Depressed, Maybe You Should Be..

Depression feels horrible, but it may have a purpose. Emotions have their own peculiar rationality and are one of the most intriguing aspects of being human. There's a reason why you feel what you feel. For the last decade or so, pharmaceutical companies have been selling the idea that mood is merely a fluke of brain chemistry and should be changed by popping a little pill. Anyone who's studied brain chemistry knows that nothing about the brain is random. If you're depressed, you probably have a reason to feel this way.

Aside from the situation we're born into--and this can be challenging--we generally have the capacity to choose our lives. Admittedly, some are born into easier situations than others(poverty vs. wealth, genetic disorders vs. health), but even within these limits, we get to choose our lives. Many individuals born into abject poverty rise up to situations of great personal achievement. We decide how we live our lives.

So, depression doesn't have to be your life, particularly if you can figure out what your mood is telling you.

Let's look at this emotion from two different angles. Some people are so logical that their emotions are like a muscle that hasn't been worked out. They feel, they just don't acknowledge it much, even to themselves. When our emotional selves are shut down, we tend to end up with a gray world. It's like turning down the sound on a radio. Everything gets muted, not just the low notes. Few things stimulate excitement in this state and pretty soon, the very rational person feels nothing, but depression.

Aside from the highly logical, there are others for whom depression actually makes sense. If these individuals are in relationships that are highly dysfunctional or careers they don't like, but feel they have to stay in, depression is a logical outcome. It fits. In this case, your depression is your way of telling you that changes need to be made. Either the relationship needs a major over-haul or you need to change the job you're in. Sometimes depression occurs when you've had a significant loss in your life or when you've had several life-altering changes in close succession and you're overwhelmed.

Don’t run out to get a prescription for meds(unless you need this short-term to function), listen to what the emotion is telling you. Emotion isn't the enemy. It generally makes perfect sense, even if it isn't fun. When individuals work to understand themselves and start making choices based on this understanding, the emotional side usually straightens out.

In life, we sometimes experience loss. Sometimes great loss. Sadness in these situations is also reasonable. Extremely difficult, but reasonable. The parent who loses a child, grieves and there's no way around this. For him, the emotions of loss, regret, rage, defeat just roll over him. He may have difficulty going on with life.

This situation is very, very difficult…but the depression is reasonable. It's a horrible experience and it makes sense for the emotions involved to be horrible. Few could have this kind of loss without tremendous emotional distress.

Our emotions are not the enemy. While we don’t want to function out of pure emotion--that makes for an erratic life--we do need to listen to how we feel. For very logical individuals who've disconnected as much as possible from their emotional side, some valuable information is lost. These folks tend to miss personal internal cues.

When you listen to how you feel in a given situation, you can be warned of danger, realize when relationships need attention or find the career that makes you a happy individual. Depression is an indicator. If you're struggling with this, it may be time for a serious self-assessment. Sometimes, individuals don't want to look at what they need to look at. It may be uncomfortable or inconvenient or the choice you need to make might appear to conflict with how you want life to be.

Depression can be another internal clue. If you want to make use of all your capacities, pay attention to what it's telling you.

Small Choices, Big Consequences

Only a few choices seem big at the moment you're making them. You look down a long aisle of a church and see the person you're marrying--that's a big choice. You look down at the contract you're about to sign for a thirty-year mortgage on a house. That seems big, too, even though you can sell the house, if you choose.

Most choices, though, don't come with a resounding trumpet blast announcing "This Is Big!" Many are small, sneaky moments that you don't even really notice unless you're paying attention.

One night with a hot guy and an old condom. Leaving a sleeping child in a car while you run into a store for one small minute. Buying your kid a toy every time she whines in the store. Flirting with the new woman at work, even though you're married. Gunning your car to race through the traffic light that's turning yellow.

Our lives are filled with small choices. Some can have huge consequences. Life-altering, life-ending or just frustrating consequences. We have to remember that each action we take has a consequence. With this clearly in focus, we are more likely to give each action the thought it needs.

When you're out partying with your friends and blowing off steam from a crappy week or month, be aware of how one choice can change your life…and those choices get blurrier when you've had a few. Getting pulled over for a DUI is only one possibility. What if the hot guy you have sex with has Chlamydia? Or HIV or venereal warts? Getting wasted at the club might have more consequences than you ever thought.

If you run the yellow/red traffic light, you might get one of those tickets in the mail, but you might also have a bad meeting with a semi-truck.

Watching the television news report about these kind of moments, you might say, "How could they be so stupid?" But when you're in the moment, things may not be so clear. The urge to cut corners can be strong. Even more likely are the everyday choices that have relationship consequences. The fight with your spouse that never gets resolved. The times you promise your kid you'll be home and you don't make it because you have other priorities.

Never think that your actions and your words don't make that big a difference. What you do--or don't do--matters. Your choices effect your relationships, your work experience and your credit rating. You are very powerful. You get to be in charge of you, every day. While this may not seem like a big deal, it really is huge. Even in situations in which you don't feel like you have much choice, you get to choose how you function, how you behave. You have power over who you are.

In most situations, you get to choose what you do, where you do it and who you're with. It's your power. You get to make the choices and they bring certain consequences. Big or little, your actions create your life.

Learning to Love

It seems so obvious, I mean, who doesn't care about someone? But this is more difficult than it looks. Love is hard, just ask the newly-divorced. It hurts, and who wants to hurt? You could decide to be an island and not care for anyone, but that's not a great option either. You live an isolated life and tend to die younger. Living completely unattached to anyone is very hard, so we humans are becoming adept at pseudo-attachment. This means we're not really attached, but it looks and feels attached, for a while.

First off, folks are diving head-first into immediate intimate involvement. Dating, as such, doesn't really happen anymore. No longer do individuals have casual, non-committed interaction to enable them to move toward more than acquaintance. Now, people hook-up on first meeting and--because it can seem trashy to have random sex outside of a relationship--we tell ourselves that this is a relationship. It's just a relationship that happened really quickly and involved sex within hours.

The problem here is that you don't know the person you're with. Not really. You haven't had enough interaction to know him. The color of his undies may be something you've discovered, but you don't know whether he likes peas or hates his mother. Voted blue, red or not at all in the last presidential election. Still, we humans aren't happy in a disconnected state. So, you hook-up and break-up and then get out there looking for someone to hook-up with again. A relationship revolving door. Many approach relationships in a totally random manner. Kind of like buying a lottery ticket…you keep hoping you'll hit the jackpot.

The bad news is that this isn't attachment. Emotional connection doesn't take time, it takes knowledge of the person you're meeting between the sheets. Really getting to know her is what takes time. Knowledge enables understanding…understanding is required before attachment can be experienced.

Some people never get here. They get almost there. Caring about someone, without understanding leads to a dangerous pseudo-love. Many individuals--not knowing real love--even have this kind of experience with children or relatives. The tendency is to see others through our own experience. I would feel a certain way if I acted a certain way and others must be like me (most only know their own perspective), therefore….

This is not love. Not attachment in any sort of enduring way, which is why many people connect, disconnect, and reconnect over and over again. They struggle to know and love others; struggle to let others know and love them. Love can hurt. If you care for another and he leaves the relationship, you suffer.

This is why children who've been abused or abandoned by parental figures so often struggle with a disorder known as Reactive Attachment Disorder.

But attaching to someone is the only way to experience a healthy self-image.The only way to be emotionally whole.You have to let someone love you. Individuals who struggle with this have massive issues; issues now being mapped by neuroscientists. Kids who suffer abuse or grow up in neglectful homes show actual brain development deficiencies. Not being cared for has major implications for the young. It effects us physically and emotionally.

This need doesn't change as we get older. Love is vital. Letting yourself risk attachment is necessary for your well-being. Yeah, it can hurt like hell, but the alternative is really, really sad.

You can handle this. You can recover from loss. Learn to let yourself love.

Embracing Imperfection

Perfectionism is tempting, even though being consumed by the drive to be perfect is bad for you. We may try to be a perfect mother or ideal mate, but we don't necessarily love those who seem to be without flaws. Everyone wants Martha Stewart's soufflé to fall. We tend to resent perfection even as we find ourselves striving for it (and buying her cook books as well as her magazine). But have you ever considered that imperfection could be good for you?

This is not to say screwing up feels good. Falling on your face in front of your new boss, blurting out just the wrong thing to prospective in-laws or burping in front of a scrumptious first date...these never feel good. Mistakes, though, are not only unavoidable, they're actually a vital part of your growth landscape. You need to mess up because mistakes are an integral part of progress.

Movement forward. Getting to where you want to go. Planting your flag on the turf you've just won. None of that happens without mistakes. The May issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience reports a study that indicates we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. Failure has an upside.

Take, for instance, the perfect high school valedictorian. Never puts a foot wrong, always gets amazingly high scores. Let's make it worse. Let's say she gets those grades without really even studying that hard and she's the head cheerleader, dating the captain of the football team. This sounds so great, so desirable. We want to be her, right? Other kids in high school hate her--except the ones who want her to tutor them in organic chemistry. She's never screwed up a test, never gone out to a party without writing her English essay first, which only takes her a half hour.

She's perfect…and she's so screwed. Screwed because she doesn't know how to fail. Doesn't know how to study for a really tough class. Doesn't know how to persevere in the face of abject failure.

Who hasn't heard of the really bright kid who kills him or herself because of a rejection from the first pick college? Learning to fail is vital to success. We may tend to forget this reality, but failure brings with it tremendously important information. It's packaged with certain truths you can't get any other way. Think about this--few goals are reached without learning to adjust your trajectory. If you never fail--never let yourself fail--you won't learn what works and what doesn't work.

It is a sad reality that there are very bright people who settle for low level jobs and bad relationships because they're afraid to risk failure. If you try and don't succeed--that's failure. For some, failure is so unacceptable that they abdicate from life. They deliberately take the less fulfilling path because it seems easier…because there's less chance of failing.

Failure doesn't feel good--failing feels like crap--but it can be a valuable pit stop on the way to phenomenal success. To make the most of the experience, you have to sift through the ashes to find the kernel of truth. You need to understand where you screwed up if you want to have a shot at earning the goal. In every moment of failure there exists a gem of learning. Where did I mess up? This is a massively important question. You don't need to figure this out just so you can beat yourself with the mistake. You need to see it, so you don't take that path again. What do I need to do differently next time?

Perseverance. It is a golden word and without this ability, few achievements are ever made.

Those who stumble into some level of success without any apparent failure experiences are susceptible to the imposter syndrome. Failure and correction and plowing ahead leaves you knowing you deserve every success you wrench out of life.

Failure is good. Study it. Embrace it. There is always something to learn in not achieving. You have to fail to reach success.

Thinking Seperation?

If things are rocky between you two, separating might sound less traumatic and final than breaking-up. You need to think about this, though. Individuals have a variety of reasons they prefer separation. Look clearly at your reasons. If you've been in a committed relationship, you have feelings for the person you've been with--maybe a big mix of feelings. If it's hard to think about just separating, but you need a good reason why you're not leaving for good.

You'd probably argue that you love the person you're with. You just aren't sure the two of you can continue the way the relationship has been. If you're living together, you may feel you need some "space." Perhaps things have gotten intense between you. You might tell yourself you just need to breathe. It's not like you want to completely walk away--at least, not yet--but staying the way things are now, isn't good either. No one considers separation unless the relationship has been rough awhile.

You need to be honest with yourself, however. Ask yourself these questions:

Are you trying to let your partner down gently? If your mate still wants the relationship and you don't, you can feel like a heel just walking away. Maybe you don't want to be the bad guy. Who doesn't care what others will think? You might feel bad if you don't do everything you can to try to make it work. If you can't fix it, you tell yourself, then you'll walk away.

But hope can be painful. If you're really done with your relationship, just walk away. Don't keep your partner in the emotional turmoil of uncertainty. This isn't kind. If you want to go, just go.

Are you trying to hang on to a relationship? Some people suggest separation to keep a partner from walking away completely. Usually, when it comes to this, things have been bad for a long time. Separation can seem like your only hope to hang on to the relationship, but living apart or not talking for awhile doesn't automatically make anything better. If things are this bad, go see a therapist and really look at your part in the mess.

Are you trying to see if you'll find someone else better before you let go of this relationship? This is a "training wheels" kind of perspective. If you don't look seriously at what you contributed to one relationship that failed, you're doomed to repeat your mistakes in the next one. Being emotionally-disconnected enough to start looking around for your next relationship means you might as well leave.

The tendency to treat emotional connections like a relay race--only letting go of one when you have the next one lined up--prevents you from learning. Many people feel they just cannot be alone. They're only happy when they have someone to be in a relationship with, even if the new person isn't necessarily who they need or isn't at the top of their list. Having no one is better than getting with just anyone.

Are you trying to find out if you'll miss your mate? Maybe you're not sure whether this relationship is where you want to be. You might be frustrated enough that there are days when you're ready to leave, but you'd like to try it out first. Take a test drive. After all, you don't hate him. You tell yourself that maybe you'll miss him and want to go back and everything will be good again.

Unless you're actively working on (therapy!) the relationship, nothing is going to be made different by living apart or not seeing one another. You have to change your interaction or the relationship is going to be the same.

Have you already found a new, "better" relationship? This can seem like the best and worst of both worlds. Your old relationship has had many problems--enough so that you pulled out emotionally and found someone else--but the two of you have history, a shared past. Maybe a shared house or a kid. The new relationship is shiny and "perfect". This new person understands you in a way you hadn't thought possible. You feel amazing when you're with her and you can't imagine it ever being different.

But you feel guilty about cheating on your previous relationship.

Suck it up. If you're into another relationship, it's not fair to hang on to your old one "just in case". You may have a fall-back job interview while you wait to see if the job you want comes through, but in relationship-land, this is cheating.

If you've got someone else and it seems to work out, you're unlikely to go back. While no relationship is perfect or conflict-free, you've already left your previous relationship.

Don't call it separation when you know it's over. Just be honest and leave. Relationships are complicated and can be fraught with problems, but separation is rarely the answer.

Seeking Comfort

Life can be rough. Work situations can leave you feeling wrung out. Traffic is hell. Your relationship might have land mines you don't know how to avoid. At the end of the day, you can feel frazzled and stressed.

You've been battered and your soul needs some comfort. Maybe you've had a fight with your teenager or your boss yelled at you for no reason or you've gained the ten pounds that makes your swimsuit really revealing. Or all three happen on the same black day. When the world turns mean, we just want to feel better. To be soothed and consoled. Even the toughest of us can find ourselves whimpering and wanting to crawl under the covers.

Or into a tub of Hagaan Daz. Possibly a bottle of Jack Daniels. We crave comfort and sometimes oblivion seems like the closest thing.

Most of our bad habits are attempts to feel better when we don't feel all that great. Eating too much of the wrong foods(comfort foods are almost always the wrong foods). Drinking too much. Some take prescription drugs or drugs that aren't prescription, at all. We just want to feel better. We want comfort.

Magazines and e-zines publish articles that address this offering meditation, yoga and prioritizing to cope--all good things. But for some individuals, these methods don't seem helpful. The trouble is, we often don't know what is comforting to us individually.

For some people, physical touch is very soothing. Getting regular massages can be very helpful if you're dealing with tough situations. Others almost crave movement. For them, physical activities like running or dancing can be very releasing. The real trick is figuring out your needs. When you're very stressed--by your job or something in your home life--it's difficult to think beyond the destructive comforts.

Many individuals grew up with their mothers offering ice cream when they had sore throats, but we are a nation of obese, sedentary individuals. Too much weight, too little action. Too tired to do anything to make it better. Then comes the guilt, the low self-esteem and heart attack risks.

We need comfort. Need to find solace in some way, but we need to figure out what works for us and what doesn't. Do a little personal sleuthing. Think back to when you were a kid. Did you go and side and play all day? Did you dive into a stack of books from the library? Maybe you and a friend went wandering through the woods. When you were younger, you probably had more methods of comforting yourself.

This is not to say that all the methods we used as kids were healthy, but before you give up on finding any source of renewal, think about what used to work for you.

But I Still Feel Depressed

It seems like everyone and their dog are on anti-depressants these days. Who doesn't have times when they just can't get excited about anything? When life seems flat and depressing. It can be difficult to get out of bed some days. Sadly, after a while the happy pills can leave you feeling less than jazzed.

What do you do when you're taking anti-depressants and you still feel depressed?

The biochemistry of the brain remains largely a mystery to us even though great strides have been made in the last twenty years. But what once seemed like a simple solution--why not take a medication that removes angst?--is turning out to be less effective than originally thought.

Medication to assist in coping with emotional life challenges can be helpful in some situations, but perhaps not in quite the way first thought. Recent research indicates meds are only part of the picture. There are some individuals who swear their lives have been totally turned around by psychotropic medication and believe they couldn't live without it. For most people, though, find this medication has a positive affect for only a period of time. After a while, they lose the emotional boost and must raise the dosage or change the medication to regain it. In addition, anti-depressants can have alarming side effects in some, with an actual increase in the incidence of suicide for a small percentage of teenagers and young adults.

Newer studies indicate that the better treatment for depression lies in a combination of talk therapy and medication.

Yep, talk therapy. Actually sitting down and talking with a real live person who's focus is helping you solve your problems. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to find a therapist with a couch you can spend the rest of your life on. Talk therapy has evolved into a more collaborative effort…you and a therapist sorting through which behaviors work best for you. If you're struggling with depression or anxiety or relationship problems, you need an assistant who can help you sort your life out.

A good therapist will listen to you harder than your friends can. He or she has no axe to grind and will resist telling your how to handle your down days. You might actually want someone to tell you how to fix your depression, but it's more important to understand it and help you fix the problem. You need to be empowered to direct your own life.

Medication has its place. Some individuals need help just to get out of bed. When things are this bad, take the pill. But don't forget that you can sort your life through. The chemistry in your brain responds to different thoughts and different choices.

Even when you don't feel capable, you still have the power to change.