what is depression well according to Google depression is feelings of severe
despondency and dejection whenever it comes to depression there seems to be
two main forms that we can categorize it in and that's important because the
category that your depression might be in can tell you how you should approach
it so the first is something called dysfunctional depression this is when
everything on the outside should indicate happiness however on the inside
you feel the common symptoms of depression things like loss of interest
in things that you once enjoyed the regularities and sleeping being tired
without energy and trouble concentrating however there is another type of
depression one called functional depression and this is when you're
experiencing a low in your life due to environmental causes so what is so
special about something called functional depression well unlike
dysfunctional depression which is usually approached with medicine or
therapy functional depression you can actually control it by changing your
environment now in my life I'd say there are two times that I had depression and
both were functional meaning that they had a reason number one was in early
high school and this was more just social anxiety that presented itself in
the symptoms of depression so I'm not gonna really count it everyone has
social anxiety at some point and I should have had the symptoms of
depression because I really sucked having conversations with other people
eventually throughout high school I worked on it my confidence improved and
the symptoms seemingly went away the second time in my life that I'd say
I'd had depression was my very first semester of college now let me get down
to it I had no friends I did not love what I was learning I was in my dorm
room when I wasn't in class and my diet and exercise sucked and to an outsider
there's no wonder my brain was like dude there's something wrong here and at this
point in the video I want to say sure I felt lonely before and I felt useless
but I've never had dysfunctional depression or been medicated for it so
it's important to say that I can't speak for those who have and I hope that one
day we find a better treatment for him this video though and the following
advice that I'm going to give is specifically for people who have a form
of depression that can be relieved by their own actions the issue with this
though is that you don't know if certain actions will actually help you until
after you've performed them so let's move on to an analogy that helps
describe what functional depression is imagine this you touch a hot stove and
it really hurts right so you lift your hand up imagine
what would happen if your brain didn't process and it didn't feel the pain of
the burn you just left your hand there because you didn't know that it was
painful and so what happens your hand just starts to melt into this mashed
potato lump of flesh that's not really good for future you who maybe wants to
do tool or hold things well it's the same with depression most of it is
functional which basically just means that you're sitting in your chair all
day long or maybe you don't have any friends or because you're drinking every
night we're doing a ton of drugs that mess with your brain chemistry in a
negative way or maybe it's simply because you're not doing what you love
it is your brain saying the stove is hot do something to change it
so for example when I was in college I got depressed because I was in my room
for 16 hours a day doing homework I didn't have any friends and I was
studying something that I wasn't passionate about so it's no wonder that
I got depressed eventually I dropped out and guess what the day that I came back
home was the happiest I had been all semester now I'm not saying depression
has something to do with what's going on in your life but if you have depression
there's probably a high chance that if you fixed something in your life for the
better you would probably also feel better now the psychology behind this is
that according to evolutionary psychology almost everything that
happens to us has a reason including depression psychologists surmise that
one function of depression is to allow you to think about your situation and
possibly find a solution to improve it there's another theory that suggests
that our current environment is changing so rapidly that our thousand-year-old
bodies can adapt to the new technology for example people are indoors and
receiving way less sunlight than they used to they breathe in much more
harmful chemicals on a daily basis in general they live more sedentary lives
and certainly social media apps are changing the base lines of
neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin so for example if you get
dumped by some girl that you really liked you probably should be depressed
for a short period of time your environment is going to drastically
change for the negative and your brain wants to consciously figure out what
caused that negative shift were you too clingy or controlling or did you let
yourself go did you just stop doing the things that made her smile your brain is
trying to figure out what caused that negative emotional shift but it's simply
not as easy as figuring out that your hand hurts because your hand is on the
stove this causes a lot of problems and is why depression is very difficult to
figure out another example if you lose a million
dollars in the stock market you should also be depressed the normal response to
that would be to feel a little down to process those depression symptoms for a
few days or maybe weeks and then come to an understanding of how you actually
made that decision to lose how much money so without further ado here is a
list of things that you should quote fix to give yourself a fighting chance now
it might be worth noting that in my life when I look at the best the happiest and
the most joyful memories all of these things are present I also want to note
that this isn't like a put a magic crystal next to your bed and you'll wake
up with more electrons in your body and that will translate to higher energy
levels and it'll raise your chakras and this isn't like that these are mostly
things that have actual studies backing them so number one get on a regular
sleep schedule this one is first because it's the most important wake up and go
to sleep within 30 minutes of the same time every day and also try to make sure
you get at least seven hours of quality sleep usually fixing these two things
helps most people if you can't sleep seven hours a night you might have
something called insomnia in which case you're fighting a double-whammy
depression and insomnia and you should definitely reach out to a professional
number two start a routine now it doesn't have to be super complicated
just try to have a morning routine or have something you can rely on
we all need a balance of chaos and order and right now you probably have too much
chaos see in our lives when we have too much order life starts to get boring
however when there's too much chaos you start to have anxiety try to give your
life some order and set up a routine number three go to the gym if you can
add the gym to your routine you can knock out two for one even if it's just
the elliptical for 15 minutes or 20 stinkin push-ups it doesn't have to be
that hard but if you only knew what it did for your brain and body you would
start going number four get on a healthier diet this one's pretty simple
no caffeine after noon less processed foods and keto if you can heck try a
24-hour fast every now and then I might go more in depth on what a healthy diet
for your brain is later well let's move on the number five number five is pretty
simple stop taking illegal drugs this includes
alcohol even though it's not illegal alcohol completely ruins your sleep and
it greatly diminishes your decision-making capabilities
most cases drugs do crazy things to our brain chemistry some irreversible so do
yourself a favor and cut back if not stop most drugs are correlated with
depression too so that should be one big red flag
number six is to expose yourself to something new do something creative or
learn a new skill listen to new music take a course order something new at
your favorite restaurant or travel to some unexplored places near you just
exposing yourself to something new has been found to help with functional
depression number seven is to set a small goal and then try to achieve it
you can try to do five push-ups a day for a week or you can try to talk to
three strangers a day for a week eat less than fifty carbs per day for a
week try to keep it simple and your whole perspective of life will change
now this also helps with motivation sometimes you just need some natural
dopamine from actually achieving a goal that you said the trick here is to make
it a small achievable goal number eight is to listen to some more upbeat music
seriously though if the prime words and your choice of music right now are pain
suffering or alone and other negative words like that what are you expecting
your brain to do with it start to listen to inspiring music there are literally
thousands of motivational speeches on YouTube you should try one of those next
time listen to music that talks about how you want to feel not how you're
currently feeling last on our list is to think positive now I know this one is
pretty difficult for a lot of people they say ninety-three percent of your
thoughts are thoughts that you had yesterday the trick here is to stop a
form of negative thinking called rumination so this is pretty interesting
and I first heard about rumination in Martin Seligman's book learned optimism
in which he talks quite a bit about depression rumination is the act of
thinking about a thought that has a negative emotion over and over and over
again the author says this is one of the main causes and symptoms of depression
in most people now a simple trick I've learned to stop ruminating is to start
meditating and short meditation is just not thinking and if you do think about
something which you will you say oh that thought popped into my head I understand
that it's most likely an automatic thought let's let it pass and see what
comes on next and then you try to think about nothing until the next thought
pops into your head now this seems to build up the ability to let your
thoughts pass without affecting your emotional state
it's very powerful when it comes to ruminating are you ruminating on a daily
basis I highly suggest to try meditation even if it's just a hundred 20 seconds
in the morning you are essentially building the bicep of your brain or
training your emotional regulation muscle also as a little bonus tip here
I'm gonna suggest to journal this allows you to track your days including your
emotions and feelings even if it's just as simple as writing down the after
version of a to-do list which is like a done list what it does is it gives you a
clearer version of what happened in the past week or past month because if
there's one thing I've learned about studying memory in the past few months
it's that humans have horrible memory when it comes to remembering what
actually happened without biases or misperceptions so writing down what
happens in the day that it actually happened helps keep your mental timeline
concrete and prevents time from corrupting your idea of the past so
maybe you want some proof that some of these things work well let's say if I
wanted to make a depressed person here's what I would do I would take everything
I just recommended you to do and then I would have them do the opposite I would
give them less than five hours of sleep a night and I would change when they go
to bed every day then I take their routine and just throw it out the window
if they have a job I would fire them because jobs are usually the best form
of routine for most people then I would get rid of their daily walks I'd keep
them inside for most of the day and probably include lots of laying in bed
just watching Netflix next I'd give them a crappy diet I'm talking like fast food
three times a day with sugary drinks and fat cakes for snacks then I'd add in
alcoholism and maybe a few pain pills here and there and especially some
illegal stimulants and if that isn't enough I'd let them listen to depressed
sad music for maybe four hours a day so much so that they can eventually start
to sing along and if they're not diagnosed with chronic depression yet
then all I'd have to do is surround them with a bunch of friends with the same
habits do you think someone like this would get depressed I guarantee that
they would this is actually called the inverse rule and it's a secret
decision-making heuristic that I like to use pretty often
so if you're feeling like the person that I just described you probably need
to seek out professional help because it is very difficult to change many of
these things at once by yourself so ending this video I'd like to leave
you with a quote to think on Viktor Frankl once said when we are no longer
able to change situation we are then challenged to
change ourselves also I want to let you know that my goal with this video was to
give you some actionable some practical advice and ideas and things that you can
change in your own life that might help you relieve some symptoms of depression
I want to make it clear again that this is specifically for functional
depression and there seems to be no way of telling the difference between
functional depression and dysfunctional depression until you follow almost all
these things and if you do all these things and you're still depressed or
maybe you watch this list you think to yourself those won't help or I'm not
actually going to do those then you probably should reach out to a
professional who has the skills and tools to properly help thank you guys so
much for watching you should leave a comment below in what you thought of
this video I'll see you in the next one