How to Not Succumb to Depression

Practical Understandings

It’s the Winter Solstice. In the northern hemisphere, daylight levels are down, leading to a lack of motivation or depression for some of us. Each year, nature gives us this challenge of getting through the darker times.

How to not succumb to depression?

One thing that I think really helps is to not subscribe to unrealistic expectations or fantastical beliefs. Let’s look at a couple of popular ones which surround depression…

1. You can think your way out of depression. No, you can’t. There’s just not enough energy in thinking to get you out of depression. It won’t work. Which brings me to #2.

2. You can get out of depression without moving your body. No, you can’t. It’s actually completely unrealistic to expect to have lifelong mental health without ongoing, significant bodily movement.

I mention these things because dropping unrealistic beliefs absolutely works for some people in their battle against depression. Whilst we still believe that we can somehow ruminate our way out of it, it has us in a choke-hold. If we know that that won’t work, we know what we need to do - move our body.

Depression is complex. Neither psychology nor neuroscience have really made so many inroads into it. But I believe that there is truth in the aphorism that depression is our thinking mind pushing down on our body, to keep repressed feelings and energy buried. It’s a form of addiction to a suboptimal state that keeps us feeling safe, if miserable.

So, if you're depressed, provoke feeling, provoke energy. Lean into the Arch position, breathe deeply and feel your body. After a minute, come up and go into the counter-stretch - the Bow. Keep breathing deeply and feel your body. Repeat two more times.

So, if you're depressed, share. Find someone to speak to about what's happening inside of you, what's going on in your life.

Both sharing and bodywork allow some of that blocked energy to start to move again. Emotion is energy in motion - e-motion - as the man I trained with used to say.

If you can't get these possibilities going, I understand. A lot of the time, depression simply comes down to there being inadequate motivational energy to undertake a strategy that we know will work. Our mind has too much control over us, and it is digging in, content to leave us with a miserable life rather than give up its dominion.

So, try this. Stand under your shower and set it as cold as it will go. Begin to breathe deeply through your mouth. Switch on the shower and breathe your way through the coldness for a full sixty seconds. 

This again will get your energy moving. It's the same principle, just a little more drastic.

You deserve better than to live a depressed life. And sometimes you just need to believe this, rather than think about it too much.