- Hi, everyone, welcome back to Aspergers From The Inside,
you're here with Paul.
So this month's patrons' choice video topic
is Dealing With Depression.
And we're gonna cover four things in the video today.
First, I'll share my explanation
of what depression actually is
from an emotional intelligence perspective.
We'll look at some common reasons you might be depressed,
what it can look like for those of us on the spectrum
and finally some things you can do
to help manage in daily life.
So before we start, I should say explicitly
that this video is not a substitute for professional help,
so if you're feeling depressed then I encourage you
to take your own health seriously
and find someone you can talk to about it.
So a really common question is
what's the difference between being depressed
and just being sad?
And how I explain this is that a depression
is like being stuck in sadness.
So I've graphed an incredibly oversimplified version
of how our emotions work over here.
And how our emotions are supposed to work
is when something good happens we feel happy, great,
and then when that dies down
we go back to just feeling peaceful and okay.
When something bad happens, when something sad happens
we feel sad and then eventually when that dies down,
we go back to feeling peaceful.
So, being stuck in sadness
means that our bodies never quite get back to this,
I'm feeling okay, I'm feeling peaceful kind of place.
And it also means that when we're sad
we can't appreciate things, physiologically,
you can't appreciate something when you're sad.
So, things that I used to be able to enjoy,
if I'm depressed I can't enjoy the things
that I used to be able to enjoy.
There could be potentially plenty
of really really good reasons to be happy
but because my body is stuck in sadness
I can't feel any of those reasons
and I feel sad even though intellectually I think like,
why aren't I enjoying myself in this situation?
This is a good thing, why can't I feel happy at the moment?
So my analogy for this is,
it's a little bit like having asthma or something like that
where there's plenty of oxygen in the air
and I'm trying to breathe, I just can't get
the oxygen in the air into my lungs, right?
So, when you're depressed there might be plenty
of reasons to be happy, plenty of reasons to be thankful
and grateful and all that good stuff
but it just can't get the feeling of happy into my body
because my body is literally stuck
in this physiological state of sadness.
So unfortunately another thing that often happens
when we get stuck in sadness is that we can tell ourselves
that we don't deserve to feel sad,
that we should feel happier
that we've got nothing to complain about,
or not as much to complain about for example
and when people ask us, "Why are you sad?"
It's very hard to put your finger
on exactly what the problem is.
And that's because the problem
is that my body is stuck in sadness
and that's why I feel sad.
I'm not feeling sad because something bad has happened,
I'm feeling sad because I'm depressed,
my body is stuck in sadness, that's why I'm feeling sad.
So we're jumping ahead a little bit
but one of the things that you can do
to make depression a little bit better almost instantly
is just accept that it's there,
accept that, I am stuck in sadness at the moment,
I don't have to force my body to be happy,
I can just accept where I am
and then I'm taking away a level of mental anguish
that I'm putting myself through.
And I'd recommend a book called
"The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris
that talks a lot about what they call clean discomfort,
like I'm uncomfortable, yes,
it's not a fun feeling to be sad
but I don't need to make it worse by beating myself up,
thinking I shouldn't be sad at the moment.
Okay, so number two what are some reasons
that can lead our bodies to become stuck in sadness.
So when I think of common reasons for depression,
I'm thinking of internalized messages
especially around not being good enough,
maybe due to bullying or other kind of social expectations
or perhaps a difficulty in finding friends
and making meaningful social connections.
And one thing I wanna say to this is you are not alone,
if you feel lonely you are not alone,
trust me, there are so many people that feel alone
but we don't see it on the outside,
we just feel it on the inside.
And to make matters worse, when you're stuck in sadness,
it physically inhibits your ability to feel connected
which means that we're much much more likely to feel lonely
even if we've got the same amount of friends
and the same amount of social contact.
Okay, so what can depression look like in autistic people.
This is a little bit tricky because we don't always show
the same signs as other people.
So, if I spend a lot of time alone
does that mean I'm depressed?
Well, not necessarily.
If I don't wanna do things that other people do,
if my face has a really neutral affect to it,
does it mean that I'm happy?
Well, no, not necessarily.
So, instead the things you can look for
are around passion and motivation and energy.
So part of being sad is we slow down and we feel tired.
It's the opposite of being happy
where we speed up and we feel energized, right.
And it, happy is energized,
sad, it sort of takes all the energy
and momentum away from us.
So if a person is absolutely losing interest
in a lot of things that would otherwise have been enjoyable,
especially a special interest,
if an autistic person is losing interest
in their special interest, that's a really bad sign,
unless it's being replaced
by another equally powerful passion.
So, I know I'm getting depressed
when I feel just tired all the time.
I don't want to do anything,
I can't even think of something nice to do,
because I imagine myself doing it
and the thought of doing something that shouldn't feel nice
just isn't an attractive thought.
So, that's why when you're stuck in sadness,
things that would otherwise have been enjoyable just aren't.
So another way that comes to mind
to find out if you're depressed or not
and I know this works for me,
so test it out if it works for you.
I need my alone time to recharge, right,
and when I'm feeling healthy and I get my alone time,
I feel great and I can finally shut out the world
and rest and do all the things that I need to do.
If I am depressed the minute I'm alone
and I don't have a distraction keeping my mind occupied
suddenly everything's terrible and I can't deal with it
and everything's caving in.
So, if you're the kind of person who needs alone time,
you can tell if you're starting to get depressed
if that alone time is getting to be more difficult
or you're even avoiding it
because it's not a fun experience.
Okay, so finally number four, getting help,
how can we manage depression on a daily basis?
So, one of the challenges here
is that asking for help for any kind of chronic illness,
chronic health thing becomes really really difficult
because people want to help
and they wanna see an instant result.
I'm feeling down, oh, you're my friend,
you wanna cheer me up, and that's okay temporarily.
But if I'm depressed then after that cheer up has happened,
I'm gonna fall straight back down
into my normal everyday depressed self
and my friend who's cheered me up
is gonna say, "Well, I did my best
"and there was nothing I can do."
So, the thing that has the most impact are long-term things.
Our emotions fluctuate on a regular basis
in a short term, that's completely natural,
but what we wanna do to help depression
is find things that are gonna slowly lift our mood,
regularly on a consistent basis.
We often talk about depression
linked with the phrase mental illness
and I personally find it much more helpful
to think of depression being stuck in sadness
as an emotional health issue
rather than a mental health issue.
So rather than thinking, oh,
it's a chemical imbalance in my brain
and I need to do something about it psychologically,
that might be part of the solution
but also there's lots of emotional things
that I can do in my daily life
that are gonna make a really big difference too.
So when I think about what I can do
to help myself if I'm feeling depressed,
it's working on really long term things,
like getting my diet right or exercising
or getting a mindfulness or prayer routine
or something like that.
It's fostering meaningful connections
with people on a regular basis.
It's physical affection and things like that.
Hacks for mental health that have the power
to physiologically make you feel better.
And the issue is that, again,
when I'm stuck in this sadness, those things,
although they're actually doing me good,
they won't necessarily feel good at the time.
And this is where the spiral kicks in
because things that are good for me don't feel good
so I don't do them as much and then I get even worse.
I'd recommend another book called "The Upward Spiral,"
which is all about the feedback loop of depression
and how it gets worse and makes itself worse
and worse and worse every day,
and how to basically reverse that loop
and get a little bit better every day,
feel a little bit better tomorrow
and then all of a sudden it becomes easier
and easier and easier because the good things
that are making me more healthy
start feeling better and better every day,
which gives me even more motivation, even more energy
and the spiral continues like that.
So in terms of how to cope and stay productive
or at least not have everything fall apart
when you're really depressed,
my biggest tip there would be around
setting up routines that you just follow
because you've decided intellectually that it's a good idea
and you're gonna just push yourself to do
what you know is a good thing to do.
Because if you rely on your body
of what I feel like doing, you're not gonna feel
like doing very much at all.
And in terms of when to set that routine,
you wanna be feeling as good as possible
when you decide what to do.
If you're feeling like life is way too much
and you just wanna give up on everything,
chances are your decisions are gonna be like,
oh, well I'll just completely throw in the towel
'cause everything's too hard.
Whereas, if you're feeling good in that moment,
you're like, I can do this,
what are the things that I need to do
to actually get this done?
So, if you make your decisions when you're happy
and you stick to those decisions
when you're not feeling so good,
you've got a better chance of actually
getting the right things done,
because when you're happy you're more likely
to pick something that's actually good for you to do.
Okay, so I wanna finish on a positive note,
which is to say that if you're struggling
with depression at the moment, firstly, it's not your fault.
Secondly, there are things you can do
to help make it better.
And those things are gonna be relatively personal to you,
you know, listen to your body,
what's it trying to tell you?
What needs are not being met,
and if you understand why your body is doing these things
then it becomes a lot easier to find ways
to give your body what it needs
so that you can actually make it better.
But at the end of the day,
if you've already tried all of those things
and you haven't found something that's working for you,
the only thing I can recommend
is to work on your emotional intelligence skills
and understanding how your personal system works
so that you can find out what you personally need.
And you probably knew I was gonna say that,
if you've been watching me for a while
you know that emotional intelligence
is one of my special interests
and one of the reasons is because
when we understand how the system works
it gives us a huge amount of power
to actually make a change to it
and effect a change to our to our bodies
and to our emotions if we know how they work.
So, learn how it works, learn the triggers,
learn the traps, figure out strategies
that work personally for you and your body.
Okay, well I hope you've enjoyed
this month's patrons' choice video.
You can become a cup of coffee supporter of this channel
for less than a dollar a week.
And if you're interested
in more emotional intelligence stuff,
you can also check out emotionsexplained.com.au,
where I've got a course that I wrote
that goes through the the four areas
of emotional intelligence,
in order that we understand the system
and can take back control of our own emotions.
So thanks for watching and I'll see you another time.
Bye.