As promised...some thoughts on combating depression and addiction arising from interviews, personal experience, and research.
Depression can be chronic, occasional, or a brand new problem. Regardless of the state or frequency, the important thing to understand is that the problems are cumulative.
- And excessive preoccupation with one's own self, i.e., everything becomes about me. The experiences of others are viewed through the lense of how it affects me.
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The preoccupation with self creates an inward focus resultingi n a false sense of helplessness, which evolves into hopelessness.
Facing life after either depression or addiction treatment bears a strong resemblance to living through a divorce.
One man described life after the divorce that arose from his depression.
"After my divorce, though I was still blessed with plenty of friends, my single friends were old college buddies living out of state. Married friends would invite me to events and their home for ball games, et al, but everything was different as a single person so I usually found reasons not to go."
So...suddenly..the need to recover permanentaly from depression came with the dual challenge of creating a brand new life.
Addiction is similar, in that one often has to avoid the people and places that are familiar in order to avoid falling into the addiction trap. The inability to socialize, enjoy a drink, and hang out with certain friends would be depressing for anyone. If you alread suffer from depression, it's even worse.
So how do we live above the fog of depression?
1. Exercise, exercise, and exercise. A supporter of Chattanooga Counseling & Mediation offered this advice: "One friend, a pulmonary doctor, insisted that I exercise every single day as the first priority above anything else. Another friend, who bikes every day, said that the outlook of someone who exercises is automatically much better and more consistent."
If you have time, then exercise.
If you don't have the time, then make the time. It will change everything.
If exercising bores you, then there are ways to enetertain yourself while you exercise. You could begin the exercise with some quiet prayer time, and then enjoy some entertainment. Think about it, in one 2-hour period you could have a great quiet time with God, finish a book, burn a million calories, and refresh your mind and spirit. Talk about multitasking? This could quickly become your favorite time of the day.
Ways to make and keep your exercise interesting...
- Download audio books onto your iPod.
- Buy a small DVD player and strap it onto a treadmill (just like parents do for kids in the minivans).
- Read your Kindle or iPad while walking.
- Download a great sermond or stand-up comedy.
This cannot be overstated. The exercise increases the ability to handle life's uncertainties. The energy level will increase. People will become more enjoyable.
2. Take the focus off of yourself.
An axiom of mental health education is that depression is anger turned inward. If that is true, then treating depression would also mean treating anger, whether the depressed person realizes it or not.
Glad you asked.
The first way (after exercise) to attack self-centered thinking is to force yourself to look outward.
A lady in Alabama had her first child during the 1990's. After the baby was born, the lady often complained that no one understood what it was like to be a new mother. The humorous part was that she included the child's grandmothers and her friends with children in this statement.
On the one hand, that was silly because there are billions of women alive right now who fully understand it. On the other hand, it showed how warped one's vision can become when focused on self.
Second only to exercise, the need to focus beyond self is the most important way to combat moments or episodes of depression.
Volunteer: Make sure that you find ways to help others. These are not abstract suggestions; they are real ways to connect and build relationships. Read to the elementary school classrooms. Serve at food kitchen. Join a civic club or a women's professional group.
IMHO, the scriptural insistence that we be "doers" of the word as well as hearers could be as much for our emotional health as for any other result.
Fellowship:
John Milton wrote that oneiness was the first thing in creation that God's eye saw and pronounced "not good." Join a Sunday School class. Also, as mentioned above, you could join a civic club. Join your college's alumni association.
Find groups meeting often enough to empower the building of relationships.
Barge in: I found a Sunday School class with approximately 100 people, and I was one of the 10 oldest people there. Only a few people spoke to me that first Sunday. I showed up every time, signed up to volunteer for almost every event they held, showed up when people needed help moving (even when I had never met the people moving), and just kept doing it until familiarity brought openness. Now, I have friends in the class and heard from many of them even while in Virginia.
Planned fun: Every week I calendared the mens groups, Sunday School class events, lunches with friends, time with kids, golfing with buddies, party invitations, dating, or anything else. I always kept a calendar I could review and appreciate. One important key is to look at the entire month at a time.
That can help one celebrate, and can show the blank spots in advance so they can be addressed early.
Consider this example of planning ahead: "When my first post-divorced wedding anniversary approached, I didn't know whether it would be a deeply sad occasion...given how badly I missed (and still miss) my kids. The solution? I spent the evening as "Joseph" in a live manger scene at Christmas time."
It sounds cliche, but forgiving people will lighten whatever load any of us carry.
I'm a big believer in the 4 promises of forgivenenss by Peacemakers International.
The 4 promises of forgiveness...
- "I will not dwell on thi incident."
- "I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you."
- "I will not talk to others about this incident."
- "I will not let this incident stand between or hinder our personal relationship."
If we all forgive people and actually keep these promises, our loads will immediately lighten. Too often, we recite words of forgiveness yet still harbor the joy of holding the past against people.
4. Eyes off the scoreboard
The best sports analogy for dealing with this comes from Nick Saban (of course), who emphatically tells his players to ignore the scoreboard and think about nothing but the next play.
Any of us can look at life's scoreboard and dislike one thing or another. Using the Saban principle, we should ignore what we don't like about or lives on the macro level and pour ourselves into changing it today.
For example, on a typical day, if you have exercised and planned something fun (or volunteered for something), you can rejoice in your day.
The new focus will have brought immediate change. The evidence might not be visible for days or weeks, but the change will be its own immediate reward.
Thursday, January 23, 2014 at 3:26PM 