How to fight depression - Acceptance is the first step

From my experience and the experience that others have shared with me. One of the most difficult things about suffering from deep depression is being so misunderstood by those around you. Some depressed individuals tend to display a facade that so often is unconvincing. A made up character that depletes them of the little energy they have left.

When someone is in a deep depression and still must walk out and face the world, quite often the mask that they wear before leaving their home does not completely hide the darkness that lures behind it. A darkness that is more often than not, mistaken for impoliteness, arrogance, and standoffish. This in turn can cause the depressed person who is suffering to feel even more misunderstood and lonely due to the negative judgments others have on them.

Many individuals in the mist of a depression, so desperately hold a desire within them to scream out loud to anyone that can hear them “accept me, look I’m hurting and I can’t control it!” But only for the few they choose to unveil the truth to, those are the one’s that will only know how they truly feel, and that may be enough. We can not teach the majority of the world with a vast amount of misconceptions. We can only hope they on their own will someday learn and that awareness on the topic will some how reach them.

Accept powerlessness. The depressed person must come to terms with the powerlessness they have over their illness. Powerlessness does not mean we throw our hands in the air and say “oh well.” Through acceptance you can learn how to identify these negative emotions and strive toward positive progression.

This does not mean the individual should succumb to it completely and stop working on improving their lives. It means that accepting the illness, symptoms and the lack of control that many times comes with it, can help tremendously in not punishing them selves for something they can not control, something they are powerless over. Now by no means does this excuse erratic behavior. It means, once you surrender and accept you are powerless, you begin to gain control.

Not everybody will understand, depression can be a complicated illness with a variety of symptoms for different people. There might be some people whom will interpret your symptoms as arrogant behavior or may even place you in a strange category, and if so, than I say, so be it. The individual suffering will not get better focusing on what other people think of them but, rather the focus needs to be on improving the way they think about themselves. Health, well being and an appropriate course of treatment should be the individual’s main goal. The depressed person should come to the realization that there are people that simply do not know how to recognize it and probably never will.

Due to others lack of knowledge and the stigma still attached to mental illness. The individual should not beat them selves up for symptoms that they are powerless over. They should eventually accept it for what it is, and begin to work toward healing themselves as well as seeking the appropriate help. The sooner the depressed individual comes to terms with this, the sooner they can apply the energy spent on worrying about others reactions or opinions on a better mind set for themselves.

Madison O'