Bounce Out

6 ideas to help you bounce out of depression

Depressed manNote: This is a guest post by blogger and author David Ramos. 

The phone rang. I lifted my head up off the tear-soaked pillow and searched for the phone under a mess of tissues and blankets.

Hello, I said, doing my best to sound as if I hadn’t just finished crying.

Hey man, how are you doing today?

Damn him. I felt the tears welling back up, begging to be released.

*cough* I’m ok. You know…just taking it one day at time.

But I hadn’t been able to take it one day at a time for weeks now. My world had been shrink-wrapped and all I could manage was to pray that the next 60 seconds wouldn’t send me over the edge. Minute by minute, hour by hour.

I wasn’t battling my depression; I was trying to survive it.

 

You Don’t Get Out of Depression

Depression is terrifying. It looks like sadness, feels like exhaustion, sounds like defeat, but in truth it’s a monster much bigger than the sum of its parts.

I had encountered it on a smaller scale half a dozen times growing up. However, this last time it didn’t hold anything back. Yes, circumstances were difficult: unemployment, relationship troubles, and health problems among other things. But for those of you who have ever faced depression you know that it can seem like it towers over every area of your life, regardless of circumstances.

I wracked my brain for months on how to get out of depression. I read books on the subject, watched videos, and even attended professional counseling. Some things helped, most didn’t.

Now, after a year of being depression-free I can see that I was aiming at the wrong goal.

I was consumed with the idea that I had to get out of my depressed state. That if I could just escape somehow then I would finally be “normal” again. It doesn’t work that way.

What I learned was that you don’t get out of depression, you get the depression out of you.

 

How To Overfill The Cup

My counselor described it like this. We all have a cup. This cup is filled with the different parts of our life. We get depressed when the cup is filled with more bad than good.

I want to offer you some ways of filling the cup back up with good stuff. The more good you put in, the more bad stuff gets pushed out. This is not a magic cure, just one human talking to another.

1. Read Positive Influences: quotes, non-fiction and fiction books, uplifting stories from the new paper. Show your mind over and over again that there are good things happening in the world.

2. Listen To Uplifting Music: This does not necessary mean religious music. Anything that’s upbeat and can put a smile on your face will do. Just make sure the lyrics are putting good material into your mind.

3. Find Good Atmospheres: I had to force myself out of the house during my month of depression, and it only got more difficult towards the end. But this is also one of the most effective ways to speed up your recovery. Find places you enjoy being with people you enjoy being around and spend time there. Even when you feel like your going to break down, go to the bathroom – cry it out – then come back and stay another hour. Just the presence of certain people can help cure a damaged mind.

4. Talk About Anything: A lot of the time I had no idea what was wrong or what I was actually sad about. I just felt heavy and dark. Find someone who will listen to you without having to offer advice or cast judgment. Talk about anything; just get your mind active in speaking. It will help loosen its grip on the heaviness.

5. Exercise Your Body: During those difficult months my body felt as if it had picked up an extra 100lbs. Even doing everyday tasks had grown exhausting. How was I supposed to exercise? Truth is this really does help. Start small. Walk around the block twice a week. Spend 5 minutes in the morning stretching. These small blocks of activity will give your body and mood a kickstart in the right direction.

6. Sleep Whenever Possible: Trying to sleep a full 8 hours during my depression was impossible. I’d wake up after 3 or 4 and then feel guilty about not being able to rest. Don’t beat yourself up. Sleep whenever you can. If that’s a few hours a night mixed with a nap or two during the day, that’s fine. If you need supplements to help you sleep, ask the doctor and don’t feel bad. Sleep is a scarce friend when depression hits, so welcome its presence when available.

 

These are all things within your control. Coming to grips with the fact that circumstances are always changing and that we cannot control the world is a huge step towards feeling better and bouncing back.

Focus on the things you can control. Food, exercise, conversation, your free time. Chip away at your depression, activity by activity, and take your life back inch by inch.

The depression slowly grew over time, before I felt like I was completely consumed by it. In the same way it will take time to shrink back down again. Be patient and believe that there is a better tomorrow down the road.

I promise you, you will be happy again. And you will be stronger.

 

If you’ve faced depression, what things helped you survive and overcome that period of your life?

 

About the author: David Ramos is a serial blogger and author of the upcoming book Builder Chaser Dreamer. His goal in writing and sharing what he has learned is to become a dream enabler – helping people create the lives they want from the passions they have. Read more of David’s writing on his blog.

“A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear [that results] from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl.”

Building self esteem!

Increasing Self-Esteem and Happiness: 8 Steps to a Fulfilled Life

Smile

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” ~Buddha

A few nights ago I did a search on Google Ad Words to compare the words “self-esteem” and “happy.” I discovered that over 55 million people search for the word “happy” every month, whereas just 800,000+ people search for “self-esteem.”

Okay, I get it; we just want to be happy. But in order to be happy we need the foundation first, and the key ingredient is a healthy self-esteem. Once we increase our self-esteem, happiness comes with it.

Creating a healthy sense of self-esteem might mean tons of work for some of us. It all starts with disciplining our thoughts.

When I was in my twenties I was as far away from understanding this as you can imagine being. I used to think I was the ugliest person on the planet. I went through two terrible depressions, and I even contemplated suicide.

All of this happened because I lacked gratitude for being alive, and I struggled with self-acceptance, discipline, and forgiveness. I had trouble forgiving myself because I would be too tough on myself whenever I made a mistake, and I had trouble forgiving others because I used to take things too personally, when in reality what other people say is a reflection of them, not me.

Growing up I didn’t develop confidence in my ability to create change. I was “allowing things to happen to me” instead of “making things happen for me.” 

The last time I was depressed was 12 years ago. I could have died after taking a whole box of sleeping pills. After that I finally realized how ungrateful and selfish I had been by only focusing on myself.

I decided to take 100% responsibility for my life because the idea of dying was scarier than the idea of living. If I was going to live, I decided I will do it in the best possible way.

And I did. In the process I laid a strong foundation for high self-esteem and ultimately became much happier.

Now, I love my life, I’m extremely grateful, and I continually learn how to keep improving as a human being while also teaching what I learn.

Being the woman I am today doesn’t mean I never get sad, or that I never have problems.

Being happy with who you have become, being grateful for the opportunity to live and for all you’ve experienced so far, being open to teaching and helping others helps you to deal better with challenges that life puts into your journey.

Life is a cycle: sometimes everything is great and sometimes everything falls apart in a matter of seconds. But we can choose to see each experience as something that will help us grow and become wiser.

My conclusion after years of self-growth work is that a high self-esteem equals a high level of happiness, which leads to a fulfilled life. The keys?

1. Understand why you need to change your thoughts and habits.

It takes discipline to direct your thoughts to love, to increase your good habits, and to look after your body and soul every day.

One way to increase your discipline is to write down the “why’s.” Ask yourself, why it is important to improve the quality of your thoughts?

How would you feel having more loving thoughts? How would you feel if most of your thoughts were self-hating? Can this be a compelling reason? How would your life change if you treated your mind as sacred? How would life be if you treated it with respect?

I used to have very low self-discipline, but step by step I kept improving it because I found compelling reasons to do so. Find your “why’s” and start with the first step. Today.

2. Enlist support. 

Ask your family and friends for support, join a community, or seek professional help as you work toward increasing your self-esteem. Alone we won’t get anywhere.

3. Use affirmations and mantras.

Choose a mantra that will guide you through this process and repeat it three times a day (thirty times each time). One of my favorite mantras is “Every day I am better in every area of my life.”

4. Filter your inner circle.

We can’t always avoid negative people; they are everywhere. But you can choose to surround yourself with people who support you and encourage you to be a better human being, while you also do the same for them; and you can create some distance in relationships where this isn’t the case.

Trust that by creating some distance, you will make space for more healthy relationships. Give yourself the opportunity to be surrounded by great souls. You won’t be alone, I promise.

5. Practice gratitude for yourself.

Every day is a new life. It’s not that hard to be grateful when everything is okay. The tough part comes when you need to continue being grateful during hard times.

When I’m feeling down I thank my body for being able to breathe, I thank my eyes for being able to see, I thank my hands for being able to create, and I thank my values for leading me toward positive experiences.

Write down everything you are grateful for and read it every morning or any time you’re feeling low.

By practicing gratitude for parts of yourself you may otherwise not think to acknowledge, you will value more who you are, and this will help you to create a higher sense of self-love.

6. Be present. 

By learning to not worry so much about the past and the future, you can start focusing on the moment, seeing each day as a new opportunity to do your best.

By being in the present you will have more confidence because you’ll know that whatever negative experience you had in the past does not have to repeat itself. You will feel empowered to create a compelling future regardless of what’s happened before, which will strengthen your sense of self-worth.

7. Help others.

When you’re feeling helpless, go out and help someone else. Perhaps you can join a non-profit to volunteer your skills.

This will allow you to see other realities, which will help you appreciate how fortunate you really are. It will also make you more confident because you will feel you can add great value to others in need.

8. Trust in something bigger than yourself.

We are not alone; we are all connected. Whenever I find myself trusting only my own strengths, I get insecure. But if I have done all that I could in a particular situation and then I also trust that the universe is supporting me, insecurities go away and miracles happen.

Get out there, do the best you can, and allow the universe to give you a hand.

I’d love to know what your challenges with self-esteem and happiness are! Will you take these important steps? What else would you add to this list?

 

Avatar of Carolina Ordoñez

About Carolina Ordoñez

Carolina is the Author of “The Confident Woman: How to Boost Self-Esteem and Happiness”, she teaches women how to maximize self-esteem and happiness to live a fulfilled life. She is also a globetrotter and a healthy cook.

Copyright © 2014
Tiny Buddha, LLC

Ways Not To Think

Types of negative thinking that add to depression

All-or-nothing thinking – Looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground (“If I fall short of perfection, I’m a total failure.”)
Overgeneralization – Generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever (“I can’t do anything right.”)
The mental filter – Ignoring positive events and focusing on the negative. Noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right.
Diminishing the positive – Coming up with reasons why positive events don’t count (“She said she had a good time on our date, but I think she was just being nice.”)
Jumping to conclusions – Making negative interpretations without actual evidence. You act like a mind reader (“He must think I’m pathetic”) or a fortune teller (“I’ll be stuck in this dead end job forever”)
Emotional reasoning – Believing that the way you feel reflects reality (“I feel like such a loser. I really am no good!”)
‘Shoulds’ and ‘should-nots’ – Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do, and beating yourself up if you don’t live up to your rules.
Labeling – Labeling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings (“I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser.”)

If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. – Mister (Fred) Rogers

Things to say to a depressed person

 

6 Things to Say to Someone with Depression or Who's Depressed

Lots of people experience depression, while others just have bad days or just are feeling down on themselves. No matter why they’re depressed, sad, or unmotivated to do much of anything, one thing is certain — it’s a tough feeling to experience. Depression is isolating — like you’re all alone in it, and that it will never end.

As a friend or partner of someone who’s experiencing that depression or feeling blue, what can you do to help? After all, there’s a lot of advice telling you what not to say to a depressed person and things that most people don’t want to hear when they’re feeling down.

We crowd-sourced the following list by querying our Facebook friends about what they’d like to hear when they’re feeling down, blue, or depressed. Here are a few of their very, very good suggestions.

 

1. You’re right, this sucks.

The generalization is that men are problem solvers, and women are listeners. People who are depressed don’t want problem solvers — they’ve usually run through all the scenarios and solutions in their head already. They just can’t do it.

What they’re looking for instead is simple acknowledgement and empathy.

2. You don’t walk this path alone. I’m here if you need me.

When a person is depressed, one of the feelings many people experience is an overwhelming sense of loneliness — that no one can understand what they’re going through. They are all alone.

A reminder from a friend or loved one that, indeed, they’re not alone and they are loved can be invaluable. It also reminds them of the reality — that people in their life do love them and are there for them if they need them.

3. I believe in you… You’re awesome!

Sometimes a person has given up hope that they’ll amount to anything in life. They’ve lost all belief in themselves, and feel like nothing they do is right or good enough. Their self-esteem is, in a word, shot.

That’s why it can be helpful to reaffirm that you believe in them. You believe in their ability to once again experience hope, to be the person you once were — or even more. That they are still an awesome person, if even if they’re not feeling that way at the moment.

 

4. How can I help? What can I do for you?

One part of the way many people experience depression is that they have little motivation to do things that need to get done. Offer your support and direct assistance in getting something done for them. It might be picking up a prescription, a few groceries from the store, or simply getting the mail. Offer this help only if you’re willing to do what is asked of you.

5. I’m here if you want to talk (walk, go shopping, get a bit to eat, etc.).

This is more of a direct suggestion, choosing something that you know the friend or loved one is going to be interested in doing. Maybe they just want to talk (and need you to simply listen). Maybe they need a nudge to get up, get changed, and go out and just do something — anything. You can be that person to help them get moving.

6. I know it’s hard to see this right now, but it’s only temporary… Things will change. You won’t feel this way forever. Look to that day.

When a person’s depressed, sometimes they lose all perspective. Depression can feel like an endless black hole in which there’s no way to climb out of. Saying something along these lines reminds them that all of our emotions and moods are not permanent, even if they feel like they are.

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