Hi I'm Dr. Paul again at Live On Purpose TV. Today, we get to learn a little
psychology. You ready for a psychology lesson?W hat's the difference between
depression and sadness?
As a clinical psychologist, I get a lot of questions
about depression. One of the most common and commonly diagnosed conditions
that we deal with in the field of psychology and one of those questions
has to do with sadness versus depression, was the difference? I think to to better
educate ourselves on those lines, let's take a look at mood and what mood is. So
on this graph, we will put at the top of this axis, manic. Some of you have heard
that word, I'll describe a little bit more about what it means here in just a
minute. Down here at the bottom, we will put depressed and those are both words
that describe mood. Not talking about a particular disorder right now, talking
simply about mood. Now in the middle of this, if depression is at the
bottom and mania is at the top, somewhere here in the middle of this range is what
we might call, I'll give you the psychobabble word for it first,
euthymic, nobody uses that word. It's psychobabble,
it means normal. This is the normal range of mood so these would be the extreme
ends and this would be the normal range. Now most people go through life having a
normal mood so some days they might be really up and some days they might be
really down, it might cycle a little bit but basically, they're going to stay in that
normal range, some peaks, some valleys but it kind of returns to this normal range.
Depression is a disorder of mood and there's many different kinds
of depression, just as a quick overview, you might
have a severe unipolar depression, that's when the mood is very depressed, okay,
down here. Now I'm not talking sad, in fact, a lot of times, sadness is confused
with depression. Sadness is part of a normal mood cycle where there's a
lowering of the mood, depression is often more numbness. In fact, it's described
that way very often, it's like there's a flattening or a deleting of mood because
your mind and your brain have mechanisms built-in to compensate for being in this
range so often times, it's more blunted or numb rather than sad. In a severe
depression, the mood remains in this depressed state for a prolonged period
of time. Now there's also something that we might
call, bipolar depression. You're familiar with that term, it's actually a clinical
diagnosis. The old term was manic depression.
Okay, those words sounding familiar from what we've talked about here? In a
bipolar condition, we have the depressed mood, usually for most of the time and
then there will occasionally be a spike up here not to normal but to the manic
side. Let's talk about mania for just a minute, this is not happiness. Any more
than depression is sadness, it's an extreme end of an elevated mood. Another
word for manic might be crazy, in fact, it looks crazy to people. I remember early
in my career, a young man who was going through a manic episode, we found him at
midnight in a tree with a guitar singing his lungs out, a little crazy right? And
it's because of this elevated mood. Some people when they're in a manic state,
will get very pressured speech or they'll start engaging in activities
that are very questionable judgment, like gambling or sexual promiscuity or
something that they regret later on. So mania is not happiness. Any more than
depression is sadness, okay. Happiness is part of a normal mood range, I'm talking
extreme. In a bipolar depression, there's at least one manic episode and then
usually a return or a crash back down here to the depression state. Bipolar,
meaning that there's two ends to that spectrum, the mania and the depression.
there's a lot of different kinds, we won't go into all of them but I think
you get a sense for what we're talking about with the mood spectrum here. Now
depression is a mental illness or a disorder. I also like to think of
depression kind of as the fever of mental illness.You know, when you have a
fever physically, that's not necessarily the problem, it's an indicator that
there's a problem going on and depression can be caused by
circumstances in life or depression can be caused by an imbalance of the
chemistry in the brain. There are a lot of different causes, it can be caused by
a belief. In fact, you know the number one depressionagenic belief, depressionagenic
just means it causes depression, the number one depressionagenic belief
is, that my worth, my value can change. Wow, think about that, that changes the game a
little bit in terms of how we're going to deal with it. The belief that my value
can change because then I'm constantly scrambling to try to do just that, to
improve my own value. We'll talk about that in some other videos as well. One of
the problems with depression is that, when a person is experiencing depression,
they are less likely than ever to do the things that are actually going to help
and so that's why it's important for all of us as we notice our loved ones
experiencing depression or possibly even clinically diagnoseable with depression.
There are things that we can do to help and support them. Let's talk about a few
of the things that actually help with depression and we're going to start very
simple. I'm going to some research now that was done by Dr. Ed Halliwell at
Harvard University. At least he's the one who presented
this in a seminar that I attended once, he called it brain maintenance. Now this
affects the chemistry of the brain and it also follows certain, already
determined principles that we've shown through clinical experience and research
to actually be helpful. Brain maintenance, think of it as four steps. We're going to
start with sleep. Get enough sleep. In another video in this series we talked
about, sleep, you can find the link in the description down there. Sleep is an
important way to monitor and adjust the chemistry in your own brain and
different sleep patterns help to reset or reboot certain things. So get enough
sleep. Step number two, regular exercise. Oh, you knew this one was coming, didn't
you? Again, we've got a video on how to
motivate yourself to exercise. We want to give you the full tool set here at Live
On Purpose TV. Exercise has been shown through the clinical research to beat
antidepressant medication in the clinical trials. Isn't that interesting?
Now it's hard to get yourself to do it when you're depressed but the research
is very conclusive about this. Physical exercise helps. Step number three, diet.
No, I'm not a nutritionist, you can get that on other channels. What you put into your
body matters, this is the fuel that drives the equipment. Some people
erroneously make a distinction between your brain and your body.
Folks, your brain is part of your body. In fact, it is the most vital organ in your
body and it's an energy hog, it consumes more energy than any other single organ
in your body so the fuel that you burn matters, eat a balanced diet that has all
of the proper nutrition to run your body, the most important part of that is your
brain. Eat a balanced diet. The last one, step number four is solitude, prayer,
meditation, centering, mindfulness and throwing out a lot of words for you, pick
the one that suits you best. We found that healthy brains have
to have time where there is a clearing of the noise and the clutter and the
thoughts,so prayer, meditation, mindfulness, those kinds of practices
tend to increase the health of your brain. Brain maintenance, one of the most
important things that you can do to take care of depression and to encourage
other people that you love who might be experiencing depression. Now, quick little
thought about therapy, counseling, medication, there are professionals who
are trained to deal with this very issue and there's a variety of different
approaches, get connected with people who can help you. I remember one of my
clients saying, "Well, I should just be able to do this myself."
And I challenged him a little bit about that, I said, "Really? Yourself? Like, do you
do anything yourself?" They looked a little confused, I said, "Like getting
dressed in the morning, do you do that by yourself" "Yeah, I dress myself." "Really? With
what? Clothing that you made from fibers? That you harvested?" Okay, he rolled his
eyes a little bit. "Okay, I get it Dr. Paul." "Probably hundreds of people helped you
to get dressed this morning. Can you sign your own name?" "Yeah." "With what? A pencil
that you crafted from materials that you harvested? I don't think so."
Hundreds of people combined to help us and assist us in doing whatever it is,
let's get past the taboos of, "Oh I should do it myself, I don't think I should need
help." Whatever, let's be humble enough that we
can access the brilliance of professionals and others who have
studied these very conditions and are in a position to help us. There are so many
options. We all have a whole spectrum in the range of emotions,
hopefully that brought some light to the question of depression and what we can
do about it. I'll see you tomorrow at Live On Purpose TV.