and avoid difficult work.
Socially it is quite common to withdraw from relationships and normal social contact. Many let their personal appearance deteriorate and withdraw from usual activities.
Chemically: some people have adverse emotional reactions to toxins that they encounter. Alcohol is a well-known depressant. Different people might experience a negative reaction to medications. Women may experience natural depression during the monthly cycle or after childbirth.
In sum, we may not know the exact cause but that does not mean that we need to live with it. We can do a lot of things to reduce and even eradicate the symptoms. So what are the options?
Key 1: Work with your Physician to develop a supportive pharmaceutical approach that suits your needs and supports your efforts to beat depression once and for all.
PHARMACEUTICAL ASSISTANCE
I recommend that you visit your medical practitioner to benefit from the assistance that pharmaceuticals can provide, at least in the initial phases of your journey through to overcoming depression. Sometimes a prescription can provide quick relief and allow you to move forward with your life. You may find that the prescription doses getting smaller and smaller as you proceed with your efforts. Work closely with your physician for the approach that works best for you. There is no shame to taking medications if your body needs them.
Natural vitamins may also work well for you.
There are also other measures you might explore. You might attend self-help groups or work with a psychoanalyst. Often times, ‘talking therapies’, without or without chemical support, can assist you in working through the problem.
The purpose of this book is to explore a wide variety of solutions so that you can beat this thing once and for all. You may pick and chose methods that work for you. Implementing one primary methodology or finding a variety of remedies that work in unison to defeat this enemy is the goal.
Key 2: You have the keys to your house. Control Your Keys
Foundational Concept: You have the keys to your house.
YOU … NEED … to control them.
Keep them in YOUR pocket.
Do you remember when you received the keys to your first car, your first apartment, and your first home? Putting them in your pocket felt good. They were yours. With them came a sense of ownership, empowerment, excitement, satisfaction and even success.
It time to think of yourself in those exact same terms. You have the keys to ‘your’ house in your hand. Your body is your primary house. Its emotions, feelings, attitude and actions are the rooms and decorations within. You can use your keys to lock or unlock the doors of your rooms, its emotions and everything about you. You can walk into the room of depression, or you can close the door on it. You have the power. At this point, you may have just a few keys or many.
In this book, I am going to provide you with a variety of keys that you can chose from. You can insert some into today’s locks. You can leave others until later. Whatever you decide, it is up to you.
Perhaps you have been spending too much time in your depression room. You may have wanted to do some tasks in other rooms, you may have wanted to explore the attic, but this room seemed to hold you. In reality, it does not have the power to control you. You have the key in your hand and can do with it whatever you choose. Now is the time to actually start doing different things. In reading this book, you have already begun launching yourself; now keep going forward with a new future in your mind. Your future is all about how you handle your keys and your choices.
Key 3: Set Boundaries around your keys and your heart.
Know that everyone has legitimate “reasons” why they are facing depression. And I know that facing down depression is not easy. So what can you do? You cannot accomplish everything at once. You must do it in stages.
To give you some freedom to move along your pathway, I suggest that you set up a set of boundaries that will initially restrict your path to a narrow perspective. Know that everyone needs emotional, physical and mental boundaries. Boundaries help us define ourselves in our world along with finding our place and purpose. It is in setting boundaries that we grow with new insights as to differences between how we have been and how we want to be feeling. Gain success in one small avenue and then expand.
Setting boundaries sets emotional limits on your feelings and is an effective way to manage and gain control over your emotions. Boundaries will assist in providing you with cognitive insights into your emotional pain and over reactions. Your ability to discern differences will increase, as will your capacity for tolerating the problems of life.
As an example, you may observe your life and notice that your depression is frequently sourced in external factors. Things do not go smoothly in your life, upsets happen frequently and you cannot control or handle them, yet.
In this case, the boundary you would want to set would be between you and the upset. Put an addition on your house and designate it as the room that particular upset will reside in until you have time to deal with it. Remember Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. When problems beset her, her response was a determination to “think about that tomorrow.”
This approach works. It disencumbers you from the distress of dealing with the uncontrollable now. It frees you to focus on things you can control, which in turn empowers you. As you become more and more empowered, you will be able to better control the upsets in your life. In the meantime, you have relegated them to “their place,” even if only temporarily.
Some of you might be facing internal warriors. These come in many forms such as self-loathing, fear, shame, and so many others.
Decide to put these in a Steamer Chest in the Depression room. Remember those nostalgic wooden storage chests that some people place in rooms as coffee tables, side tables or use for general storage. They are old and comfortable and give any setting an ‘at home’ feeling. They are a perfect holding place for your “old” self-concepts. They can be stored and locked away for the time being, then dug out later to see if they are still relevant.
Take a moment more and consider “What are the things, events, relationship issues, and work/family interactions that make me sad or depressed?
Make a decision to place these on one of the shelves on the bookcase in your depression room. You may need to refer to them on a momentary basis, every once in a while, but for the most part, they can be left in the depression room for as long as expedient.
Now, as you leave, lock the door on your depression room and attach a sign to the outside of the door that notifies everyone “I am perfectly imperfect and that is OK.” Now, every time you are tempted to enter the depression room you can read the sign and decide to go back later at a more convenient time.
You have now set the stage for your success. You have temporarily locked the door on troublesome factors and you are stepping out along the path to an exciting new future.
Let’s begin by examining the physical location where depression starts.
FACTOID: “You am perfectly imperfect and that is OK.”
