Interactive Guide: Understanding How Depression Affects You

Grab a pen and paper to walk through this guide together. By the end of this self-guided talk, you should be able to identify if you're experiencing symptoms of depression and what the underlying cause of the symptoms may be. You should also be able to identify your specific problem-solving style as it relates to the symptoms, any maladaptive behavior related to that style, and how to improve upon it.

You will need something to write with as you move through this journey.

Transcript

This talk follows part one of break the cycle of depression.

Part one reviews the actual cycle of depression and some behavioral ways you can break it.

This should help with people who have mild to moderate symptoms of depression,

General sadness,

Or a lack of motivation.

But for people with more severe symptoms a deeper dig into the psyche will most likely be needed.

The behavioral treatments can help us manage the symptoms of depression,

But it won't help us heal from the underlying causes of depression.

So this is where part two comes in.

But first I need to warn you that some of the examples could trigger you,

So please listen with caution and stop the recording if you need to.

So let's discuss the cognitive aspect of depression.

Why am I depressed?

This is the million dollar question.

The answer could lie in the past,

Present,

Or the future,

Or within a combination of these timeframes.

To figure this out we must first assess your symptoms of depression.

Everyone presents it differently,

So you could know ten people with depression and they could all experience it differently.

So it's important to understand your symptoms and how you experience them.

You're going to need a piece of paper or something to write with and an open heart in mind as we move through this discussion.

So if you need some time to get it please pause this recording and come back to it when you're ready.

Now we're going to review the symptoms of depression and you can jot down the symptoms that you're experiencing.

There's poor sleep which is either too much sleep or too little sleep or it could be a combination of both.

A loss of interest in activities that you used to do used to enjoy.

The key here is a loss of interest not whether you're still engaging in them or not.

Feeling bad about yourself or guilty,

A lack of energy,

A loss of concentration,

A poor appetite which is eating too much or too little or again a combination of both.

Feeling like you're just going through the motions of the day like you're on autopilot and not too engaged or emotionally present.

I equate this to sometimes when I'm driving I'm on autopilot and I automatically start driving to work when I'm supposed to be going in the opposite direction or even worse when you space out while driving and when you become present again you wonder where the hell you've been for the last few minutes.

Scary hope I'm not the only one on that one but yes it happens.

And the last symptom is feeling like you would be better off dead.

This could be in the form of actively thinking about hurting or killing yourself or wishing it would just happen naturally or by some other means.

If you have some of these symptoms you could have depression.

I say could because there's a lot more that goes into diagnosing depression but our purpose here is not to diagnose depression because that must be done by a mental health professional.

Our purpose right now is to identify whether you're experiencing any symptoms that could possibly contribute to depression.

If you are experiencing five or more of these symptoms ask yourself how often do these symptoms interfere with your day-to-day activities.

If they interfere one to two days a week then you're probably looking at mild severity.

Three to five days a week would be more a moderate level and six to seven days a week would be more severe.

So I want you to make a note of your possible severity level.

This helps us really see how these symptoms are impairing and affecting your day-to-day life.

Think about if these symptoms weren't present how much better your life could be and what you could be doing instead.

Sometimes we don't even realize the impact things make on our life and how many sacrifices we make because of it.

So it's important to really assess this with objective accurate eyes so that you can see it in black and white how the symptoms are truly affecting you and those around you.

Now think about when the symptoms first started not just recently but the very first time you started experiencing the symptoms that you endorsed on the paper.

How long ago was it?

Did you feel this way as a child your teenage years or did it start later?

I want you to write down the approximate time in your life when these symptoms started.

If you need some time to think about this go ahead and pause the recording and come back to it when you're ready to continue.

Now think about what was going on at that time,

The time your symptoms started.

If the symptoms started in childhood or teens it may have been from problems at home or school.

If the problem started a little later think about any changes in your life either good or bad that went on around that same period of time.

Remember that even good things can cause symptoms of depression or anxiety like moving,

Buying a new home,

Getting married,

Having maybe,

Getting a new job.

It all has an emotional impact on us for one reason or another.

Once you figure that out go ahead and make a note of it.

Again if you need more time to do this pause the recording and come back when you're ready.

As we move through this discussion and you're not able to identify any sort of triggering event that could have been causing your symptoms then you may have a more chronic type of depression that could be more biochemical in nature meaning that for whatever reason your brain is not firing enough of the happy pleasurable neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine that allow us to be happy.

If that's the case then the best treatment is really psychiatric medication.

Now I'm sure this is debatable for sure but this is just my opinion.

Of course you can work on behavioral changes like putting yourself on a schedule,

Setting daily and long-term goals,

And using coping skills that help you feel better like working out,

Hanging out with friends or family,

Things like this.

But if your symptoms are so bad where it prevents you from doing these things then it's really not a good solution.

This is stuff you can try after you start taking the medication and start feeling a little better because if there's nothing triggering your symptoms there's nothing to actually work through in therapy.

So again I'm not endorsing psychiatric medication but I'm just giving you the science behind it and the psychological reason for what I'm telling you.

Okay so if you are able to identify an initial trigger to the symptoms I want you to think if the symptoms have been present fairly consistent throughout the rest of your life,

Did they start out mild and gradually worsen over time or have they been off and on throughout your life?

Go ahead and make a note of this and pause the recording if needed.

Again I want you to think if the symptoms have been fairly consistent throughout your life,

Did they start out mild and gradually worsen or have they been on off throughout your life?

This will generally speaking make a difference.

Figuring out the course of your symptoms can tell you a lot about yourself because it can give you an indicator of how you react and manage stressors in your life,

How you cope and how you problem-solve.

I'm gonna go through these different styles of problem-solving and how they can relate to different behavioral characteristics.

As I go through these it would be helpful to make a note of what applies to you and again pause the recording anytime it's needed.

So if the symptoms have remained pretty consistent from the time they started and don't seem to come and go then it may be that you've just accepted in a sense that the symptoms are part of your life and part of life in general.

Loosely similar to how people refer to a functioning out alcoholic,

Only this is a functional depressive which by the way is a term I just made up so this is not a professional term.

You may have just incorporated the symptoms as part of your life and you deal with life stressors with a minimal approach.

You get by emotionally with the minimum requirements.

You may even allow other people to manage problems even when the outcome will directly affect you.

You may allow others to make important decisions for you and interact only when it's necessary or you're pressed on the issue.

You may go through the emotions,

I'm sorry the motions of emotions,

But you never allow yourself to truly feel them.

You never feel fully depressed but you also never feel fully happy either.

You're just kind of blah.

If your symptoms started and have gradually worsened over time then you may be the type of person who avoids addressing problems,

Avoids confrontation.

You may not speak up for yourself,

Stick up for yourself.

You may shut down,

Internalize things,

Doesn't talk about your problems.

This usually comes from an initial stressful triggering event that happens and then you shut down.

You try to ignore the problem and move on with your life but in actuality what you did is you added a piece of clothing in your baggage of life as I like to call it.

Then another stressful event happens,

You ignore it,

Move on,

Add another piece of luggage and a piece of clothing to your life baggage but there's only so much room in that suitcase.

We all only have so much tolerance,

Patience,

Compassion,

Kindness,

All that good stuff and when we're filled to the top with the baggage from the past we're unable to deal with current or future stressors that come our way and we can easily snap or hit an emotional wall where we have nothing more to give emotionally speaking.

So as each life stressor happens that we ignore and pack in our luggage all the patience,

Tolerance,

Compassion is being reduced and it's making it much harder to deal with the next wrecking ball that comes our way.

If your symptoms have been on and off throughout your life this tells me that you may not deal well in the moment of stress or a crisis.

You may not work so well under pressure or when something bad happens or you may have a low tolerance for stress or not enough good or appropriate coping skills to help you through the stress.

But once the dust settles you're able to move on with your life of course until the next life event comes crashing your way and it breaks you once again.

This could also be the person who doesn't address problems as they happen and allow them to build up until they one day explode or break down.

Regardless of the course of your symptoms I'd like you all to draw a timeline starting with the initial trigger then go through the years of your life in chronological order and identify the events that followed that could have triggered your depression or worsened it over time or caused you to shut down making your symptoms even worse.

Of course this might take you a little time so you can pause the recording but just to review I want you to draw a timeline start with that initial trigger that was when you go back and see what you wrote down what you identified as when your symptoms of depression started and the initial trigger is what event could have possibly started and this may be multiple events go ahead and jot them all down and then from there I want you to just kind of draw a line with an approximate time and what that event may be.

Once you're able to identify these triggering events think about how they affected you.

Make some notes about each event.

Just brief it could be one word how you felt emotionally when this happened.

How this may have changed your view of yourself,

Others,

Or maybe even the world.

Now these views were probably not on a conscious level especially in the moment but I want you to put yourself back there in your mind's eye and think consciously now about how these events affected you.

I'll go through one example of this with you and then I'll give you some time to apply it to yourself.

Say for example you experienced childhood abuse or bullying by peers then this could have made you feel sad angry worthless less than you could have made you could have felt bad about yourself and felt like you were not as worthy of kindness and love and other people as other people.

It may have lowered your confidence and self-esteem.

It may have made you feel that no one else cares about you and that you have to protect yourself because no one else is going to.

You could start believing the world is a scary place and that people are mean and will hurt you that people's intentions are bad and you can't trust them.

So that's an example so go ahead and pause this recording and go through this step on your own.

Again think about how these events affected your belief system about yourself about others and the world.

Go ahead and pause now.

Hopefully you're starting to see how certain events or situations caused you to feel or think a certain way.

Thoughts direct our behavior.

Try to recognize how these events have shaped your life and helped create your current behavior.

Being aware of this negative pattern between your thoughts and your behavior can give you more power to change it.

Gaining the awareness of where our behavior is coming from often in itself can help us feel better and we can change it.

A lot of times we just feel like we're losing it or going crazy when in reality there is a logical process to what we're experiencing.

At this point we know that we need to work through our initial triggering event.

It's important that you dig down to the core root of the depression and not work on symptoms or reactions to the depression.

Accurately configuring this timeline in the course of your symptoms tells us a lot.

It tells us the core problem that needs to be worked through.

The rest of your triggering events usually have some connection to the initial event,

Kind of like the game Jenga just before it's about to collapse.

The entire game rests on the stability of the bottom wooden pieces just like your initial triggering event does.

As an example let's take someone who was sexually molested as a child.

Well now that person is an adult and has children of their own.

They become overly protected and strict with them.

They don't let them go anywhere without them.

They can't play over other kids houses or have sleepovers.

Now this is because the parent doesn't trust their kids or is it because they don't trust other people and want to protect their kids from also being abused like they were.

The overly protective nature has absolutely nothing to do with their kids and everything to do with the abuse they experienced as a child.

In order for them to strike a balance between protecting and smothering their kids,

They first need to work through their own childhood trauma.

The parent working on letting their kids go places without them would be futile.

It wouldn't last or it wouldn't work at all and their symptoms could get even worse because they would be working on the symptom to a much deeper problem.

You would work through these triggering events by journaling about it,

Talking to someone you trust,

Or talking to a therapist.

You have to get it out somehow either through written or verbal form.

You can't just think about it in your head.

One thought leads to ten then 20 and now you're overwhelmed with worst-case scenarios.

You've started 20 thoughts and haven't finished one of them.

Now you're more stressed than when you started.

Writing or talking through your emotions forces you to complete these thoughts and release them from being trapped inside your brain because right now all of that pain is just trapped inside of you.

By not talking about it you're just protecting it and keeping it with you with all the other baggage you've collected since then.

After you process your emotions you can begin the process of letting go or,

Dare I say it,

Forgiving.

But don't even think about that now.

For more actually for more on the topic of letting go and forgiving you can listen to another educational recording that I have already posted titled Letting Go vs.

Forgiveness.

So hopefully that can help eventually.

So now that you've identified your problem-solving style you can also work on improving that so you can begin to address and process problems as triggering events happen and not repack all that life luggage again.

We all need to lighten up our load.

So in order to make changes in our life we must first identify what we're trying to change.

For the people who have maintained a certain level of depression throughout their life without any major ups and downs,

They should work on becoming more connected to their emotions and allowing themselves to feel and experience it whether it's positive or negative.

You may often answer questions with responses like,

I don't know,

I don't care,

It's up to you,

What do you think?

This means you should work on finding your voice and use it appropriately of course.

Don't accept that your opinion doesn't matter.

If it didn't matter people wouldn't ask and most people don't enjoy being around someone who just doesn't care or seem to care.

Not everyone is going to necessarily like your opinion but at least you're getting on the merry-go-round of life and not just watching from the bench without a ticket.

If you've been numb to your emotions for many years then you may need a therapist to help you deal with what you're feeling but the result is well worth it.

We are human beings,

We are filled with emotion at any given moment.

Without sadness we're not going to have joy,

Without anger where we won't have excitement.

Living is about feeling.

Using this type of problem-solving is merely surviving.

How can we learn to address problems when we don't even know how we feel about it?

How can you go through the grieving process from the death of a loved one when you're not allowing yourself to feel the loss?

How can you process and feel,

I'm sorry,

How can you process and heal from a divorce when you don't even know what you're feeling?

Is it anger?

Is it guilt,

Sadness,

Regret?

You've got to know what you're feeling in order to process and heal from it because you have to know what you're even trying to heal from.

You can start this process by asking yourself in your head,

What do I think about this situation?

How does this make me feel?

You may need to journal or talk to someone to actually sort out what you feel and then to address the problem at hand.

For the ones who avoid addressing problems as your symptoms continually worsen,

Then you know that you have to learn to address problems as they happen as opposed to trying to ignore it and push forward.

Of course we always have to pick our battles but if we are truly able to ignore and move on then by all means ignore it and move on.

But if you find that you're trying to ignore ignoring things that keep nagging you,

That's a warning sign that the problem may need to be addressed.

People with this type of problem-solving need to stop putting other people's needs ahead of their own.

You probably tend to make sure everyone else is okay while you continue to struggle in silence but this is not okay.

Your needs and wants are just as important as everybody else's.

Addressing problems doesn't have to lead to being mean or arguing or fighting,

Which by the way could also be what you may have witnessed as a child,

Which also may be why you're scared or nervous to address problems.

You don't want a confrontation or people to not like you or be mad at you.

Addressing problems appropriately means you have to work through your own emotions first,

Then think about the problem and all the ways you can deal with the problem.

The next step is to weigh the pros and cons of each option and choose the best option for you,

Which is usually going to be the option that provides the desired outcome with the least amount of conflict.

That's the goal at least,

But sometimes that isn't always available to us.

If your symptoms tend to be on and off and spike during triggering events,

Then you may have to practice staying in the moment,

Staying present when something stressful happens.

Process your emotions as they happen so that you can problem solve them appropriately.

Of course when stressful things happen,

It's normal for all of us to be more emotional than normal and have symptoms exacerbate,

But it shouldn't be so severe that we're unable to function or figure out a way to deal with the problem or make a rash impulsive decision in the moment of heightened emotion that you end up regretting later.

When something stressful happens,

Don't shut down.

Work through your emotion by journaling or talking to someone.

We shouldn't make decisions when we're highly emotional because our emotions are irrational,

Which means our decisions will most likely be irrational.

We need to work through our emotions and calm down so that we can think more clearly and deal with the problems more appropriately.

Your current symptoms.

.

.

Well,

Let's step back a moment.

Let's run through an example of everything that we've reviewed so far so you can be able to see everything step-by-step with a specific example.

Okay,

So let's say your current symptoms include sleeping too much,

Emotionally eating,

Low energy,

Sadness,

Feeling bad about yourself,

And feeling like you're just going through the motions of the day.

You realize that these symptoms have caused you to not want to be around people.

Withdrawal from friends and family,

Spend more time isolated,

Feel lonely,

You're frequently calling into work sick,

And you don't have many friends left.

You discover that the initial triggering event is the death of your grandma at let's say age 22.

Subsequent triggering events including moving on,

I'm sorry,

Moving into the first place of your own,

Let's say at 23,

Getting a promotion at work at age 25,

Experiencing the loss of your dad at age 30,

Starting to use alcohol excessively,

And breaking up with your significant other at age 31,

And now you're seeking therapy because you're depressed and you have no idea where your life took a turn for the worst.

This timeline illustrates that this person never grieved properly for the death of their grandma at age 22.

Even though they were moving on with their life and good things were happening,

They were unable to feel happy because their grandmother maybe wasn't there to share the good news with.

These happy moments only ended up making them more sad.

Their depression gradually worsened.

The experience of another death of a loved one was a turning point for them.

They could no longer be that functioning depressive like I made up that I talked about earlier,

And their symptoms become debilitating.

They start to self-medicate by abusing alcohol,

Which then led to their significant other breaking up with them,

And all of a sudden they're at the lowest point of their life.

So let's start with their triggering event and see how it may have affected them through their life that they probably were never even aware of.

How this changed the way they viewed themselves could be that they can only count on themselves and feel the need to protect themselves from being left.

People sometimes see death as abandonment and not as a natural process,

As if their loved one chose to leave them,

But this of course is their irrational state of emotions that they're not aware of yet.

How this changed the way that they view others may be that people will leave me either voluntarily or involuntarily,

But either way they will leave and I can't now count on anyone else.

How this changed the way they view the world is they will have to go this life alone.

They were born alone and they must die alone.

The world is a very lonely place.

Pretty depressing,

Right?

With this belief system,

How could they not be depressed?

They need to start by processing their emotions about their grandma's death,

See where that leaves them,

And process the events that followed their grandma's death only if necessary.

Once you're able to process and heal from the initial triggering event,

You usually won't have to do much emotional work to heal from the rest of the events,

But every person and triggering event is very different.

What I can tell you is that the rest of the events will be easier to process once the first one is done.

It's kind of like a domino effect,

Just as our life can slowly crumble once one bad thing happens,

But once we change that projection it can also slowly get better.

I may do a future talk on how to reprogram your faulty thinking or irrational belief system,

So stay tuned for that.

Now to avoid following the same trap and starting a new timeline of stressors,

People need to improve their coping strategy and their problem-solving skills.

The timeline suggests that the person's symptoms gradually worsened over time,

Which means they avoid talking about their problems,

Addressing their problems,

They shut down,

And they think they can just ignore their emotions.

They need to stop ignoring their emotions.

You can now see that this doesn't work anyway.

Talk to someone,

Journal,

Whatever works best for you,

But you have to get those emotions out in order to truly move on.

If any of these sections were difficult for you to apply to yourself,

Then you can have a mental health professional guide and support you through the process.

So hopefully this talk was helpful to you.

I keep up on all the comments,

So help me improve these discussions or let me know what other topics you would like to see,

And please keep in mind that I'm speaking very generally.

I don't know exactly who's out there listening,

And I certainly don't know your circumstances.

This is not going to apply to everyone,

But I'm hoping it will apply to the general population,

But I hope it can help some of you.

Blessings of good mental health.

Thank you for listening.

Reviews

This was absolute great!
I’m so glad you went and specifically dissected the issues. GBU 🙏🏾🙏🙏🏻👼🏾👼👼🏻💛💙🧡💚