Fixing depression
I am asked frequently how we define depression and how we go about trying to fix it. Well, our starting point is that everybody in life has goals. They may want to get married, have two children, finish their law degree, go and become a solicitor. As long as life goes to plan, people do not develop depression. If every day, you got up and made a plan and it all happened, you would never develop depression.
But that’s not how life works as we all know. That lovely wife unfortunately went off with our best friend. All of a sudden, we had to replan our lives. The cause of stress is always life not going to plan. Once we start to understand stress, we start to demystify it. We do not feel that we are crazy, we understand that we are stressed.
Stress is experienced in different ways. We feel life is not going to plan, or potentially may not go to plan. Or we could feel literally on the wrong path. Or we should have, would have, could have done something different.
We are always lamenting something.
When things go wrong, part of us thinks: maybe we deserve it. Maybe the fault’s in us. Maybe we’re not as sharp as we thought we were. Eventually we always blame ourselves partly when things go wrong. Part of it always relates to self-esteem. The average human being sets goals, and when things go wrong, it undermines his self-esteem.
The logical thing to do when something is affecting us negatively is to stop doing it. A person who has major things in life go wrong decides to stop making goals. That way, he won’t feel worse. But unfortunately we can’t stop having goals because depression is when we do not have any goals.
Depression is when someone has no belief in the future. The reason is society teaches us to set your goals and achieve them. It’s a success model. Get our life right. We are always boasting about our achievements. But we may decide, we are not going to have any goals any more, because we feel worse every time we do not achieve a goal.
How do we fix depression?
We have to give the person another reason to have goals beside achieving them. How many big picture goals will I make this year? Fifty to 100? We will be lucky to achieve 20. The other 80 will be fantastic learning experiences. We define myself by my learning, not my achievement.
We work on the basis that people can learn to live better and to regain their equilibrium. That’s the nub of our approach. I suggest that if you know someone who is suffering depression that you get in touch with us. We are here to help,
