This is from my personal experience, I have no qualification or experience that would allow me to help someone else.
First what depression was for me was a lack of positive emotion. Not that I felt sad all the time or that I was always down. It was just nothing felt good. I could eat something nice, do something for someone, watch a great movie and I felt nothing.
This was not so bad at first but as the months rolled past it got very hard to live with. Nothing motivated me. I didn't want to get up and do anything. Why do anything there was no positive feedback to do anything.
But I did. For some reason I kept my routine. I worked as hard as I could. Probably about 70% of my normal. But I just kept going. There was something in me that said this can't last forever. I was getting suicidal and was struggling to keep going but I just kept one foot in front of the other. Not thinking about much other than the day ahead.
Relationships were hard, I didn't have much patience for others. But I lived in close quarters with people, kept my job and maintained church commitments. I just kept going.
My hope was that one day things would get better and I didn't want to wake up one day finding I'd walked away from everything just to find things had gotten better. You know what they did! They got so much better. It took a year or so and little things started to feel good again. I was so happy when they did that things just spiraled upwards.
I've learnt a thing or two about my emotions and thoughts. Trying to keep from becoming fed up and down seems to stop me rolling back to that depressed state.
Looking back I think it was the routine that pulled me out. It was the keeping on going that gave me something to think about, instead of the negative thoughts. I couldn't create positive feedback but I could stop the negative (a little bit).
Other people have it way harder than I ever did and I don't want to say they could do the same thing but I do think that there is reason to have hope. Hope wont make you feel better but it can keep you going 'till you do.
First what depression was for me was a lack of positive emotion. Not that I felt sad all the time or that I was always down. It was just nothing felt good. I could eat something nice, do something for someone, watch a great movie and I felt nothing.
This was not so bad at first but as the months rolled past it got very hard to live with. Nothing motivated me. I didn't want to get up and do anything. Why do anything there was no positive feedback to do anything.
But I did. For some reason I kept my routine. I worked as hard as I could. Probably about 70% of my normal. But I just kept going. There was something in me that said this can't last forever. I was getting suicidal and was struggling to keep going but I just kept one foot in front of the other. Not thinking about much other than the day ahead.
Relationships were hard, I didn't have much patience for others. But I lived in close quarters with people, kept my job and maintained church commitments. I just kept going.
My hope was that one day things would get better and I didn't want to wake up one day finding I'd walked away from everything just to find things had gotten better. You know what they did! They got so much better. It took a year or so and little things started to feel good again. I was so happy when they did that things just spiraled upwards.
I've learnt a thing or two about my emotions and thoughts. Trying to keep from becoming fed up and down seems to stop me rolling back to that depressed state.
Looking back I think it was the routine that pulled me out. It was the keeping on going that gave me something to think about, instead of the negative thoughts. I couldn't create positive feedback but I could stop the negative (a little bit).
Other people have it way harder than I ever did and I don't want to say they could do the same thing but I do think that there is reason to have hope. Hope wont make you feel better but it can keep you going 'till you do.