As a professional psychologist, I deal with depression all of the time but how
do you deal with depression on your own? Some tips today at Live On Purpose TV.
Several years ago, Jim came to see me, he was embarrassed. Okay, honestly,
psychotherapy sounds a little like therapy for psychos to some people and
they don't want to volunteer to go and some people get dragged in here kicking
and screaming, Jim was no different, his wife sent him because she was sick and
tired of the consequences of his depression. Now I asked some questions
about, well why are you embarrassed to be here? He says, "Well, I just feel like this
is something I should have been able to do on my own." And I can appreciate that
because there's some pride in that, right? To be able to handle something on your
own, it's like that that fortitude from our forefathers that we can handle
anything, right? I grew up in a small town where we didn't have psychologists, we
just had, you know, uncles and cousins and ecclesiastical leaders and these are the
people that would help out if there was a problem and psychology wasn't even a
thing, I didn't even get exposed to that until I went to college. So it's
interesting that there's some taboos and things around that but anyway, let's talk
about Jim's desire to do it on his own and so I listen, I'm empathic, right, I
listen and as I'm listening to Jim talk about this, I said, "So do it on your
own? Huh? Like what? Is there anything else
you do on your own?" Well he was a little puzzled by my question and then I
followed it up, "Like getting dressed in the morning. Do you do that on
your own?" "Of course, I do, Dr. Paul. Everybody gets dressed on their own."
"Oh, really? Like using what clothing?" He's still puzzled by my question.
"Stuff I got in my closet, it's my clothing, right? I'd get dressed on my own."
"Wait a minute. You didn't create this clothing, did you?" No, he didn't, he's an
engineer, he's not a tailor. He did not create the clothing and the
people who created the clothing for him did not create the materials from which
they made the clothing and the people who created the material for the
clothing did not create the fibers from which the material was fabricated. Do you
see where I'm going with this? It probably took hundreds of people to get
Joe dressed that morning and yet he did it on his own?
I don't think so. You look at the enormous resource and how about having
breakfast, do that on your own? Yeah, we're eating what? Stuff that you
harvested or that you produced by your own hand? No. See we are by our definition
as mortal human beings, we are codependent or interdependent on each
other for all of the resources that we sometimes take for granted and we don't
even notice. I wanted to share that story with you right up front because if you
want to do something on your own, let's get clear that that is probably not
possible. Now having said that, I know that you are resourceful, I know that you
have all kinds of skills and abilities and you've got a lot of what it takes to
deal with depression already built into you so we'll tap into that and I'm going to
give you a few steps but here's the paradox.. To do this on your own, you first
need to realize that you can't and then you're in a better position to do it. You
hear what I'm saying? So it's giving up some of that
self-righteous pride that has you thinking you have to do it on your own.
You don't and any resource you find is going to be supported and provided by
other people out there in the world that aren't you and that's actually good news
because that's what gives us an opportunity to have an economy, okay. Even
watching this video is only happening because I created this video for you,
okay, and I'm not claiming any kind of responsibility for your healing and
improvement in life, I'm just saying, look, I gave
you a resource and you were bright enough to access it and to put it to use.
So who do you think's going to do this? What if you hired a doctor?
What if you hired a doctor? That sounds weird to some people because they're
like, "Oh, my doctor said I had to do this." As if they're working for the doc, no,
it's the other way around. That doc is working for you and you might handle
your depression on your own by using your brilliant mind to go out there and
hire the doctor. You did it. What if the doctor gives you medication? Oh, but I
wanted to do it on my own. Well you were brilliant enough to hire someone to put
you in contact with that resource so that you could choose to take it and
thereby improve your own functioning. See, I'm almost talking out both sides of my
mouth here, I just realized that because I'm saying you can't do it on your own
and you can only do it on your own, that's the weird paradox we're talking
about here because every intervention you choose is by your choice. You're
driving this thing and you're going to hire and in enrole resources from other
brilliant people all around who can assist you with that. Now let me help you
in some of the ways that I might be able to help you but only by your permission
because you can fire me at will. Alright, we're clear about that. Now that
we've handled the philosophical paradox that we're dealing with here,
let's talk about three resources you may not have considered yet that are in my
realm of expertise because I don't prescribe medication, right, not that kind
of a doctor and I'm not bad-mouthing the medication, I'm just not licensed to do
that so you're going to talk to other professionals about that. Are we clear?
Here's a few things that I've come in contact with that I think could be
useful in your quest to handle depression on your own and you can
choose to use these or not. Remember, it's up to you. Number one, I'm calling this
brain maintenance. Now there's some other videos we've done on depression you can
link to that playlist right up here and we'll talk about this in
different kinds of detail in different videos but that's another resource for
you. Brain maintenance, very quickly, there are four steps. Think of this as taking
care of the equipment, it's just like your car when you maintain your car, you
can avoid the costly repairs and this allows the mechanism to function at the
highest level of efficiency, so that's what we're talking about. Brain
maintenance includes four parts. The first part is sleep, get enough sleep,
okay. Do what you need to to improve your sleep, stay away from an alcohol and
caffeine and blue light, interestingly enough, can interfere with your stage 4
sleep especially when you're exposed to a lot of screens within an hour or two
of your bedtime. Caffeine has been shown to interfere with stage 4 sleep. Less
than 200 milligrams of caffeine before noon is recommended so that the
half-life of the caffeine doesn't interfere with your sleep patterns.
Alcohol tends to disrupt our sleep patterns. I would recommend you stay away
from that as much as you can. There's other considerations with alcohol, that's
not the purpose of this particular video but that's what we're talking about in
terms of your sleep. Have a comfortable place, that's reasonably cool and keep it
dark so that you can facilitate your body's need for sleep, that's step one in
the brain maintenance. Step two, get an adequate diet, a nutritional diet, a
well-balanced diet, this is the fuel that you're running through the system so
make sure that your diet is in line. Number three, exercise. Good aerobic
exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes has been shown in the
literature and the research, there's different levels in different studies
but the consensus seems to be about 30 minutes, three times a week of good
aerobic exercise to take care of your brain. Now that's going to have other good
effects on your body, we're talking brain maintenance here and number four has to
do with solitude and quieting and mindfulness so practicing something like
meditation or prayer or martial arts that help you to center and focus, these
are the things that are shown to maintain the brain. So brain maintenance including
those four parts. Now let's move to the next thing,
practice positivity. The very first video that I launched when I went to daily
YouTube is about how to stay positive no matter what, that's a really good
reference for you to get back to how that's done. I am so pleased that the
research now, the brain research and the psychology research is enormously
supportive of the positive attitude that gives us an advantage in every aspect of
our life, it helps your mood if nothing else but it also puts you in position to
do some of the other fun things like creation and bringing an upgrade to your
life. Practicing positivity is probably the number one thing that you could do
to improve your life now no matter what your circumstances are. That is a bold
claim but I'm going to stand by that because I have seen that it is
absolutely consistent with the clientele that I've worked with and with the
clinical research that's coming out nowadays so that's a fun one, practice
positivity and then here's the third one, reach out to serve others. Probably
already heard that service is important. There's a lot of reasons psychologically
why that is very literally a true principle. If nothing else, what it does
is, it changes our focus from egocentric from it's all about me to focusing on
other people and one thing that I've learned about anxiety specifically, when
we experience anxiety, where is our focus? Hmm..
it's about me. Yeah, we're going to let go of that focus shifted to other people. The
other thing that this does just is a quick overview of the psychology behind
it, it causes us to focus on what we can do
rather than what we can't do because which pool are you going draw from in
order to serve people? The stuff you can't do or the stuff you can do? Pick
one of those pools. When you're serving, you have to draw from the things that
you can do and again, this is like hocus focus.
Hocus focus, do you like those terms? It's a magical way to change how you
feel by changing what you focus on. I have a friend who puts it this way.. What
you focus on, you feel. What you think about, comes about. What you focus on, you
feel. So keeping that in mind as we turn our focus to other people and we turn
our focus to what we can do versus what we can't do, it changes our mood and
depression is a mood disorder, okay. Or a mood problem if not a disorder but it
can elevate to the status of disorder if we don't handle it in these appropriate
ways. Who's going to do this? It's you. See, any of these resources are available to
you including the traditional medication and therapy which are absolutely valid
and helpful resources and there's a whole plethora of other resources
available to you that you get to choose on purpose intentionally. Who do you
think is doing this? Of course you're going to do it on your own and of course
you can't. Don't you love it? There's so many paradoxes in psychology. You can
deal with depression on your own when you realize you don't have to
and neither do your friends. Share this episode with them.