Is There Anything Good about Depression
Have you ever wondered if depression serves a natural purpose in our lives? We spend so much time and money trying to get rid of depression symptoms, could there be a benefit to being depressed. You’ve most likely heard people say that there is a good and bad side to everything, so could there be anything good about depression? To answer this, we will have to define depression, and then state why we get depressed at all.
What is depression? Depression is characterized by feeling unhappy, sad, and feeling down, and feelings of low self-worth. Depression can be brought on by mood disorders that manifest in those feelings already mentioned, and by feelings associated with loss, frustration and anger. We cannot put the causes and the ramifications of depression neatly into a nutshell and say “here it is.” Depression is usually a progressive illness brought on by chemical changes in the brain. The delicate balance of brain chemicals can be upset by our reactions to things going on around us, and by our very thoughts. If you go around all the time down in the dumps, and your cognition (thinking) is always on the negative side, your brain chemistry will respond in proportion to your thoughts. In a way, you can speak things into existence, just with the power of suggestion. For instance, if you were to believe you were going to die soon, and you always spoke about it aloud or mentally, you will likely be suffering from depression, and you might even “speak” your early death into existence. Call it power of attraction or something else, you can manifest the positive and negative feelings from your thoughts. You can influence your state of health by your thought processes.
Events happen in our life every day; some of these events are joyous events, and some are sad and even devastating. As a reaction to sad and traumatic events happening in our lives, we often respond with feelings that lead to depression. Is depression necessarily a bad thing? Can there be anything good about depression? It depends on how you look at depression. Again, we’re talking about positive or negative thinking. If you tend to think positive, you can look at the symptoms of depression as a manifestation of your body telling you something is wrong, that needs your attention. Maybe you are depressed over the mounting bills, and you are depressed over it. Are you just going to stay depressed over your mounting bills, or are you going to solve the problem. Many times it is our inaction to the problems of everyday life that causes us to respond to them with depression symptoms.
If you think of depression in a more positive way, you can think of it like physical pain. Physical pain is a warning sign that something is wrong with us that needs our attention. If we didn’t have pain we wouldn’t know that anything is wrong and we could die. Depression is much the same way. Depression symptoms are believed to be manifested by the chemical changes in our brain. Yes, what you think about yourself, the people around you, and the events that happen around you does matter. Your thoughts about these events have a direct influence on the serotonin and norepinephrine levels in your brain. When these neurotransmitters get out of balance, your brain receptors get the message to change how you feel. Therefore, if your depression is not disabling, you may be able to change your negative feelings of depression into more peaceful feelings by dealing with what is causing the internal stresses. If you are worried about how the bills will get paid, sit down and make a plan of how you will pay them, and then set goals to how you will meet your financial and personal obligations in the future. Sometimes just dealing with situations as they happen, rather than brushing them under the rug is enough to ward off depression before it happens.
Related Depression Posts