Overcoming Depression

Help and tips for getting over depression

Whitney Houston – A Tragedy

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Over this past weekend we learnt about the untimely death of the superstar Whitney Houston. What a tragedy for her family, her friends, all her fans and the music world. She really was a one-of-a-kind world-class singer. How very sad.

Watching the TV over the weekend I saw a rerun of an interview done with her about 10 years ago. “Are you addicted to …..”  and the interviewer gave a long list of possible addictions. Whitney, in a sheepish sort of way, replied “I don’t like to think of them as addictions, but rather bad habits that I can break .. ”  And break them she couldn’t. Although the autopsy to establish the exact cause of her death is still to happen, in the end these addictions ruined her life.

Addictions or bad habits?

Labeling an addiction as a bad habit is really a case of denial. And if you deny the truth of addictions, you let yourself off the hook of having to deal with the situation. A bad habit can quickly veer down the path to ‘addiction’ and at that stage, the addict has little or no control over what is happening to their body. The drug/alcohol is in control. Acknowledging that you are an addict, requires a degree of humility, and admitting that your life has sky-rocketed out of your control. You need help!

Calling an addiction a ‘bad habit’ implies that you are in control, a belief that is clearly not based in reality! Acknowledge the truth because it is the truth that will set you free!

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!

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How often are we given the advice ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!’ It’s a common saying meant to give encouragement.

HOWEVER it really isn’t very good advice. It’s actually very bad advice! Think about it. If you didn’t succeed in the first place, why just keep on doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again? Unless of course, you want to fail, and fail, over and over again.

I love this picture! If you want to succeed you need to reassess your ‘travel plans’, see where your original ‘road map’ might be wrong. Take the next exit to Success, rather than staying on the Highway to Failure.

My daughter has been battling to get her driver’s licence for quite a while now, but each time she tried, she failed. This was so disheartening for her and for me. She had been very loyal to her driving school, but in the end decided it was time for a change. Maybe a change in strategy would lead to success. It was time to change driving school. With that decision made, she booked for her drivers test again and passed with flying colors!

So, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, think of another strategy, and only then, try again!

Charles Dickens on Hardship

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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens – Worldwide,  people are celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of this very famous author. At the time he was writing there were only 60 books in print in England! (Time magazine February 6 2012) What a difference to modern times, where books no longer even go ‘out of print’ because of electronic text!

Dickens wrote stories of poverty, hardship, and even about a debtors prison. What interested me in particular was his final bit of legacy. He appointed his friend Forster to write his biography after his death. He felt so ashamed of his upbringing that he didn’t want his readers to know that it was his own life that inspired his writing, until after he died. The books were essentially about him. So after his death, this shock was revealed to his readers. He had seen his own father go to debtors jail and Dickens himself worked in a factory as a child.

What a story of a man who overcame adversity. So many people become a victim of their past, or their bad life experiences. Not so with Dickens. He used his bad experiences to create a better future. Only a person who really knew what hardship was like could so vividly portray the community of that time. What an example to follow.

So many people go through life with a victim mentality, an ‘if only’ mentality. ‘If only’ I had more money, then …. ‘if only’ my partner were nicer to me, then ….  and nothing comes after ‘then’… They have become victims of their past.

Try to think of the ‘if only ….’ attitudes that could be keeping you a victim of your circumstances, of your past. Change ‘if only …’ to something like ‘it would be nice if….’ and then get back to reality, creating a better future for yourself with what you have. ‘If only’ statements keep you focused on what you don’t have, rather than what you do have.

If you’ve experienced many difficulties, you’re the expert! Turn it around for good and use it to help others through their hard times!

Enjoy Your Cuppa Coffee!

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For all you Coffee Addicts! Good News or Bad News?

A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine (26 September 2011) reports that women who drink four or more mugs of caffeinated coffee a day have a 20% less risk of getting depression. Caffeine releases ‘dopamine’, the brain’s ‘happy hormone’.

This doesn’t mean that you should start using coffee as a kind of medication to overcome depression! What it does mean is that you really don’t need to get on a guilt trip for drinking coffee. Coffee does have quite a lot of bad press, but maybe if you’re overcoming depression, don’t add this to one of your ‘have-to-give-up’ lists. It can wait!

Years ago a friend of mine suffered from panic attacks every single morning while she was making school sandwiches for the kids. What an awful way to start the day! ‘Amy, do start your day with a nice strong cup of coffee?’ I asked. ‘Of course’, she replied. Bingo! I remembered reading a while back how coffee, drunk first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach can trigger panic attacks. Once she stopped this early morning adrenalin fix, the panic attacks stopped. What a simple solution!

Caffeine does have a short-term mood lift, and it also gives energy. That’s why it’s so often used as a stimulant when one has to stay awake.How many of us haven’t used coffee to stay up late at night to study! On the other hand, if you want a good night’s sleep, don’t think about drinking anything containing caffeine just before going to bed. Caffeine can cause sleep disturbances. If I have too many cups of coffee, after enjoying myself at a dinner party, I usually wake up at about 3 am feeling ‘tingly’ all over!

Coffee can cause a raised heart rate because of the caffeine, but the good news is that you won’t die from drinking coffee! There have been no reported cases of death from overdosing on coffee – you’d actually need to very quickly drink over 80 cups of coffee to do that.

Everything in moderation is probably sound advice!

Change the way you think!

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Change the way you think and your mood will change. Sound a bit puzzling? Let me use an analogy of driving a car as you head on the journey of overcoming depression.

Driving your car!

You might wonder what on earth driving your car has got to do with overcoming depression. To learn to drive a car, you probably went for driving lessons. You thought hard about taking out the clutch and putting your foot on the accelerator, so you didn’t stall or grate the gears!  And if you did you just had to practice a bit harder.

And most importantly you keep to the correct side of the road!

Driving your Life!

When we were growing up the people around us taught us how to ‘drive’, or live our livese, what to do to get on well in life. At that stage we had no idea if we were being taught well or badly! If our parents said something was right, it MUST be right! To children parents are ‘god-like’! Now some of our ‘life-skill’ instructors (otherwise known as parents) weren’t that smart because they also had been taught badly when they were growing up.

So now in adulthood we drive ‘our lives’ off the main highway and onto the dirt tracks, falling into potholes along the way. We’re bad drivers. This really means that it’s time for some self-examination, seeing which our beliefs about how we relate to this world are really true. If untrue they need to be chucked out!

Think of some of the criticisms you received as a child that emotionally handicapped you. Thoughts might be something like, ‘nice children don’t get angry’, ‘big boys don’t cry’, ‘children are to be seen and not heard’. Throw these thoughts away, they’ll take you into the potholes!

Some people say, ‘well, that’s just the way I am, can’t do anything about it, it’s too difficult to change’. Yes, it’s true, change is difficult. But if you moved to a country where you had to drive on the other side of the road, you would learn very quickly! Why? Because you value your life and really don’t want to crash.

Same applies with our lives, try listening to your inner thoughts. See if the engine is healthy and if not, start fixing it up! Overcoming depression? Check up on your driving!

Lovely chatting to you! Be sure to look out for more info. next week!

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