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By June23
Depression is an illness and needs to be acknowledged as such.
It is not a reason to be ashamed. The reason so many people
fail to seek help for their depression is that they are
ashamed. Unfortunately, this is one of the feelings associated
with depression anyway and makes the illness difficult to
acknowledge.
If you are constantly feeling particularly low, well-meaning
friends might tell you to “snap out of it” or even start to
get
irritated by your mood. Your depression will feed off this
negativity and you start to wonder why you can’t just “snap
out
of it”. You then start to feel that there’s something wrong
with
you because it should be so easy and it’s just “not right”
that
you feel so bad all the time. Well, it’s not right and there
is
something wrong with you. You have a medical condition and you
deserve treatment in the same way as any other patient. If you
had a cold for six months would you ignore it and hope it
would
pass? No, you would dose yourself up with anything you could
find and maybe see a doctor to find out if there’s an
underlying reason for it to last so long.
Depression is sadness that lasts too long. Everyone is sad at
some point in their lives but depression is more than that. It
is a feeling that you can’t bring yourself up from the bottom.
In the end you give up trying. People start to avoid you. You
feel worse. You need to find external help to treat the
problem
in the same way as you would if you had a long-lasting cold.
You
could try herbal remedies – there are some in your pharmacy –
or
you could see your doctor. There may be an underlying physical
cause for your depression.
If your doctor cannot help you they may refer you for
counselling. Don’t be embarrassed to go for counselling but do
make sure you are comfortable with your counsellor. If not,
try
another one. Counselling should not be discounted because you
don’t feel comfortable with your first choice of practitioner.
In everyday life you will naturally find that you get on with
some people and clash with others. You cannot afford to have a
personality clash with your counsellor. On the other hand you
must be sure that it is a personality clash and not just that
you don’t agree with what they are saying. A general rule is
to
go with your instincts. If you like the person and seemed to
get
on well in the first couple of sessions then stick with it
because they might just have touched on the root cause of your
problem.
In some cases, acknowledging depression may be difficult
because you have lived with it so long that you don’t know
whether it is depression or not. If you have grown up with
depression it is possible not to realise that you are actually
depressed because you have no concept of how normal people
should feel. You may feel angry all the time or you may feel
like going to the middle of an empty field and simply
screaming. You may feel anxious, have trouble sleeping or even
sleep too much. You may think that your family would be better
off without you (and actually believe that to be true) and may
have considered running away or suicide. You may worry about
death all the time (yours or someone else’s) and not let
yourself be happy just in case…… (or even “I must enjoy this
now in case………..”). If you are feeling any or all of the above
then you need to consider talking to someone. Even if it is
just a friend or family member to start with, they may be able
to advise you and encourage you to seek professional help.
Once you have acknowledged that you have depression please
remember that it is a medical condition and can be cured. You
don’t have to feel this way for ever. Nobody actually thinks
of
you the way you think they do. Talk to someone. Seek and
accept
help and you will find that there is a different way of seeing
life.
About The Author: June23 maintains the Depression Online Site
www.depressiononlinesite.com - a collection of articles
for people living either with depression or with someone with
depression.
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