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Hi Ken and Cindy.
Welcome to the forum.
I did everything wrong for many years. I was very young and clung onto dysfunctional relationships. That just made things worse. I also had PTSD, which made things much worse. I'm also older and there wasn't much treatment then.
Looking back and knowing what I know now I can see that there were some things that helped.
I had two small children to raise by myself. There was no way I could stop and give into my depression. I had to keep going no matter how I felt. I always felt better when I was working. I would have to hold in the tears a lot, but I worked just the same. I think that was very good for me and kept me from isolation.
Helping someone else always helped me forget myself and my own problems temporarily.
I really started feeling better when I started taking responsibility for my own emotions and realized it was something from within me that needed to be healed and nothing outside of myself was going to make it better. That is the first step that I remember. I began seeing my own character defects and wanted to live my life differently. I couldn't do it, but I kept moving forward.
I had faith in God and clung on to him. With his help I discovered all the hidden reasons for my depression and emotional pain. Once I understood what was causing my pain the pain went away. I always projected my pain on present problems with relationships and family. It turned out to be pain that I had been carrying around from my childhood.
There is treatment and therapy now. They've come a long way since I went through my depression.
I've also experienced another kind of depression. The kind I've described and then there is the depression that needs to be treated with medication. My experience with this kind of depression is that it's not really caused by circumstances or emotional pain, but more of a physical depression. An anti-depressant cleared that up for me. The symptoms of this kind of depression were no energy, a feeling that there is no reason to keep going, no motivation, wanting to do things, but can't muster up the energy, lack of interests, isolation, irritable etc...It did not have emotional pain or crying with it. I was able to clear that up right away with medication.
I have not experienced depression from bi-polar disorder, which can be trickier because of mood changes and the need for medication changes with different cycles.
I think we all need to accomplish something in our lives on a regular basis. Accomplishments help build our self esteem and self esteem helps us out of depression. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be cleaning the house or doing the yard work. Taking a class in school that you enjoy. Learning how to repair something. Sewing, recovering a chair, painting your bedroom, moving the furniture, learning something new, building a wall, volunteering at a hospital, taking a defense class and so on. Accomplish something.
Hugs,
MG
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