The word depression doesn’t mean anything on it’s own, until people raise it from the floor of obscurity with reflective words offering it a description and thus a purpose to be communicated.
Do something better with your lives than stare into this bottomless vortex of boredom and find something that interests you instead. -ShamanOfHigh
Intro
Having more recently been through what I consider tough realizations, I took down notes to help others skip over theirs more smoothly, everyone experiences similar problems.
Crying is an acceptable way to vent your feelings so you may consider trying that as it releases endorphins so If you’re already sad, this post is likely to make you feel worse before you feel better.
The first question I ask anyone dealing with depression is this:
“have you lost something/someone in the past, or do you fear something of the future?”
Either of these typically cause depression and/or anxiety.
Definition
Sadness is not depression. If you’re crying you’re not depressed.
Depression is a state of feeling no other typical emotion such as happiness or sadness.
When someone’s expectations are broken the person needs time to compose them-self alone and this often requires disconnecting from close friends and family until the problem is dealt with. This is a natural and intelligent defense mechanism that temporarily pushes yourself out of more possible danger.
Neutralization
The world sucks and you should be cynical with low expectations. People are not worth anything, material stuff is not worth anything, life has no intrinsic value and family/friends are just people you fell into circumstances with. The only thing that does have value is drama which can be derived from greed, stupidity, malice or neglect. It’s a backwards concept and I’m working to change people’s perceptions but for now this works in our favor to help realize we are being depressed due to what must be overrated like everything else.
Something bad happen? Become stronger from your experience, learn and gain advantages no one else has.
I for one would encourage exploring all types of feelings for the purposes of gaining perspective but only to the point that you ‘get what you came for’. If you decide you need to experiment with some weird and dangerous or morbid ideas, your frontal cortex (the virtual reality simulator in your head) is absolutely the place to do it in, now or later, where no one else will get hurt from the outcome like when playing a violent video game.
If you simulate morbid thoughts a few times they won’t bother you as long as bottling them up will because guilt will press them into you until you’re stressed and don’t know why.
Rebuilding
Ask yourself if you can envisage a better life, make sure the answer is yes.
Figure out exactly what mindset you will need to adopt, or what actions you will need to accomplish in order to get to this new point.
Find something obscure to enjoy, and enjoy it more than everyone else.
If they start liking it to, you get to be known as the trendsetter to be followed.
Plan a bit out, but do not continually change direction with your concepts. This will often lead into a cycle of generating new ideas and never actually stopping on one you like. Just choose a direction that sounds nice and move on to step 3.
Creating ‘that difference’
It’s time to roll out your plan.
If you do not act on your new plan to improve the world up to your level of expectations, it will remain bleak and boring for everyone, this may make you depressed.
Anyone can think of a cool idea, ideas are cheap and come by the dozen.
Anyone can start a project. Lots of people get 10% of the way through only to stop short.
Do.
Just start and don’t stop for a good 10 minutes, working on whatever it is you’re aiming to complete according to exactly how it looks in your head. If it feels boring at first try to remember what your goal is, you need a purpose in life, but life isn’t going to give you one.
Everyone will love something you make if you put this much effort into it. I used to think “wahhhh, putting effort in means life isn’t worth living” but I’ve come to genuinely think ‘working’ to some degree is less effort than not working, because trying get by on nothing is a lot of work, and the reaction from others after you develop something innovative or entertaining is a great reward.
DOUGLAS WENTWORTH – Armchair philosopher
Outro
That’s all there is to it.
My life did certainly suck for at least a number of months, but the goal I set was to make my life feel better until it outweighed the bad by working at numerous tasks simultaneously and networking them together, and that is going to take a long time and spawn some amazing work. So far so good, trying itself leaves me more confident. Now to keep it up for a while, and see if I can’t get this to a level of self-employment.
shamanofhigh 