The Energy of Depression

When we suffer from depression, it can take over our entire lives- our thoughts, feelings, intentions, behaviors and decisions. Our energy is a huge part of who we are, and when it comes to mental and emotional health challenges, our energy can often mean the difference between healing and staying stuck.

When we are depressed, we tend to focus on how depressed we feel. We have a very hard time imagining we might feel any differently someday, and we find it difficult to remember a time when we didn’t feel this way. We focus on the bad feelings we feel- the anxiety, hopelessness and despair. We believe these thoughts and feelings will always be with us, and we can’t even begin to imagine a future without them.

We dwell on how much we’ve lost interest in our hobbies, rather than trying to remember the joy they bring us. We focus on how long it’s been since we last did something we enjoyed rather than setting the intention to make the time to do it. We focus on how we can’t get out of bed, or can’t talk to our friends, or can’t will ourselves to go for a walk- rather than encouraging ourselves to keep trying. When we do take small steps, we beat ourselves up that they weren’t bigger.

Those of us with depression tend to be very hard on ourselves. We beat ourselves up for even being depressed, for not getting better fast enough, for not being able to cope with life. We feel ashamed of ourselves for our depression, for how much it has derailed our lives. We carry guilt and regret for all our mistakes and wrongdoings, and we think and speak of ourselves with hatred. We judge ourselves harshly for not accomplishing more in life, for not being where we expected we’d be at our age, for not measuring up. We believe we’ve let everyone down.

We have a tendency to compare ourselves to other people and assume they are better, stronger, and happier than we are. We create mental games of competition with other people, and the worse we feel about ourselves in relation to other people, the harder it gets to focus on our recovery.

Recovery requires that we take inventory of our thoughts and feelings. How is our energy affecting our depression and vice versa? The sooner we understand how our energy is impacting our mental and emotional health, the sooner we can make progress in our recovery.

The community at Enlightened Solutions has years of experience helping people recover from depression. Call (833) 801-LIVE for help.