How I Overcame Depression (For the Time Being)
For those of you who don't know what it is like to suffer from depression, let me explain it a little further so you can try to understand what its like. According to www.mayoclinic.org, "depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depression, major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and depression may make you feel as if life isn't worth living.
More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn't a weakness, nor is it something that you can simply "snap out" of. Depression may require long-term treatment." When you are truly depressed you literally feel worthless and no matter what people say, you will continue to feel that way until it either subsides, you find out what your triggers are, and or you get put on medication. I won't focus on the medication so much because I know there are people who disagree with it and this whole post would be focused on the benefits of medication. Moving away from that topic, I would like to just focus on how I personally, at least for the time being have overcome depression.
The things that trigger my depression always change. Depression is always there but I learn how to curb it when I figure out the triggers. While I was in High school it was due to the rumors and partial truths that had been spread about me, I was also constantly worried about how people saw me. When I moved out of my parents house and I started being on my on to a point, I began focusing on "hanging out" or just constantly being out of the house because I was afraid that if I stayed at home for too long with my thoughts that I would get more depressed or do something drastic. Because I thought this way, it slowly caused me to become even more depressed. Especially if plans fell through that I was looking forward to. Now I know a lot of people who may not know what depression is like may think that sounds childish. I would like to say though, if you base how you see yourself simply from how people treat you and if plans are cancelled or people bail over and over and you feel like they are doing that because they are annoyed or they don't like you. It will negatively effect you. I promise.
Without going into too much detail, I will just say that there were a couple of instances where I was way to focused on being in a relationship. You would think that if you were in a relationship with someone or if you even just liked each other, there would hopefully be close to a 50/50 effort. However, with the first person it felt more like a secret. He would only ask what I was doing late at night. We never went out during the day to do anything. He told me that he doesn't respond to anyone really through text or ever text anyone, Eventually it got to the point where we would go weeks without talking and we would only talk if I said anything. I was sick of the mind games so I decided to drop it and not put forth any effort and we stopped talking. I finally had my answer. What we had never meant anything. I was just being strung along. Looking back I know what was about to happen next was a very drastic choice. This was another time I seriously contemplated harming myself. I felt like I had put everything that I had into the relationship, I treated him the exact way that I wanted to be treated. The same way anybody in a relationship would want to be treated. I had been played, used, and emotionally abused. So I felt worthless. I couldn't think of anything else. I decided though that I am better than that. I deserve better. I deserve to be treated better. So I told myself to not get to down about it. This took time to come out of my funk but I did eventually get to the point where I kind of forgot about him. I had to, otherwise I was literally going to drive myself insane.
The second main instance that was the final straw for me happened not too long ago actually. I began talking to someone from my past again. I had stopped communication with him initially because that was before I came out and I had no idea how I was going to go about things yet. It seemed like things were going well, we were going to get to know each other again because it had been so long. He wasn't honest though... I think in a way it was pay back for me. He was mad with me still for how I had stopped talking to him in the past, but instead of talking about it he decided to string me along too. He would make the initiative with plans and then cancel right before they were supposed to happen. This caused me to again have negative thoughts and get down again. I let him know that he had done it three times in a row so it was obvious he was avoiding me. He then opened up a little bit and we met up again to hang out. We decided that we did want to be friends and he said that there were still feelings there but then he started ignoring me again and it just went back to how it was before.
My parents had warned me multiple times that I need to take a break from relationships and just focus on myself and this kind of forced me to do that. I decided to give it a shot. I stopped planning things with people so much, I started a second job, I came home after work, and I began focusing more on myself. I needed to get myself to a healthy stage in life and the people I was focusing on were not helping me get there. I stopped feeling the need to always be gone and my happiness increased immensely. I decided that my life has no room for toxic relationships. If people really wanted to be in my life then they would have made more of an effort. I am not trying to sound winy or complain about people. I simply just wanted to open up a little more about how I was internalizing things. There is definitely more stuff that has made me depressed in the past and there is likely to be other things in the future. For the time being however this is what has been a big contributor to my most recent outbreak.
I hope that we are all able to take a break from our day to day lives and ask ourselves who is the captain of our ship? Are we the captain or are we letting other people drive our ship based off of how we let them make us feel. In my case I was letting others drive my life in a different direction than what I wanted. So I decided to take charge and grab the wheel of my life. I hope all of you are able to do the same or at least recognize that there is always something you can do to improve your quality of life.
Until next time,
Zac :)
More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn't a weakness, nor is it something that you can simply "snap out" of. Depression may require long-term treatment." When you are truly depressed you literally feel worthless and no matter what people say, you will continue to feel that way until it either subsides, you find out what your triggers are, and or you get put on medication. I won't focus on the medication so much because I know there are people who disagree with it and this whole post would be focused on the benefits of medication. Moving away from that topic, I would like to just focus on how I personally, at least for the time being have overcome depression.
The things that trigger my depression always change. Depression is always there but I learn how to curb it when I figure out the triggers. While I was in High school it was due to the rumors and partial truths that had been spread about me, I was also constantly worried about how people saw me. When I moved out of my parents house and I started being on my on to a point, I began focusing on "hanging out" or just constantly being out of the house because I was afraid that if I stayed at home for too long with my thoughts that I would get more depressed or do something drastic. Because I thought this way, it slowly caused me to become even more depressed. Especially if plans fell through that I was looking forward to. Now I know a lot of people who may not know what depression is like may think that sounds childish. I would like to say though, if you base how you see yourself simply from how people treat you and if plans are cancelled or people bail over and over and you feel like they are doing that because they are annoyed or they don't like you. It will negatively effect you. I promise.
Without going into too much detail, I will just say that there were a couple of instances where I was way to focused on being in a relationship. You would think that if you were in a relationship with someone or if you even just liked each other, there would hopefully be close to a 50/50 effort. However, with the first person it felt more like a secret. He would only ask what I was doing late at night. We never went out during the day to do anything. He told me that he doesn't respond to anyone really through text or ever text anyone, Eventually it got to the point where we would go weeks without talking and we would only talk if I said anything. I was sick of the mind games so I decided to drop it and not put forth any effort and we stopped talking. I finally had my answer. What we had never meant anything. I was just being strung along. Looking back I know what was about to happen next was a very drastic choice. This was another time I seriously contemplated harming myself. I felt like I had put everything that I had into the relationship, I treated him the exact way that I wanted to be treated. The same way anybody in a relationship would want to be treated. I had been played, used, and emotionally abused. So I felt worthless. I couldn't think of anything else. I decided though that I am better than that. I deserve better. I deserve to be treated better. So I told myself to not get to down about it. This took time to come out of my funk but I did eventually get to the point where I kind of forgot about him. I had to, otherwise I was literally going to drive myself insane.
The second main instance that was the final straw for me happened not too long ago actually. I began talking to someone from my past again. I had stopped communication with him initially because that was before I came out and I had no idea how I was going to go about things yet. It seemed like things were going well, we were going to get to know each other again because it had been so long. He wasn't honest though... I think in a way it was pay back for me. He was mad with me still for how I had stopped talking to him in the past, but instead of talking about it he decided to string me along too. He would make the initiative with plans and then cancel right before they were supposed to happen. This caused me to again have negative thoughts and get down again. I let him know that he had done it three times in a row so it was obvious he was avoiding me. He then opened up a little bit and we met up again to hang out. We decided that we did want to be friends and he said that there were still feelings there but then he started ignoring me again and it just went back to how it was before.
My parents had warned me multiple times that I need to take a break from relationships and just focus on myself and this kind of forced me to do that. I decided to give it a shot. I stopped planning things with people so much, I started a second job, I came home after work, and I began focusing more on myself. I needed to get myself to a healthy stage in life and the people I was focusing on were not helping me get there. I stopped feeling the need to always be gone and my happiness increased immensely. I decided that my life has no room for toxic relationships. If people really wanted to be in my life then they would have made more of an effort. I am not trying to sound winy or complain about people. I simply just wanted to open up a little more about how I was internalizing things. There is definitely more stuff that has made me depressed in the past and there is likely to be other things in the future. For the time being however this is what has been a big contributor to my most recent outbreak.
I hope that we are all able to take a break from our day to day lives and ask ourselves who is the captain of our ship? Are we the captain or are we letting other people drive our ship based off of how we let them make us feel. In my case I was letting others drive my life in a different direction than what I wanted. So I decided to take charge and grab the wheel of my life. I hope all of you are able to do the same or at least recognize that there is always something you can do to improve your quality of life.
Until next time,
Zac :)
Comments
Post a Comment