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Hello dear readers of my blog! If you read my article “What are the symptoms to determine the state of deep depression and why is inaction dangerous for a person?”, and found signs of this complex disease, I want to talk about how to find a way out of depression on your own. In order not to resort to drug treatment and to improve the quality and completeness of experiencing sensations in your life.
Recommendations
1. Recognition
When living through depression, there is a kind of numbness of the soul, when a lot of feelings are confused, which are very difficult and do not want to live. This leads to the fact that a person simply ceases to feel anything. Therefore, first of all, it is worth having the courage to admit reality, your well-being, because depression is a disease, it is not shameful and not terrible, and it is quite possible to cope with it.
And in order to heal, it is still worth giving the opportunity to feelings to do their work. And this means that no matter how painful it is, it is very important to live through grief, and pain, and anxiety, and other emotions, in order to make room for something good, for pleasant changes. And then, one morning you will wake up and enjoy the new day, no matter how nonsense this phrase may seem at the moment.
First steps towards understanding
- Choose a place and time when you can be alone with yourself, when no one will disturb you. Take a sheet and try to write or draw what is hidden deep inside you. Listen to your feelings, ask yourself the question: “How do I feel now? What is happening to me? What feelings have I pushed away so as not to experience? If the answers don’t come to mind, to write out the sensations that arise, allow your hand to represent the images that arise and the fantasies of what it could be.
- Whatever sensations arise, do not resist them, even if it becomes unbearably painful, just stop fighting them. Because, ignoring and not feeling, we do not get rid of them, but on the contrary, we allow them to live inside ourselves for a very long time. After all, if we don’t see something, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, does it? Having lived longing, pain, helplessness, grief and so on, we will get out to the exit without getting stuck halfway, depriving ourselves of life.
- The state of health will be depressed, but let it be. Suffer, if you want to cry — cry. Even if you are a man, believe me, holding on to emotions then results in outbursts of rage, impotence or alcohol addiction. Discard the ancient belief that men do not cry, because we are all human and we all get hurt. Find an opportunity to cry out your feelings, scream out (take a bath and scream into the water), get rid of them, for example, by beating a pillow or tearing sheets of paper into small pieces on which you depict your experiences.
When you become aware of your feelings, you get information about what exactly is happening in life, you can use it to get to know yourself better, and then it becomes possible to find options for getting out of a hopeless situation.
2.Recovery
The next step will be to restore our emotional and physical state, which means that we will declare a battle to insomnia. I already told you how to deal with it in the article. “What if you wake up very early and don’t know what to do about it?”.
Here are some other ways to help you relax and fall asleep:
- When you went to bed, but the dream does not come, and a lot of thoughts are spinning in your head — do not resist, but rather, let them be. Try to imagine that a warm ball has formed inside you, which rolls slowly over all parts of the body: head, shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, buttocks and legs. Exploring every part of the body, and if it comes across a tense area, let it linger on it in order to relieve this tension with its warmth. And repeat as many times as you need to completely relax.
- If you woke up in the middle of the night or can’t fall asleep at all, come up with some kind of business in advance for yourself that you don’t want to do, but you need to. And without giving yourself indulgence, proceed to it immediately. In extreme cases, you will finally do what you have been putting off for a long time. But most often it happens that a person falls asleep, because sleep is the best way to avoid an unpleasant event that the psyche will not miss.
3. Sports
Try to overcome your resistance and go in for sports. This is the best medicine for any situation. You will be able to release the accumulated energy, which only destroys your body, and, consequently, emotions such as anxiety, anger, disappointment and pain. During sports, any, endorphins are released in the body, which, as we know, are called hormones of joy. I already talked about this in the article. How to stop your psychological addiction to adrenaline.
If you combine, for example, running and swimming, with the help of which you will spend the accumulated energy with meditation, you will achieve tremendous success. Because it is she who will help you get closer to yourself, find inner balance and harmony. Regarding the usefulness of meditation, I also wrote an article, you can learn more about all the positive effects of practice «What is meditation and what will it give to the common man».
4.Love
I have already said that during a deep depression a person loses interest in life, pleasure from it and joy. Therefore, your task, although at such a moment it is very difficult to perform, is to remember and remind yourself of what you love and have loved. Again, take a piece of paper and start writing out the points, you can do it in a different order and on different days:
- What you enjoyed, any little thing that could please you before, even just a breath of wind or falling snow. It doesn’t have to be something big, like a big purchase or a trip abroad. A happy person is one who is able to enjoy insignificant moments that many simply do not notice.
- What you love, for example, is. Yes, it’s so banal, but believe me, a person during a life of depression is sometimes unable to name even his favorite dishes, sometimes simply losing his taste. Therefore, strain yourself and remember what you loved to eat as a child, what dishes delighted you.
- Think about what activities calmed you and gave you a sense of satisfaction? What did you like to do or create, but, mired in feelings of emptiness and pain, you just stopped doing it? Maybe weaving, painting, fishing or car repair helped you to be alone with yourself, leaving an aftertaste in the form of satisfaction from the process and the result?
- What dreams did you have or still have? What would you like today, in a month or in general? Yes, in such a state, sometimes there are no other thoughts and desires, except for dying, but still try to remember what you used to fantasize about when falling asleep? What were the unfulfilled childhood desires?
Once you’ve made this list, try to implement it as much as possible. Perhaps, over time, you will feel the taste for life, step by step approaching a completely opposite state, when there are many desires and excitement, and energy is in full swing.
5.Environment
Although during the blues you don’t want to communicate with anyone, but still only on your own, without receiving support from loved ones, it will not be so easy to get out of a state of despair and emptiness. Maybe there is a person in your environment who can just listen to you, in whose company you do not have to pretend to be cheerful when you can just be yourself?
Or did you push your family away during this period, not letting them into your experiences? Maybe it’s time to admit that you can not cope with yourself, and you need support? Haven’t played with kids in a while? It is likely that a joint walk will captivate you and bring back the forgotten joy.
6.Health
A healthy lifestyle will help restore the immune system and in general your physical well-being. If you do not have hypochondria, which I already talked about in a previous article, then it will be just useful to pay attention to your body. For example, treat your teeth, heart, undergo examinations and drink vitamins.
Eat healthy food, it will give strength and improve overall well-being. But addictions will have to be overcome, otherwise you will only aggravate the emotional disorder. How to deal with addiction to alcohol, you can read on the blog «Symptoms of alcohol addiction and how to deal with it yourself».
Conclusion
Psychology has long discovered such a pattern — the more you fight pain, the longer it will hurt. And this means that if you forbid your soul to suffer, you will thus deny the importance of what is happening to it. If this condition arose in the event of the loss of a loved one, work, or after a series of failures, allow yourself to grieve. There is no need to avoid feelings, because blocking them just leads to a complicated emotional disorder. Joy to you and strength to return to life and enjoy it.