today we're going to be talking about how depression is like
quicksand and the sneaky ways in which it can trap you and make it difficult to escape
hi everyone depression is a very common and extremely challenging psychological condition
in which it can often feel like there's no way it's no way to escape and that things will never
get better you may have well-meaning friends try to encourage you with things like you just
need to cheer up or you just gotta get out there and and be more engaged in life the problem is
when people are suffering from depression they can often feel so stuck and trapped
that it feels like there's nothing they can do to feel better i call this depression quicksand and
that's what we're going to be talking about in today's video but before i get into that
just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province of
british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended
as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional
now with those things out of the way let's start talking about depression quicksand now i want you
to imagine a really strange and odd scenario suppose i were to offer you 10 million dollars
if you were able to make yourself feel as depressed and awful as you could for an entire day
so the goal is to try and drive your mood down and drive your motivation down and make you
feel discouraged hopeless and depressed and if at the end of the day if you're successful in making
yourself feel extremely depressed you get the 10 million dollars so what do you think you would do
in that situation what would be some of the things that you would do to try and make yourself feel
as awful discouraged hopeless and depressed as possible well let's start at the beginning of
the day you wake up in the morning what would be the first thing you might do
well one of the first things you might do is nothing you may stay in bed pull the covers
over your head and just lie there thinking about the various problems or challenges that are likely
to come up in the day you might find yourself getting anxious and discouraged as you think about
all of the things that you haven't been doing and all of the tasks that you're behind in and then
you might start thinking about how this is all your fault and how if you were just more efficient
or more disciplined you wouldn't be so behind in things and you wouldn't have so many problems
and so you stay in bed thinking about all of these things for half an hour or an hour
that's likely to make you feel pretty bad so what's the next thing you might do well you
probably call in sick to work because you don't want to face all of the things they
have to do that day and you tell yourself that there's no point in going into work because
you just screw things up anyway and after you call in to work to tell them that you're not coming in
making up some excuse about having a cold or a flu you then beat yourself up for being such a liar
and you get down on yourself for taking advantage of your employer's generosity
so what would be the next thing you do if you wanted to continue making yourself
feel terrible well you may go back to bed pull the covers over your head and just
try and avoid the day as much as you can but as you lie there you just think about
all of the negative things in your life and how you're just wasting away another day
so you may eventually get up but you wouldn't get dressed you'd probably wear the same clothes
that you went to bed if you wanted to feel worse you would go to all of the windows and
close all the blinds and curtains because you wouldn't want to have any light shine in so
there you are in your dark home wearing clothes that you wore to bed puttering around uh but
you wouldn't want to engage in anything that would give you any sense of purpose or accomplishment or
achievement you wouldn't do the dishes in the sink you wouldn't do the laundry you wouldn't have
a shower brush your teeth if you wanted to feel even worse you probably wouldn't prepare any food
at least nothing healthy you may go into the pantry and pull out a bag of potato
chips sit on the couch and eat some while you watch some trashy tv for a little while
after an hour or so or more than that you may have an empty bag of potato chips sitting next to you
and you probably feel pretty awful because you've just downed an entire bag of potato chips yourself
and you start beating yourself up for eating like a slob and blowing your diet
you might get a telephone call from one of your friends at work who who's checking in
to see how you're doing because they heard that you called in sick but you avoid answering the
phone and avoid responding to their text messages because you think that they're doing it out of
you know some sense of pity or just trying to be nice or maybe they're checking in on
you for the employer because the employer is wondering uh if you're playing hooky from work
you question why anyone would want to talk to you and maybe you start thinking about relationship
difficulties you've had with other people in your life and how you seem to be the common problem in
all of the relationship difficulties you have you review text message arguments you've had
with your partner and beat yourself up for not being a better or more supportive to your partner
you may have planned to go to the gym after work but you don't bother going because you have to get
changed and showered and put on appropriate clothes to be going out and that would be
too much work and you don't want to be around other people you just want to keep to yourself
so by the end of the day you haven't really accomplished anything haven't been outside
haven't seen the light of day haven't been around other people you've pottered around
your home and clothes that probably don't don't smell very good by this point and
all you've eaten all day is a bag of potato chips that are making you feel pretty awful
you spent much of the day thinking about all of the ways you're failing in life and all of the
people you're letting down and what a screw-up you are and then you go to lie down to go to bed
but because you haven't really done very much throughout the day you don't feel very
physically tired and so you just lie there in bed having difficulty falling to sleep as you
dwell on all of the awful you as you dwell on the awful useless and pointless day you just had
imagine yourself going through that scenario that day
how do you think you'd be feeling by the end of the day well you'd probably be feeling pretty
awful you'd probably be feeling pretty depressed and discouraged and hopeless and terrible
and congratulations you would get that 10 million dollars because that was the goal
that you were trying to accomplish so the idea is those are all of the things that you might do
if you were trying to make yourself feel more depressed discouraged and down
now imagine this scenario imagine that you wake up one morning and you already feel down depressed or
stuck what would you be tempted to do what would you be thinking about at the start of the day
well chances are your day may go a very similar way as the one i just described if you were
trying to make yourself feel depressed for 10 million dollars
you may be tempted to stay in bed not go to work not get dressed not go out to exercise isolate
yourself from other people you may spend a lot of your time thinking negatively about yourself
thinking about failures lost opportunities things that aren't going well in your life
the difference is you're not doing these things intentionally
to try to make yourself feel worse but you're doing these things and thinking in these ways
because you don't feel you have the energy the drive the motivation to do anything else
it's almost like the depression takes control and guides your behavior accordingly
so you see this is depression quicksand
when a person is feeling bad when a person is feeling depressed and sad and down they usually
end up doing the things and thinking in ways that make them feel worse
it's like you're stuck in quicksand and all of your efforts everything you do just sinks you
deeper and deeper into that depression quicksand everything you're tempted to do every way you're
tempted to think when you're feeling depressed is all aimed at making you feel even more depressed
this is the insidious nature of depression and for people who are experiencing depression
this isn't something that's within their conscious control
it's not something that they're intentionally doing but more something that is happening to
and being driven by the depression that they're experiencing
you see the key point is that people who are depressed aren't trying to feel worse
this isn't to say that people are who are depressed are engaging in self-sabotage or
self-loathing and wanting to make themselves feel bad this is neither a conscious or an
unconscious process but rather an automatic effect that's being driven by the depression itself
so if you find yourself in this depression quicksand the key is to try and break that
automatic process and to interrupt the behavior patterns and thought patterns that the depression
is trying to get you to do to make yourself feel even more depressed and the first place to start
with this is to give up on the bigger goals or expectations or requirements of yourself
and to start by doing the opposite of what the depression is trying to get you to do
but doing this in small and achievable ways and i've done a number of videos on this idea
of giving up and goal setting and behavioral activation to help overcome depression to
interrupt this depression process and to help get out of the depression quicksand
so i hope you take a look at some of those videos if you're interested in learning more about this
so i hope that gives you a little bit of a better sense of kind of the sneaky ways that depression
works to trap you in the depression quicksand and to sink you even more into depression
i'd love to hear your thoughts or ideas or questions about this so please leave me some
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one