How do you deal with depression?
Q.The hard part is to tie the shoelaces on, do the warm up, and take the first few steps until you get going. But when you're done, you won't even remember what depression is. Do it regularly, and you'll hardly ever be depressed anymore.
A.the most simplistic solution to a severe and chronic medical condition I've ever heard -- and it just points out how little most people know -- or understand -- about real depression. It's often said that this is in part because the ailment is so unfortunately called by a word people use in normal conversation to describe normal feelings; "I didn't get the job I wanted, so now I'm so depressed," "my father died, I'm so depressed," etc. Clincial depression is *nothing* like that at all. A book I read about dealing with it by a Buddhist teacher perhaps put it best; it's about the dePRESSion of normal feelings. As if all of your emotions have been squeezed out of you until all that is left is despair. When you are truly, clinically, medically depressed, getting up out of bed to go to the bathroom can literally take all of the energy left in you. The very idea of exercise or eating or anything else that's remotely constructive is so far from your mind ... if you try to think about it when you are depressed, you can't even believe you ever moved voluntarily at all. You want to feel *something,* anything besides hopeless, but you can't. And that's the scariest part of all. I've always thought that people who manage to commit suicide must have been one tragic step away from recovery at that very moment, because to do so would require so much effort and concentration -- something you just don't have when the black beast has complete control of you. I agree completely. Psychotherapy can be a great thing. And this is exactly what I would like to point out: The causes for depression also have to be treated. Not just take pills and thatīs it. (I know some people who do self-medication like this and this is dagerous even if itīs just a natural medicine like St. Johnīs Wart or Kava Kava (which I found out causes liver damage and was prohibited here in Germany only recently). Well, gee, *there's* a very helpful comment, Laura. Indeed, you seem to be more of an expert in depression and most everything else than anybody else in this group (except, perhaps, for physical fitness). You are soooo right. Most of us silly chickens out here do not have the privilege of either knowing or understanding what the utterly life-sucking anguish of extended and recurring depression feels like, nor has any of us ever been repeatedly on the verge of suicide because of it, either at some point or throughout a lengthy multi-decade period in our lives. Yup, everybody else but you is much too simple to tell the difference between a passing mood low and the utter helplessness of the real thing. I guess that's what happens when we don't read books by Buddhist teachers, to teach us how it is all about the dePRESSion of normal feelings.
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