
The solution is simple, that is to confront out thoughts but it’s subtle to understand the same. By confrontation, I mean that we have to fight with out thoughts and win them. And only then they would no longer trouble us. But how do we fight our thoughts? It’s also quite simple but subtle. We have to fight our thoughts by not fighting them. By letting them come and accepting them. It’s winning a war by losing it.
It’s winning a war by losing it.
The problem starts with having negative thoughts after we get trapped in that Big Void. And then we try to avoid these thoughts. But, instead of running from our thoughts, we should let them come. We need to face them and accept them. It’s fine if your mind keep telling that you are a loser. Say that you are a loser, but that doesn’t mean that you will remain one. Don’t run from the responsibility when your mind keeps reminding you of all the mistakes that you have made. Accept the responsibility, but that doesn’t mean that you will keep making them. There’s nothing that you could have done if you lost someone dear. Don’t neglect when you get thoughts about that person. Let them come and cherish the moments you had together.
“There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.” — Thích Nhất Hạnh
That’s all we need to do. That is, let out thoughts come, acknowledge them, accept them, and keep moving. I understand that it’s easier said then done. But when we acknowledge a problem, we are 50% done with its solution. You would feel better than ever once you have overcome your thoughts by accepting them.
When we acknowledge a problem, we are 50% done with its solution.
3. How not to fall back?
If you have followed the points made in the above two sections. And used a permanent solution to come out of your unpleasant state, then this question becomes easy to approach.
The trick is not in avoiding falling back into the big void. Because that is inevitable. Life comprises of both good and bad. It’s not in out power to decide what life could throw at us.
“Your circumstances may feel beyond your control, but you can always control what’s going on inside your mind. And to do that, it’s going to take some work on yourself”- Robert T. Kiyosaki.
The real trick is in not getting trapped in the big void. And that could only happen when we use a permanent solution to get out. A permanent solution equips us to recognize and acknowledge the trap, the thoughts and the pain associated with it. It empowers us to accept the facts as they are rather than denying them. It inspires us to look to the brighter side of life, to appreciate the things that we already have in life. And that how lucky we are to have them rather than thinking about what we don’t have.
If we use a permanent solution to cope with any of these unpleasant states, we may still fall into the Big Void but we will never get trapped again.
Now we understand how these unpleasant states start and how we can cope with them. I wish if this article could be of any help to you.
Thanks for reading. Let me know your point of view in the comments. And give me some claps if you liked the article.
Resources
- Website/Blog of Darius Foroux
- [Book] The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
- [Meditation App] Headspace App on Google Play or Simple Habits App on Google Play
