A few years ago, I was placed on multiple antidepressants. Eventually, the realization that they were not only subduing depression but were subduing all other emotions to some degree as well prompted me to quit taking them.
I learned you cannot simply cut off your ability to feel something, such as depression, without cutting off your ability to fully feel everything as well. The degree to which you are willing to experience any given feeling is in exact proportion with the degree to which you will experience all other feelings, willingly or not.
Experiencing intense pain enables you to experience the ecstasy of life. Experiencing overwhelming despair brews a newfound gratitude for the happiness found in even the minutest of events and actions.
After quitting antidepressants, I spent years groping my way through a hazy fog of unrelenting depression with no identifiable root cause.Although it took a while, emerging from the dark depths of depression faded from a mere fantasy into my reality.
When it did, the newfound gratitude I had for my life was even greater than it was before depression entered my life. When darkness is approached consciously and experienced without resistance, depression uncovers hidden, previously ignored truths about yourself and the world around you, you see life more clearly and can live with more vitality and passion
There are many routes to transmuting darkness into light, suffering into joy, listlessness into productivity. The trick is to consider each possible path and make the effort to embark on the one(s) that call out to you.
**Here are some tips to get you started**:
Depression May Stem From Lifestyle Habits: Top Tips For Becoming More Productive, Positive, and Satisfied With Life
View Your Dissatisfaction With Life as a Message From Your Inner Self
Isolation from debilitating depression demands you to explore every corner of inner turmoil, inevitably bringing to light the behaviors, actions, hobbies, or habits which are not in alignment with your fundamental beliefs. In solitude, you begin to explore the deepest parts of your inner self, which inevitably leads to the unveiling of the inner conflicts hindering your life.
When an aspect of your life is not in alignment with your soul’s desires and your core beliefs and you continuously ignore it, your soul will often rise up in opposition and manifest itself as a debilitating condition such as depression, leaving you with no choice but to spend time in solitude.
Channel Negative Energy Into Creative Expression:
Both private and public creative expression are productive ways to minimize, if not overcome, depression.
When you engage in creative expression fully, you drop into a meditative trance-like state.
You may find you are unbearably miserable with your mind numbing job that has stripped you of your appetite for wonder, a romantic or platonic relationship, familial discord, the way you allow people to treat you, or a plethora of other things.
Whatever it is, inner child work via hypnosis, meditation, and journaling can help you identify it.
Although you do not realize it at the time, your consciousness makes contact with the inner demons hiding in your subconscious while in this state.
When you emerge from this creatively induced trance-like state, so do the inner conflicts you uncovered within it, allowing you to finally acknowledge them and make peace with them.
Increase Your Gratitude
Yes, using depression as a vehicle to increase your sense of gratitude sounds paradoxical, but it is nonetheless very possible when a conscious decision to do so is made.
This in no way means sitting around and waiting for something to happen that you can grateful for.
It means discovering all of the things you already have to be thankful for.
Intentionally practicing gratitude even when you don’t actually feel grateful reprograms the brain to focus on positive aspects of life more than negative ones.
**Keeping gratitude journals and engaging in gratitude meditations are two excellent ways to do this, according to the brain health experts at Amen Clinics.**
Improve Your Physical Health
Not surprisingly, when it comes to physical and mental health, the two go hand in hand.
Boosting physical health also boosts mental health. So, striving to spend more time in the sun, eat healthier, and exercise more are often beneficial.
Doing the work to actually change your lifestyle and routines in the areas of life you are unsatisfied is clearly easier said than done some, if not most, times.
Still, assuming you are not clinically depressed or do not have another underlying health problem causing depression, it is far easier of an option when considering the longterm effects of doing so as opposed to the harsh consequences and negative effects that opting for quick fixes like antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications will produce.
***Interested in yoga? Here are free yoga videos with playlists for experienced yogis as well as absolute beginners.**
Practice Mindfulness
Calming techniques, such as mindfulness meditation, yoga, hypnotherapy, and tai chi ease depression by helping you relax and clear your mind.
Frequently practicing these techniques for depression will provide long term positive changes in your life by shifting your consciousness to foster positivity, prosperity and growth.
A shift in consciousness provides the ability to be more aware, more present, and ultimately more alive.
**Check out this interview with Author Amy B. Scher for energy healing tools you can use to start shifting your life towards a positivity today. (Snag a copy of her book filled with life changing hacks here). **
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