Depression is a state of mind and a feeling in the body that we find it hard to bear. Depression damages our life a lot. We feel like everything that we do and everything that exists in the word is useless. We feel powerless most of the time. I know a lot about depression because when I was 25 years old (now I am 36) I was diagnosed with it. As I am the founder of this website Positive Words Research much of the work I do for this blog was motivated by me making efforts to win over depression.
It is not easy at all to get rid of depression. This is the hard truth. But you can win over it. I did. I learned a lot of techniques to fight and win over depression. I will share with you five words of encouragement for depression. All the things that I am sharing with you are real actions that I implemented in my life.
1. You Have Many Reasons To Be Grateful About Yourself
If you are struggling with depression I know this is hard to believe. Just believe me that one of the secrets of winning over depression, that I was blessed enough to find it, is gratitude. Especially gratitude about myself. I started writing small lists of gratitude for myself and I still do this. Practice gratitude from time to time is a practice that I will do all my life. Sometimes I compute the days, weeks, months since I am born and I name this period as “time since I exist on Earth”. Then I say that I am joyfully grateful or sincerely grateful for all these days, weeks and months.
2. You Have The Power To Play
Including playfulness in my life was one of my top goals in getting rid of depression. Again, it is hard to be consistent in making actions that feel like play when you are in a state where everything seems so hard and serious.
I included playfulness into my life in two ways: working on my new philosophy of life and making actions that are playful. In my new philosophy of life I included sentences like: “Sometimes life doesn’t need to be taken so seriously.” or “Dancing is a shortcut to happiness”. As actions, I searched for actions that are easy and doable so that it can help me be consistent. I developed a practice where “almost” every morning and evening I stretch my body. I do this by doing simple exercises that I learned from my sports teacher when I was in school. Nothing special, nothing extravagant. I also have a practice of dancing in my room, alone, with headsets, keeping my phone in my right hand, looking at me in the mirror. It makes me see myself as being alive.
3. You Are Loved
Working on me feeling loved was a challenge. And it still is. I don’t know why but we humans feel that we are not so loved, we don’t matter so much, we are not so important. Is that “so” that created so many depressive thoughts in my mind. And I realized that we are. We are so loved, we matter so much, we are so important.
One of the tools I use to feel loved is actually a visualization that I am doing. I am sharing this with you in the hope that you feel the love and not drama. I noticed that some people feel drama when I tell them this visualization. Here it goes.
Visualizing Of A Simple Meditation To Feel Loved
I see my heart. I see the hearts of all living humans. I notice that my heart beats at the same time as 7.7 billion other people. We are together now on a planet that is spinning in a huge universe. For 36 years this planet is holding me alive, even if I am such a sensitive being. I actually am one of the 7.7 billion people that are alive now. I am kept safe even if the Earth is pressured every second by physical forces in the universe above my power (life gravitational force etc.). I am actually in a safe place. This safe place was created for me and others because we are loved. I am loved. We are all loved.
4. You Are Enough
I must admit that I still struggle with this one. It is not that I do not feel enough, it is that I do not do enough. And actually, it is the belief that I did not do enough and I can not turn back time to do more, therefore, all is hopeless and without exit. But, I developed a trick to convince myself that I indeed was and did enough.
I Say To Myself A Little I am Enough Story
You are enough. You know why? Because you did good things that you will never know about. You do small things that matter. How come? What did I do? Well, at least once in your life you helped someone that dropped something by picking it up. Maybe that person had a bad day and you showed him that kindness still exists in the word. He went home and was a little kinder with his kids. His kids felt a little more loved. Or were not beaten that day. Kidding, just to make you smile. You are enough. You did enough, so enough that you will never know.
5. You Are Capable Of Being Kind To Yourself
I could name better this paragraph as You Are Allowed To Be Kind To Yourself. I don’t know if you resonate with me but when I suffered from depression I felt like I am not allowed to be kind with myself. I needed the approval of someone or something for me to be kind to myself. Especially kind in my thoughts. I had so many thoughts angry, hateful, damaging to myself. Hard, heavy, negative, so serious thoughts. And I remember I did not think in terms of You can choose kind thoughts just because they feel better. You are allowed to think thoughts that feel light and good.
During my depression period I thought I need, it is mandatory, it is an obligation, to think “any” thought, even if it is such a disempowering thought. “Disempowering” is politely said. Because I had heavy thoughts like “so many people are trapped in the small boxes that they call apartments in things that they call buildings and they say they are happy? How can you be happy when you live like a sheep in a box. We are all trapped without any way out except death”.
I learned that we are blessed to live a human life. And anyway it is only for 80,100,120 years, not that much, why “escape” sooner. Lol.
Of course, I can joke now with myself with the hardest and most negative thoughts of all, because I am in another state of mind, a happier one. But the transition took a lot of work. I did psychotherapy for many years, with a good psychotherapist in my country that helped me a lot and the fact that I did the best list of positive words in the world made a huge difference. I remember that while I was doing this list of positive words I thought: I am doing this list as a trace to happiness, to find my way back to the light if I ever get lost in the dark again.
I realized at one point, a few years ago, that we people are not scared of the dark. What we are scared of is not knowing a simple effective tool to turn on the light. Think about it. Every human needs dark to sleep. We love dark when we sleep. We are not afraid of being in a dark place. But we could feel afraid in the dark if we do not know where the electricity switch for the light is, or if we know that there is no electricity in the house. But even then we are still ok with the dark because we know that the sunlight will come. The consistency of the morning light eliminates the fear of the dark and you sleep peacefully.
The secret is for you to know what works for you. Is different for every person. What “sunlight” can you implement in your life to always have your morning light come over you? What is your switch to turn on the light? I would actually go for more switches in your house (your mind, body, soul). When you have light switches in your life you will not be afraid of depression anymore (the dark) because you will always find your way back from it. And at that moment, depression will lose the power it has over you.
