You may eventually hear some of your friends or family say “I’m feeling kind of depressed.” What they mean is they’re feeling sad.
Depression is the intense feeling of sadness, helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness.
It could be due to a job loss, death of a someone close or a failed marriage. To find encouragement, people usually find themselves browsing the web for short motivational quotes.
Depression typically lasts for more than two weeks, maybe even months.
Symptoms Related to Depression
Most symptoms accompanied by depression are:
- Feeling tired most of the time
- Excessive crying, irritability or feeling helpless
- An intense feeling of guilt or worthlessness
- Lack of energy
- Gain/loss of weight
- Sleeping too much or sleeping too little
- Suicidal thoughts
- Loss of interest in normal activities
- Hallucinations
Sometimes, depression can be accompanied by physical pain such as a backache, headache, joint pains or trouble sleeping.
A Rampant Mental Disorder
In today’s generation, depression is becoming a prevalent mental disease for teenagers and most students in college. One of the causes of depression is perfectionism.
Get A’s in every subject or else they’d be a shame to their family or themselves. Another cause of depression in young adults is peer pressure or the struggle to fit in socially.
Similarly, we live in such a competitive environment nowadays that it can easily be categorized into two groups: the Winners and the Losers. Why do people feel the need to be perfect at everything or else they’d start being ashamed of themselves?
Even more, there’s so much negativity and pessimism in our society. Many people assume to treat depression, they have to use medication but, in reality, a much cheaper and obvious solution is to think positively.
Jenn Proske enlightens us with a motivational quote by saying “It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out.”
Therapy for Depression
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a therapy method which helps you think positively. This also helps to cancel out your negative thoughts and replace them by helping you learn how to think positively.
Negative thoughts can drastically affect how a person functions. If he’s not much of a positive thinker, probably that person will remain anxious and sad throughout the day or the week.
Positive Activity Interventions
Consequently, there have been researches on how positive thinking can help cure depression. Positive Activity Interventions (PAI) is a treatment which involves intentional positive thinking by expressing gratitude, performing kind acts, giving comfort to someone, etc.
PAIs are usually recommended to people who have adverse effects to medication. A research was conducted in 2010 with 220 participants involving a control group.
The participants were asked to think optimistically and write gratitude letters to their future selves. In contrast, the control group was asked to write about their past experiences.
Results showed the group which practiced PAI demonstrated much more life satisfaction than the control group. Getting a mental disease is not the sufferer’s fault.
However, it is the sufferer’s decision that determines whether they continue to suffer or heal. Processing everything negatively and telling yourself over and over again that you are unlucky will never help you heal.
As Willie Nelson’s motivational quote reflects, “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”
The holiday season can sometimes be a period where we feel so many emotions. It could be as a result of being alone or spending time with friends and family.
Don’t beat yourself up! Learn how to deal with negative emotions as you celebrate the holidays.
V informative and well written. Keep writing 😊
Hi Lauren
Thank you for your kind words regarding the blog. We’ll keep writing as long as you keep coming back! 😊
Gerardo