Making Sense of Your Depression
Conquering That Void Deep Inside Us
Have you ever felt that feeling down deep inside of you, where you know things are not right and you are not well? You literally feel stuck in place, not able to move, not able to speak, or see past darkness. You have loud thoughts visit your mind and those “voices” are not your friends. Negativity permeates the air and you feel physical pain, making you not want to eat, sleep, or be in anyone’s presence. Even the things that used to make you happy have no joy.
Regardless of how your experience feels in your body, depression strikes us all differently and often in varying degrees. Being attentive to the signs of depression and really having a plan of attack against it is helpful to ensure that you or your loved ones don’t get lost in the void.
Depression as a Presence
Depression often feels like an energy vampire. And by that, I mean the force that enters your psyche, your body, and your spirit that tells you everything is much too difficult to bother overcoming. Depression can drain what feels like every ounce of motivation, intention, or excitement. Sometimes this can happen overnight, and sometimes it can creep up on you little by little, stealthily, until you don’t recognize yourself or your actions anymore.
Depression can manifest itself in every area of your life – this might look like fatigue at home on the couch, irritation at work and lack of focus, or not contacting your friends or loved ones. The first step in making sense of and managing depressive symptoms is giving it a name (like, energy vampire) that places it outside of you in order to make it feel like a worthy opponent to gain your power back.
Depression as a Pointer
While depression is undoubtedly something that happens to us—especially based on what research has found in how it impacts our nervous system, learning centers, and neurotransmitter makeup—you can still use your experience of this as a way to guide you towards healing. Depression can become a physical experience that stems from mental or emotional anguish. If we can tap into our bodies and listen to cues such as fatigue, loss of appetite or sleep, trouble focusing, and physical pain (such as headaches or back pain), we will have more information about the challenges we face. From there, we can connect emotional experiences to these physical knowing’s to seek help and assume power over our bodies once again.
Since depression can show up differently in each person, it is helpful to take a physical, mental, and emotional inventory of what happens when you feel depressed. This could look like journaling, recording voice memos, engaging in mindfulness or body scans, or using tools to help name emotions. As you seek a space of clarity and insight, ensure you are also in an emotionally and physically safe place (e.g., a comfortable chair, outside in nature, wrapped in your favorite blanket). The advantage of spending time narrating your experience can validate and explore better what you are feeling and thinking. Similar to individual therapy, holding up a mirror to your process through writing, talking, or meditating, unlocks our inner knowledge and intuition.
Most of all, remember -- you know yourself best, even when things feel out of control.
Tools for When Depression Visits You
The most powerful tool for conquering depression is movement. When we move our way through things (versus the age-old saying of “sleep on it”), it allows us to shift through, stay present for, and bear witness to our emotional and mental process instead of checking out and abandoning ourselves.
Move your body. Exercise, dance, walking in nature, and other forms of creative movement are ways of coping that access our inner playfulness found from childhood. Movement is freedom, so take a walk in your local park, dance to your favorite music, or choose a low-intensity form of exercise that gets your blood flowing.
Move your mind. Stretching the corners of our mind through journaling, mindfulness, or other forms of writing forces us to put words to experiences. Reading books, academic or self-help articles on the internet, or the words we wrote from our place of clarity, can remind us of our powerfulness.
Move your spirit. Our inner spirit/knowing/intuition thrives on connection with others. Joining with others through conversation, coffee/tea, activity, and sharing what’s on our mind can help you soothe the part of yourself that needs and depends on others. Depression tricks us into thinking that we need to withdraw and make ourselves small, so when you feel those feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations start to arise, push through and instead, connect to others.
As a therapist, I work primarily through solution-focused and narrative-therapy perspectives, which emphasize finding an individual’s unique strengths through the lens of telling your story. Through this lens, I encourage exploring and making sense of your own experience of depression, as well as how to recognize your specific bodily cues, external triggers, and other signs that it is taking over.
For more information on how individual therapy can help make sense of your experience with depression, visit us at www.havenfamilytherapy.com or schedule your complimentary consultation today!
