BREAKING THE CHAINS OF DEPRESSION

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Are you or someone you know living in a prison without bars?  Do you feel like you are being sucked into a deep black hole and everything good and loving around you is getting sucked down with you?  Are the chains of depression holding you back from living your life with purpose, and destroying your relationships?   

People have a spirit, a soul, and they live in a physical body.  When a person is in depression, there could be a physical cause, an emotional cause, or perhaps a spiritual condition.  It can also be a combination of all three of these causes.  Whichever it is, it can touch every area of an individual’s life, and they find themselves trapped in a prison without bars.   Some people describe depression as a black hole that swallows up everything around  them.

Some cases of depression may be caused by a chemical imbalance and antidepressant drugs may be necessary. Research has shown that there is a higher rate of healing in people who combine therapy with medication. Antidepressants may be used because the individual wants to avoid dealing with some unresolved issues.  The pill alone may seem easier than working through deep and sometimes painful wounds that are the root cause of the symptom of depression.

Counseling will create a safe place to deal with these difficult life issues and with someone you can trust. Emotional depression can become a person’s reactions to difficult life circumstances, and that reaction quickly becomes automatic, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.  A counselor can help you learn to replace the negative emotions with positive reactions. 

 Some of the issues that are causes of depression include: biological factors, abuse, life stresses, anger, unresolved guilt and shame, negative thinking, feelings of hopelessness, and loss. The answer is to make the effort to work on the root cause of your symptom of depression instead of being imprisoned in hopelessness and despair.  

Depression is real and the pain that someone is living with and the feelings that they deal with are real.  Depression is no respecter of persons and it affects people who are famous, unemployed, wealthy, poor, those with degrees, with great jobs, young and old.  Depression does not discriminate, and people from every ethnic background, gender, and status can find themselves spiraling down that dark hole, living in a prison without walls, or sinking in a sea of despair.  Here are just a few of the things that someone in depression deals with on a daily basis:

• Everything they try, as simple as it may seem, is hard, 

• the normal tasks of the day can seem too difficult to deal with

• lacking in motivation

• trouble sleeping

• negative thoughts

• Most people dealing with depression spend their lives pretending to be happy. 

THE GOOD NEWS: depression is treatable.  Talking to someone is the best way to get necessary help you need.