Society tells you that depression or panic attacks are some kind of illness and have to be treated with medication, but I don’t believe that. Depression is an emotion, and all emotions are simply signals from your body caused by your thoughts and interpretations of your surrounding world and life situation. They want to inform you that something is not right and try to guide you into the right direction, which is always taking action. Whenever you do not feel at ease or angry or sad, these emotions just want to show you that something is wrong and that there is something that needs to be fixed.
It can either be some little changes in your thoughts or attitude, or it might require some drastic actions where you have to hustle to turn your life around. But oftentimes it is very hard to listen carefully to your emotions and get to know what they want to tell you. Think about it this way:
There is a lot of “hype” around depression and a lot of people believe that they cannot control it, they feel like a victim. But this is not true. First you have to understand what depression really is, and that is an emotion, which wants to tell you something. But what does it mean? What does it try to tell you?
Basically depression already contains the solution in its name itself. Depression means that you “depress something”. There is so much tension in you and yet you find no release for it. Everything in nature is based on repeating circles of ups and downs, growing and dying, etc. The same goes with emotions. Emotions build up in our body, and then they are released again. It is only when you do not find a way to release them again that they build up until their heavy weight drags you down. Like a balloon, all the emotions that arise in your body accumulate and make it grow bigger and bigger. It is only when you find yourself on the edge of that little “emotion balloon” to pop, that you should release them again. Make that little balloon explode with the loudest sound you can! Do not swallow any unwanted emotions. If you don’t release them, they are stored inside you and drive you crazy.
You have to let them free or else you cannot calm your mind. Whenever you find yourself subordinate to other people (or even yourself) although you really want to do something, but you are scared of what other people think of you or “you don’t want to irritate or disturb them”, that is when your initial energy that has built up inside you (the drive to do something) does not get released and cannot be expressed due to your fear of rejection (or any other reason). It is a huge emotion that is stored inside you, and therefore hinders your actions and disturbs your mind.
Express yourself instead. Express your emotions. If you depress them (which is the main cause for depression) and you slowly deflate the balloon again until “oh it is not that important anyways” or “it is ok, no problem” thoughts are coming in again and you (falsely) feel more calm again, that is when these unhandled emotions are occupying your body and mind. Let them out instead. It can be anything: talk to somebody, argue, assert yourself, expose your opinion, cry, shout! Take your pillow and smash it against the wall if you have to! Do anything, but do something. Don’t let the emotions eat you from inside and you free yourself from any form of depression!
