Beat Depression Before It Takes Root

Take these preventive measures now to avoid falling prey to depression! Don’t wait till it’s too late or too tough to make changes.

A recent event in the Bollywood industry has shaken a lot of people. Sushant Singh Rajput, a popular and successful actor was reported to have committed suicide at his residence in a posh locality of Mumbai. The reason why everyone is shocked is that there did not seem to be any apparent reason for his actions.

This seems to me to be a ‘wake-up call’ for us to redefine success. Today, when we talk about success, we speak about things like finances, popularity, fame, and recognition. However, in reality, success is truly an accomplishment of your own goals!

Having said that, this event also calls out to us to examine the amount of time, resources, and attention that we pay to our own mental health. About 800,000 people commit suicide every year across the world and more than 200,000 of these happen in India.

The leading cause of suicide includes depression, psychosis, impulsiveness, and loneliness.

We can take steps to prevent depression, loneliness, impulsiveness, and more just like we can eat healthily and exercise to maintain a healthy body.

If you are now convinced that you should take specific steps to prevent depression from taking root, here are a few tips to help you through the process.

Top Tips to Prevent Depression

Clinical depression is a clinical issue that needs to be treated with medication, psychotherapy, or other medical means. However, we can prevent ourselves from reaching a state of clinical depression. Positive thoughts and emotions counteract negative thoughts and feelings and lead to a more fulfilling and flourishing life.

The question, therefore, is to understand how we can combat these negative thoughts to replace them with positive ones.

Exercise

I mention this is as the first tip because it is the easiest to accomplish. A 30-minute walk is all that it takes to generate happy hormones like endorphins in the body. It also helps reduce cortisol (stress hormone) levels. The medication prescribed for clinical depression also involves chemicals that manage hormones. If we can ensure an upbeat mood by exercising for 30 minutes a day, why would we not do that to avoid feeling low?

Emo-diversity

Image by Michael Rühle from Pixabay

Research shows that if we become aware of our emotions in a more conscious manner and are able to identify and experience a wide variety of emotions, we are less likely to fall prey to feelings of depression. Some positive emotions that you can experiment with include the following:

• Joy – This is the emotion that you feel when you are safe and things are going your way. When you feel joy, your face lights up, in the moment.
• Gratitude – An emotion that you feel when you receive kindness from someone else. Today, we feel this emotionless and less each day and acknowledge it only when it comes from unexpected quarters. Keeping a Gratitude Diary is a great way to include this emotion in your basket.
• Serenity – Remember the time you went to the beach and lay back and just enjoyed the cool sea breeze on your skin? That’s the feeling of being serene! Savor such moments even in your regular day by curling up on a comfortable chair with a book or your favorite movie.
• Curiosity – Not the gossipy kind of curiosity but the one that leads you to learn more is an emotion that will open you up to a world of wonder and amazement. It helps you explore the world around you and opens you up to the diversity that exists in thought, emotion, beliefs, and cultures.
• Hope – A great positive emotion to inculcate in yourself when times are tough and things are not really going your way. It motivates you towards your goal and your desire. Do differentiate hope from expectations, because the latter can be harmful if things do not go your way!
• Amusement – Another great emotion, this one helps you see the lighter side of life and enjoy it. Discrepancies, weirdness, and funny jokes are things you can be aware of and pay attention to, in order to enhance your sense of amusement.
• Pride – (and not conceit) This emotion is particularly helpful in increasing the positive quotient of your mind. When you feel proud of making a difference to someone else, it feels expansive. You feel as if your heart can tear out of your body an envelope much more than you thought capable. Allow it to happen to you!
• Awe – This is an emotion we feel when we see or hear about something that is larger than life itself. Seeing awe-inspiring images of the Eiffel Tower or experiencing the Himalayas or the Niagara Falls can overwhelm and make you feel humbled. No doubt trekkers continue to go back to experience the transcendent moments that they have in the lofty mountains despite the hardships! If you cannot go someplace, take an ‘Awe-Walk’ and look around you on a walk and find wonder in nature!
• Love – A complicated emotion and often misinterpreted, love is such a powerful emotion that it can actually change our body chemistry! Understand it and expand it to feel it!

Thought Policing

There are more than 60,000 thoughts that go through an average human mind in a day. We are hardly aware of all of them. Have you ever wondered where these thoughts come from? If we are not aware of our thoughts, who is actually generating them? Why is it that you suddenly start thinking about a specific thing in the past or contemplating about something that may happen in the future?

If we do not learn to control our thoughts, the process of thought generation becomes involuntary. These thoughts run all over the place in our heads. Given the kind of news and media we are exposed, the thoughts are invariably about conspiracies, corruption, traumas, atrocities, health hazards, epidemics, divorces, suicides, and the end of the world. How can one stay calm, peaceful, and happy with such a bombardment of bad news?

How does one control thoughts?

• The first step is to be consciously aware of the thoughts coming into your head.
• The second step is to ‘STOP’ yourself as soon as you become conscious of a negative and unhelpful thought.
• The third is to distract yourself with something that is interesting, productive, and meaningful. (you will need to spend some time figuring out what those activities are for you)

This is a technique that is often used to help people divert their mind towards positive thoughts to silence the inner critic. Finding productive and interesting things to do gives more meaning to your life and keeps you away from nihilistic thoughts!

Controlling your thoughts controls your emotions, and your emotions control your actions!

Laugh and Cry

Laugh out loud and cry heartily. Benefits of laughing include increased serotonin levels, better immune system, better circulation, and reduced anxiety and depression. Benefits of crying include stress reduction, reduced blood pressure, increased oxytocin (care hormone), and endorphins (yes, the same hormones produced when you exercise). Crying also helps you soothe yourself when there is no one around to provide the comfort you need.

Depending on your mood, put on some comedy shows and laugh out loud (as loud as you can, even if you are alone) or listen to some sad songs and cry your heart out and see how light you feel after!

Hope these points help you in keeping negative thoughts in check so you can have a happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life!