Depression can be debilitating and is very different from just feeling unhappy. Usually, there is a reason for unhappiness such as being rejected or not getting the job you wanted. Depression is a pervasive feeling. It’s almost as if you are in a black tunnel with no light. Hope disappears and the things you used to find enjoyable become a chore. Even winning the lottery would not snap someone out of depression and it is never a good idea to tell someone who is depressed to sort themselves out and pull themselves together. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple, but there are ways to alleviate the symptoms of depression. 1. Practice Mindfulness A depressed mind tends to mull over all that is wrong and worries unnecessarily about all the negative possibilities that may emerge in the future. This negative thought cycle reinforces misery and is not helpful in managing to overcome depression. Mindfulness involves focusing on the present moment and is a skill that needs to be practiced. More often than not, our brains are full of thoughts and focusing on the present moment seems unnatural for our minds. Practice on engaging your senses in the moment. Focus on touch, taste, sight, sound and smell. Engaging the senses leaves less time for worry. 2. Listen to Upbeat Music I have always thought of music as food for the soul. An upbeat tune can change an atmosphere instantly and create a more positive vibe. Listening to upbeat, happy music alters brain chemistry and can improve your mood. 3. Use Touch Science shows that touch therapies can help some people overcome depression, lower the stress hormone cortisol and increase the feel-good hormone oxytocin. Therapies to consider include acupuncture, acupressure, massage, reiki and reflexology. 4. Include Omega 3 Fatty Acids in Your Diet Research has shown that depressed people often lack a fatty acid known as EPA. Participants in a 2002 study featured in the Archives of General Psychiatry took just a gram of fish oil each day and noticed a 50-percent decrease in symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disorders, unexplained feelings of sadness, suicidal thoughts, and decreased sex drive. Omega-3 fatty acids can also lower cholesterol and improve cardiovascular health. Get omega-3s through walnuts, flaxseed and oily fish like salmon or tuna. 5. Stop the Negative Self Talk Depressed people tend to see the world in a negative way. When things go wrong they blame themselves and when they go right, they put it down to luck. Depression reinforces self doubt and feelings of worthlessness. Monitor your inner negative talk and make allowances for this type of thinking by reminding yourself that your thinking is that of a depressed person, not a healthy functioning person. Don’t take your thoughts seriously when you are feeling low. Acknowledge the thoughts but this doesn’t mean you have to believe them. Keep perspective. 6. Bide Your Time Accept that your mental state is not entirely balanced. During depression, we tend to see the negatives in everything and find it harder to be balanced about what is going on. Gently remind yourself that you are tuned into the ‘negativity channel’ and don’t listen to your thinking. It is definitely distorted when you are depressed. This idea alone can provide some comfort when the world appears bleak. It won’t last forever. Remind yourself that change is constant and that you won’t always feel this way. Be patient and do your best to look after yourself in the meantime. Eat well and get a decent amount of sleep. Say to yourself “This shall pass”. 7. Distract Yourself If possible, do your best to distract yourself from over thinking. Your thoughts are your enemy when depression sets in. Play with a pet or go for a walk. Read a book if you are able to concentrate or finish a puzzle. Do anything that takes your mind off your fears and worries. Keeping busy is an effective way to overcome depression.
8. Use More Light Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is known for causing low mood over the winter months when there is less sunlight. Invest in a sunlamp – a 300 watt bulb within three feet for 20 minutes three times a day can help. SAD symptoms can include problems sleeping, anxiety, depression, irritability, fatigue, apathy and loss of libido and using light can help to overcome depression and these other symptoms. 9. Try Cognitive Therapy Cognitive therapy can be extremely useful in counteracting depression and is based on the principle that certain ways of thinking can trigger certain health problems, such as depression. The counselor helps you to understand your current thought patterns and identify any harmful or false ideas and thoughts that you have that can trigger depression or make it worse. The aim is to change your ways of thinking to avoid these ideas as well as help your thought patterns to be more realistic and helpful. 10. Write in a Journal A journal can work in two ways. Use it to write down fears and worries. Sometimes, having an outlet in this way can be soothing and ease your mind. Another good way to use a journal (I prefer this way) is to write at least five things down every day that you are grateful for. This forces us to think more positively and can help to remind us that things are never that bad. In a gratitude journal, you can write about anything that happened in the day that made you feel appreciative. A stranger smiling at you, the sun shining..anything positive will do! 11. Connect with Friends This can be one of the hardest things to do when feeling depressed but it is one of the most rewarding activities. Force yourself to go out. Isolating oneself from others may seem a good idea but put a limit on it and then get out there again. This can have a huge positive effect on your mood. 12. Get Enough Sleep Sleep and mood are closely connected. Inadequate sleep can cause irritability and stress, while healthy sleep can enhance well-being. Studies have shown that even partial sleep deprivation has a significant effect on mood.Take steps to ensure adequate sleep will this will lead to improved mood and well-being. The quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your waking life, including your mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity, physical vitality, and even your weight. No other activity delivers so many benefits with so little effort so aim for between 7.5 and 9 hours sleep per night. 13. Forgive Others When we hold a grudge, we are the ones that feel the anger. The person whom we are angry with is probably merrily going about their business completely oblivious to your feelings. Don’t allow others to have this power over you. They have may have caused you grief in the past, try not to allow that grief to continue – it only affects you, not them. Find a way to forgive – they are not worthy of your time. Lighten the emotional load and you will improve your mood and help you to overcome depression. 14. Exercise Regular exercise has benefits for helping to overcome depression. Exercise releases endorphins which improve natural immunity and improve mood. Besides lifting your mood, regular exercise offers other health benefits, such as lowering blood pressure, protecting against heart disease, cancer and boosting self-esteem. Experts advise getting half an hour to an hour of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking at least three to four times per week. 15. Don’t give up Depression can make you want to hide away from the world and disappear. It’s okay to take some time out but give yourself a time limit and then do something productive to improve your mood. Depression can be well managed (I know this from personal experience) and there can be a wonderful life beyond depression. Hang in there and keep the faith.
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~ Khalil Gibran I was talking to a dear friend of mine recently and he was asking me who is the person I admire the most and why. The interesting thing I realized while giving him the answer was that the person I deeply admire is somebody who experienced a great deal of pain during his lifetime and what made me admire him so much was his attitude and how he always come out as a better not a bitter person from all of these challenges.
How many of us are really capable of dealing gracefully with pain, stress, anxiety, and many other negative emotions? What I want you to achieve is grace under pressure and even though it may seem like an impossible task to do, it really isn’t. There are so many other tips to share on the subject but today I will share these three things, and if you do them, believe me, your life will get better and better and you will manage to deal with life’s challenges a lot more effective and in a more graceful manner.
Just know that “the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. ~ Helen Keller Whether it’s you who is in sadness or somebody you love and care about, acknowledging and acting upon these 3 things will help you feel a lot better. 3 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO TO OVERCOME SADNESS 1. Let go of the pain. This too shall pass. Things, people, events, they just come and go, nothing really lasts forever and the same with your not so happy feelings. What I usually do when I feel like my world is coming to an end, and yes, that happens to me too, it to think of a time when I was down, a time when I felt really sad and blue, a time when I felt like the whole world would come to an end, and I had no way to escape, and I use that as proof that what my mind is telling me is not always true. It is so important to work on making your mind work for you and not against you, because you see, in order for you:
“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.” ~ Buddha 2. Let go of resistance as best you can. Even though it may seem that you talking about the things that are going wrong in your life will help solve the problem and make you feel better, the truth is that it will not, and just like Carl Jung said it, and I have experienced this myself so many times,
“What you resist not only persists but will grow in size.”
Do you understand why that is? Every time you insist on the pain, and every time you insist on talking about how much you are suffering, to yourself and to those people who are there to listen, you are in fact contributing to the growth of that pain, you are feeding it and you are building more and more pain on top of what already is! Just imagine that I gave you a clean sheet of paper and I asked you to draw a very small dot on that paper, right in the center. Looking from the distance, does the dot seem significant to you? I wouldn’t think so. But what if I asked you to take a magnifying glass and move closer and closer to that dot? You will for sure feel like the dot is all there is, it will seem huge, right? The same with your pain. It’s not that big of a deal, even though right now, in this moment you might think otherwise, it really isn’t. This too shall pass. Do you want to focus on the things that upset you and work on increasing the pain, or do you want to focus on those things that make you feel good about yourself and your life? It’s just a matter of choosing where to focus your attention, shifting your focus away from what you don’t want towards the things you do want, from unhappy to happy. It is a choice, and it’s always your choice. So chose to always focus on what you want, not what you don’t want and move in that direction. 3. Change your attitude. If you ask me, a lot of our pain is caused because of our attitude, because of our perception on the good and the bad, because of our expectations on how things should be. When you expect something to happen and it doesn’t, how do you feel? You feel sad, depressed, you feel disappointed and you might even start telling yourself that you are a failure, that things will never go the way you want them to, that your end is near, and of course, you can add some other things to the list if you want, but that’s not really what we are after here, right? But then again, if you choose to argue over your pain, it will surely be yours.
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” ~ Thomas Jefferson The moment you stop and look at things from a different perspective, the moment you chose to change your attitude toward life, life will start to change its attitude towards you, and from that moment things will never be the same again, because you see, just like Wayne Dyer said it,
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Everything changes the moment we decide to change and the whole world will start to revolve around us because you see, we do matter for the world, we matter a lot. Source: https://www.purposefairy.com/5426/3-things-you-should-do-to-overcome-sadness/
Andrew Lawes knows how you can hit bottom after a divorce. But he’s here to tell you how to survive.
I remember when I found out my marriage was over. It sent me into a downward spiral; a drink-and-drug-fueled period of bad memories and even worse situations. I didn’t care—the pain inside me was too raw, too visceral to cope with. Blacking out and forgetting was better than dealing with the crushing reality that the woman I loved no longer shared the same emotions. Maybe you are experiencing this situation right now. Maybe you are also struggling to cope with the fallout of divorce, and are engaging in some questionable activities. Maybe, like me, your days have become about existing, rather than living. You don’t know when the pain will end. All you want is for it to go away. There is no timescale for how long it takes a broken heart to heal. Sometimes it can take days; other break-ups can take months or even years to overcome. There is no secret cure; all you can do is continue living. As a man, my mentality is the same as most other men: there’s a problem; how can I fix it? How can I save this relationship? The truth is that, most likely, you can’t. Nobody walks away from a marriage without an awful lot of thought. When the conclusion they have come to is that it is over, there is very little you can do.
The Kübler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief can be applied to the end of a relationship. Although nobody has passed away, you still need to grieve. The death of a relationship; the ending of a future you had planned out; in many ways, it is harder to handle than death. At least there is finality to death. With heartbreak, there is no finality. There is no clean break. You can’t help but wonder “what if…?” The five stages of the Kübler-Ross model are: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression and Acceptance. Each of them apply to the end of a relationship equally as much as the grieving process: Denial – “This isn’t happening” “Don’t be silly, it’s just a row. You’ll feel different in the morning” Anger – “Why are you doing this to us?” “What have I ever done that’s so bad?” Bargaining – “I can change” “Please, let’s work through this” Depression – “It’s all my fault” “I don’t blame them for leaving” Acceptance – “It was over; it has been for a while, I just couldn’t see it” All of the above are phrases I’ve used during the period after a break-up, and I suspect I am not alone in that. I have used them to highlight how the Kübler-Ross model of grief relates to the end of a relationship too. Now, it isn’t as clean-cut as I’ve perhaps made it appear. You may get to the Bargaining stage and then slip back to Denial. Depression and Anger often overlap; especially in men, who generally display signs of depression differently to women. Indeed, the first four stages can be a nightmare to work through, and there will be times when you feel you will never get past it. You will. When you reach the stage of Acceptance, that is the moment you will start to live again. The thing is, you can’t wait around for the acceptance of the situation to come—that isn’t how it works. Acceptance isn’t a moment when you suddenly become fine with what’s happened, and waiting for that moment makes it much more unlikely to come. What you need to do is focus on yourself. Look at the aspects of your own life that you are unhappy with. Maybe you feel like you have let yourself go physically. Maybe you feel like your life has become mundane and routine. These are all things that you have the power to change, so do it! Sign up to a gym; take up jogging, work on your physique. If your life has become boring, make more time for the things you enjoy, and take up new hobbies. Become the man you’ve always wanted to be, and you’ll find that acceptance of the divorce comes so much quicker. It is important to reflect on why the marriage ended. In the immediate aftermath, people always tend to blame the other party, but there is always fault on both sides. If you can begin to understand why the relationship failed, then it will leave you in good stead for the future. Hard as it may be to believe right now, one day, you will love again. When that day comes, be the man you’ve always wanted to be. Learn from the mistakes of relationships past.
My divorce caught me off guard. I had no time to plan my emotional response and being the planner I am, I found this a bit disconcerting. Actually I was highly pissed. Want to set my world a twirl? Pull the rug out from under it! I had studied Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in college. I knew of the Five Stages of Grief. The problem was, I had studied them, knew them but had not planned on applying them to real life...not at that time anyway. There is Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. What I didn’t learn in college is, one doesn’t move smoothly from one stage to the other. There was no beginning, middle or end for each stage and most stages I visited several times. So, while attempting to manage your emotional recovery during and after divorce, give yourself a break. You will move through recovery at your own pace, angry one week, in denial the next. You will come to the point of acceptance though, hopefully sooner than later.
The Emotional Stages of Divorce:
Denial: This was my favorite. Nothing like moving through a storm and pretending all is well with the world. Denial is your psyches way of protecting you from becoming emotionally overwhelmed. Denial is a useful coping mechanism, as long as it doesn’t keep you from progressing onto the next stage. Use this stage to your benefit but don’t abuse it. After a while refusing to face reality becomes a very unattractive trait. Anger: This stage I visited often and my ex took a bashing. Seriously, when your world is falling down around you who better to blame for all your problems than a crazy ex husband? If the car battery died, guess who I blamed? If it rained on a day I had planned to go the beach, it was his fault. I had no role in any adversity that came my way! During the anger phase he became the worst lover I had ever had, ugly beyond description, a slob, a wimp...my anger did a number on him and his character. My advice about the Anger Stage? Have at it! As long as there are no little ears to hear your disparaging and insulting remarks about your ex feel free to let out all the pent up anger you stuffed during the Denial Stage. Bargaining: In this stage you will attempt to repair and undo the damage done to your life. Bargaining is when you stop and say, “oh dear, I can’t handle this emotionally. I’ll negotiate anything with him/her, turn myself inside if need be but I can’t go through this.” It is an attempt to put on the brakes, stop that runaway train and get your “life” back. It might not have been a great life but it was a hell of a lot better than what you are experiencing now. During the bargaining stage my ex was the best lover I had ever had. I missed his beautiful face and his manly demeanor. He was God’s gift and I wanted him back. Thankful for me I moved quite swiftly through the Bargaining Stage. Bargaining is a last ditch attempt at coming to terms with the decision to divorce. If you are the leaver, it is during this stage that you will either realize you’ve made the right decision or a mistake. If you are the leavee this is the stage where you will begin to pursue your husband/wife. You want them back at all costs to you and your self-esteem. The thing to remember is; they will also go through the Bargaining Stage. If they have made a mistake they will realize it and undo that which they have set in motion. Depression: You’ll be in bed or in front of the television for most of this stage. Sadness, debilitating sadness becomes your constant companion. This is the one stage we all expect. We know that depression is going to hit, what we don’t realize is that depression can go hand in hand with all the stages of grief. You may not bathe for three days during the Denial Stage. Hair care takes a back seat during the Anger Stage, so much so that you begin to look like Hagalina Magalina. You’re smart though and have surrounded yourself with a good support system. You’ve gotten into therapy and counseling because the support of family and friends goes a long way but there is no substitute for expert advice during the depression that accompanies divorce. Cry it out and talk, talk, talk to someone who is trained to help you eliminate those toxic emotions. Acceptance: You’ll love this stage. When it hits you’ll throw your head back and laugh. There is light at the end of the tunnel and life ahead. You’ve moved through adversity and learned from it. Full steam ahead! Be warned though, acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t still have negative emotions about your divorce. You may still feel some anger; there may still be sadness at the loss of your marriage. You’ve learned to “accept” the reality of the situation though. You may always have feelings of regret over the loss of your marriage BUT it is regret you can live with. You are no longer stuck in the grief...if lucky you are no longer grieving. If there are still feelings of grief they are at least no longer holding you back from living life. Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/cathy-meyer/the-emotional-stages-of-d_b_779816.html
