Ever heard of Professor Robert Sapolsky? He is the author of “Why zebras don't get ulcers” and a groundbreaking researcher from Stanford's University.
He purposes depression is one of the most damaging diseases one can experience. Why? Because, as he explains, even someone with a terminal cancer has the potential to look back at his life and be capable of taking something valuable out of the experience. “This allowed me to realize how much I value life. It made me realize how much my friends really matter to me” they might say. But for someone with depression the situation is different.
Why is that?
Because of the way depression affects the very function of the brain.
Since depression affects the ability of our brain to feel good, depression might feel like being forced to go through the agonies of dying, while being forced to stay alive, all the time.
Yes. It's a terrible disease. Yet, it is a natural occurring process. This is the first surprising fact about depression.
A Natural Occurring Process?
It may be hard to accept how something that takes away our joy of living, fills our bodies with pain and aches and our minds with suicidal thoughts, could be natural. If you are having doubts, this is understandable. I warmly invite you to continue reading and verify my assertion for yourself.
Suppose I'm hammering down a nail, get distracted, and I hit my finger really hard. What will happen next? I'll feel excruciating pain, my finger will began to swell, it'll become purple dark and I'll be jumping and screaming in pain for a while. After many days my finger's movement might still be restricted and I'll probably still be experience pain.
When an hammer hits a human finger, would you consider these reactions as normal or abnormal?
If a hammer has just hit my finger and I scream, does that mean that I'm broken? The finger might, but I certainly am not. What I'm going trough is a natural process all humans go through when they're aiming for the nail but hit the finger instead.
In fact, to the contrary, if we were to witness a person hit their finger really hard with a hammer and then just go on with their life as if nothing had happened, what would we conclude? That this person was abnormal.
In exactly the same way, depression is the natural, normal, end result of putting a human systematically through trying circumstances without also giving him the necessary tools for him to cope with his difficulties.
For example, If you've lost something of value, something that fulfilled many of your needs, how would you experience this loss? It is only natural that you would feel sad. If you have yet not found another way, or ways, to satisfy those needs, how can you regain emotional serenity? It won't happen. This is not abnormal.
Let us imagine it this way:
If you've lost a friend, you've not just lost a person you can replace with another. No. You've lost a person with whom you've shared countless moments. Someone with whom you had shared a strong emotional connection. You will miss his presence, the appreciation you felt coming from him. You have lost a person to whose life you could contribute. All the joy of giving to him and receiving from him and all the meaning you had constructed throughout the years is suddenly gone. You search for him but he is nowhere to be found. Your world became darker, your soul emptier.
Would it be normal if you had lost your precious friend and just moved on with your life just like nothing had happened?
No. Not a chance.
You would need to be given the necessary tools to deal with your loss in a constructive way.
You'd need a loving listener, someone who could make you feel comfortable expressing your grief. You might then learn about how important it is to really feel the relief that comes from knowing that all that this diseased person meant to you is understood and valued by those that remain alive around you. Eventually you would become able to feel the void within you, experience the sadness, but still be capable of moving on with your life. Perhaps, even becoming able to look back and feel a kind of sweet melancholy as you remind yourself of some of the countless good memories you once shared.
The mourning process would also include making sure that your intimate social circle included people with whom you could look for comfort and empathy anytime, as needed.
You'd need to mourn your loss and this might take months or years.
Would this mean that you are abnormal?
No way. Your pain would just be a testimony of how much your friend meant to you and how much he was loved by you.
Extreme circumstances, like a great loss or another highly stressful situation, must be properly dealt with. If not, they will be factors contributing to the depletion of our emotional strength.
I once read that depression can be considered the disease of the strong for that when others would have had given up, the strong person kept going until he could bear it no more. I wholeheartedly agree with this.
_People that don't hammer down nails don't often hit their fingers.__ People that run away from difficulties don't often get depression. People that don't invest their sweat and tears into a true friendship may never have to go trough the emotional depletion of losing a dear friend.
What conclusion do we reach?
If you are going trough depression, this happened because you have been has gone through a lot. And you've gone trough a lot because you have chosen not to run away.
You are not broken. You have always done the best you could with the knowledge you had available at the time. That doesn't sound like broken does it?
Why are you depressed, than?
Depression entered your life in the moment you passed a certain threshold. In the moment your difficulties and unmet needs were far superior to your remaining strength, you got depressed.
What does this means? It means that you began to feel and exhibit the symptoms that are normal to feel and exhibit when a human being reaches, and passes through, that threshold.
For some people this threshold might be higher, for others lower. But we all have it. It's a human thing. A normal human characteristic. No one has infinite strenght.
Take food away from a human long enough and he will be unable to meet his need for nourishment. He will become thin and debil. Remove his access to water and he will be unable to meet his need for fluids. He will end up dehydrated. Similarly, put him systematically through difficult circumstances and he will not have the time or the opportunities necessary for emotional and physical recover. As the wear and tear of life accumulates so do his chances of going over the thereshlod and getting depressed.
As Professor Sapolsky explains, research has found that going through 4 or 5 highly stressful and life changing events is about the maximum the human spirit can tolerate before breaking down into depression. In a future post we will be learning why.
The conclusion couldn't be clearer. You are depressed because:
1- you were born a normal human being
2- you were, and perhaps continue to, being put trough extreme circumstances.
Once this truth is accepted we are fully prepared to answer a much more important question:
How do you get out of depression?
In order to do that we need to understand a fundamental truth about this disease: Depression is a process, and processes can be interrupted, even reversed.
We will speak about why depression is a process in the next posts. This is a #philosophy of depression so to speak.
This was my first post ever here on steemit. Please follow me to get notified of my futher updates. This material is part of an unpublish work on #psychology wrote after many years exploring depression within myself and my loved ones. I wholeheartyl believe that the key to overcoming depression is understanding its exact inner workings and this is what I will be sharing with you in these series of articles.
Please feel free to share this with anyone you believe might benefit from this.