Hey guys. How is everyone feeling? I hope everyone is doing great.

Quick Question for anyone who wants to answer.

What would make it easier on you to fight depression?? We are all so different and I want to see what you guys think.

Thanks

Palomeno18

Hi Pal, sorry about the short reply, but I find that exercise and regular meals to keep up blood sugar levels both help. Also, doing something that I really enjoy every day, and something to look forward to, like a shopping trip, or a trip to the beach perhaps... Posting here helps too, and even these energy critters - here are three for you to keep you going....

http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/bouncing.gif http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/bouncing.gif http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/bouncing.gif

Thanks for the reply Fuzzybear (cute screen name).

I am suffering from Depression and it is true exercise and doing what you like helps alot.

I am doing a little study and I wanted to get as many ideas as I can on how to defeat depression.

Excersise
Eating Right
Doing what you enjoy

Thats 3. Thanks again.

I agree with FuzzyBear, having things to look forward to short-term and long-term can be a real life-saver. I like to have a list of daily fun activities, like eating ice-cream or renting a favorite movie, that I can turn to when I don't know what will help. Plus I like to plan fun things like little day-trips or get tickets to a show so I have something to look forward to.

Sometimes I'm so down that I can't think of anything I would enjoy, and I don't even want to be happy. I think surrounding yourself with caring friends is important too. Because they will notice when you're too down to pick yourself up, and they will pick you up themselves and force you to distract yourself. I have a cat and she is also a fantastic friend, and so I'm never alone.

short and sweet for me,
Each other and looking at the small things in life.
I go about my property and find lizards and wildflowers and I have a pet cemetary I groom, very peaceful.

------------------
If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.....

Everybody wants to be somebody in the world but remember, to somebody you ARE the world.

[This message has been edited by effexorjunkie (edited 06-21-2002).]

Running
Writing Poetry
Muscle Relaxation exercises

Something to believe in.

Slowly speaking the mantra...."I'm exactly where God wants me to be right now. There is a path unknown to me."

Having friends and family around you that you know care for you ~~ even if they don't KNOW of your depression... Just having them there helps.

And running... when you can get yourself motivated enough to go, it really does help a lot.

running! i think if my body can be so strong, powerful, and persistant, my mind can too. also, music helps me a lot. cheesey stuff like chicago http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/dance.gif!

The greatest help for me to fight depression is to be understood and accepted for what I am.

With loving kindness

Zafu http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/clown.gif

Reading something possitive 20min. a day. Writing down everything I have to do each day to be healthy and checking it off.

Diana http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by drs (edited 06-22-2002).]

Wow, there are a lot of good ideas here! I'm not doing any of these things. What's something positive? Like writing some positive 20 minutes every day is a such a good idea.

I feel sorry for myself sometimes. So I was thinking the other day of how lucky I was. Once my parents rented a house with an old couple. They rented a few rooms and one of them was rented to a murderer, but of course we didn't know it. Once I went up to him and asked him "did you just get out of jail?" because he looked like a criminal and I heard my parents saying how he had a jail record. My mom apologized to him. The guy kept stealing and when my dad parked in his spot once he blew out our tires. When he got kicked out he killed the two cats, put dead fishes up the chimney, behind the piano and in the walls to stink up the place. (Plus he left the room to his door ajar and a big bucket of oil on top so when the landlord when in the bucket almost fell on his head... crazy guy.) Anyways a few years later we found out he'd been arrested. After we learned about him I found out that his personality was so unstable that if I had so much as called him a name he might have killed me. That was how he was. He might have come into my room one day with a knife and tape and jumped one me before I knew what happened, and he might have slashed and cut my throat when I was 7 years old. It was a real possibility...first the cats...then the kid. Anyways I can't help but think how lucky I am to be here. No matter what I have to be depressed about now, it cannot compare to that.. I mean I have volition. I have power. I have consciousness. My sight moves with my eyes, my mind moves with my thought, each arm and each leg and each finger respond. When I breathe, the world comes in, the air of life comes in. I can feel comfort, and joy. I can see beauty. I have lived and at least learned a thing or two through the years despite depression. Not everyone is so lucky. We live, we carry on, now, we are not alone because the way humanity works, the ancestors and the posterity live in us, through us... The point is appreciating life, seeing that all our little problems amount to very little indeed compared to these things- life itself. Life is like a gift, everything, the joys and flaws. If someone gives you a beautiful present, do you say "the quality's not good" or be nitpicky? No, it's a gift! None of us asked to be born. Life is free. No matter what else happens, none of us could be born in our own log cabin- none of us had to work for the chance at that first breath of life from our mother's womb. It's a gift from God.
I am free. I am free. I am free. Did anyone see Count of Monte Cristo, how Edmund Dantes (falsely accused) jumped and yelled and screamed and went crazy on that beach after he had escaped the Chateau D'If (prison) after 14 years? Even though he had no friends, nothing, not even clothes, he was naked.. After 14 years of depression, hopelessness, wanting to die, 14 years of the same wall and the same cold bars. 14 years of euphoria meaning that an inch of the wall today came off from digging? Here we are, free! Can we appreciate that?

Then I thought we are like Gods. Compared to the dead. God is all-powerful and all-knowing compared to us, that is what makes him what he is... and yet... dead people have no power and no knowledge, so compared to them, ours is infinite. We are like God to them! They would worship us! Compared to them, we are like in heaven right now. Maybe dead isn't the best word. How about non-existent? Non-existent spirits on this plane (Lord knows we don't exist on God's plane). Any possible person who might have been born but wasn't is basically non-existent. For example, a person just like you except she or he was born on the day before your birthday. Or maybe if another sperm had found another egg at conception. Such a person doesn't exist! They all worship us. There is a non-existent person under your nose right now. He or she is worshipping you as God, BECAUSE YOU EXIST, no matter what flaws you have, you will always be infinitely better. Imagine if you went to heaven and how magical it would be and you get to see God and you are wondering how awesome that would be... and then you find out The Almighty is insecure and fearful and unhappy. How stupid is that? Well, ok, that's all for now.

Disclaimer.

Me again. Sometimes feeling guilty about feeling bad can make you feel even worse. That is not the point of the above. Not only is depression a chemical unbalance, but if meeting with the right set of circumstances anyone is vulnerable to depression, even the seemingly strongest people. It is not our fault, or a determiner of our worth. We alone determine our worth by how we view ourselves, as Eleanor Roosevelt said. The point of the above is just to remind us that the mind can find genuinely good things to be happy about.