Depression

We chat with a lot of people who are feeling depressed, if this is something you are struggling with then you are not alone – many people struggle with this, men, women, young, old, married, unmarried, those who believe in a God and those who don’t.

You may feel you have no hope and no reason to keep on going. We want you to know that there is hope, there is purpose, and your feelings can change.

We are all more than just a bunch of feelings, we have a physical body and a spiritual side to us. We really need to think about the whole of us and not just how we are feeling right now. 

Who have you talked to about feeling depressed?

Maybe you feel that you don’t want to bother any one with how depressed you are feeling, you might have decided that a friend won’t be interested or that you have tried talking about it and they didn’t understand or care.

It’s true that some people don’t know how to react or what to say but that doesn’t mean they don’t care and don’t want to help. If you are young tell your parents or another older member of the family who you are closer to. If you are older tell someone whose opinion you respect – a friend, a church pastor, a relative.

It would also be really good to talk to your doctor if you have been feeling depressed for a while, because sometimes the reason you are feeling that way can be because of a physical chemical imbalance that can be greatly helped by taking some medication for a while.

Don’t trust the feelings

Feelings are lovely when they make you feel good, but feelings are not a good, reliable test of what is actually true. People can sometimes wake up one day feeling low, and then wake up the next day feeling more positive – even though nothing in their life is different, all that has changed is their feelings.

Feelings can often trick us and so you have to look beyond feelings to know what is true. Even if you struggle with believing this – it still is true!

Even if you don’t feel it’s true, there is a purpose for you here on earth and there are so many people whose lives you could help and change.

Think about the spiritual you

Do you believe there is a God? Have you ever spent time trying to learn about who Jesus is, what he did and why he did it?

When you believe that Jesus loves you and is deeply interested in you it gives you a different picture of the world around you and of what your life is all about. It gives you a new hope and a new focus outside of yourself.

The more you get to know the real Jesus of the Bible, the more you will want to live to make Him happy and this will also then become a great motivation to keep on going no matter how low and bad you feel. Jesus cares about you – he wants you to know his peace and his acceptance and forgiveness. He wants you to know Him and how much he loves you.

Trust other people

When your mind and feelings are playing games with you – you need to remember that there is a possibility that someone else can see your situation more clearly than you can… the way you are seeing it might not be the truth. It is good to admit to yourself that maybe everything you  feel is not the truth.

You will hurt so many people

Maybe you think that nobody would miss you if you left this world, and that everyone would be better without you. – but this is completely wrong. When someone gets so low that they commit suicide great hurt, upset, pain and damage is caused to those who knew them – your family and friends would suffer so much.

Give yourself a new focus

If you weren’t feeling so low and depressed who or what would you like to make a difference to?

Your life could help 100s of other people or 100s of animals – why not have it as an aim to try and get well enough to make a difference to these things that you are interested in?

What steps could you begin to take in your life that will get you closer to being able to volunteer, or to try and raise money to help them. You might not be able to do these things now, but it’s really healthy to have something like this as an aim that you are working towards achieving. Having a focus that is outside of yourself is much more powerful than just trying to get better for you.

Get outside

Many people find that just going somewhere different and seeing some nature helps them to feel different. Fresh air is good for us all, and seeing that there is a natural world out there that is simply getting on with it’s own thing (completely ignorant of all the worries and cares of the world) can be refreshing to see. It can help us to see a bigger picture than the troubles that are right in front of us that feel like they are swamping us.