Why Do People Get Depressed?
“If life were the way
we always wanted it to be,
the whole romance would become stale.”
-Shalini Kamboj
In today’s time, depression has become an epidemic. The number of cases reported is menial in front of the actual number of people who are going through it. It is one of the most significant reasons that is crippling life and productivity, dampening happiness, and health.
Extensive research to find the cure for depression has only resulted in one incomplete solution: Medicines.
People have been trying to understand and explain depression, but have been unsuccessful. It is even more complicated for someone who is going through it. Doctors have defined clinical depression as a chemical imbalance. What medicines do is control and manage that imbalance, but it has its side effects. These medicines are highly addictive in nature and pose another problem for a person with depression. Alternatively, psychotherapy works to an extent, but it does not have a complete cure.
Something about the existing solutions seems incomplete at the root level, and that is the lack of understanding of what exactly causes depression. I, for one, found my answer and have helped countless others find a complete cure without the use of a single medicine.
To understand depression, we need to understand a few basic things. We all are born as limited beings. Recall your childhood days when you were small, unable, and incapable of doing many things. Emotional memory is created every moment when we are unable to do certain things. Every time this happens, a feeling that we are incapable or helpless, gets stored in our long term memory, over and over.
Moreover, if we have people around us who highlight and criticize us on those incapabilities, that feeling of being incapable and limited become even more ingrained in us.
These feelings are not easy to handle. Not to mention that they give immense pain, shame & guilt.
As life goes on, we learn to deal with this feeling in us in different manners depending upon the situations and opportunities provided in our lives. Sometimes, a compassionate teacher changes our life state; at other times, our obsessive need to succeed helps us learn and gather educational degrees and significant positions in our life, only to deal with that feeling of “I am incapable.” However, whenever such a situation presents itself in our life when we again find ourselves inept and incompetent to cope, we still start developing and recalling that same pain, shame, and guilt. We can find temporary solutions for a while, but when we find ourselves in such situations where we are unable to resolve things over and over again, these feelings start surfacing in the long run and refuse to go away.
These accumulations finally result in one conclusion that ‘I am not good enough’ or ‘life is not fair,’ and we lose all hopes as to if it will ever be better. Moreover, If you feel that you will never be able to become capable of achievements and capable of living a happy life, this hopelessness finally turns into depression.
Another case is when we find ourselves limited as a child, and some people encourage us and help us achieve and finally develop a feeling of “I’m capable.” The reality is that your achievements are probably more because of other people helping you succeed. You are provided with everything in life, and we start feeling that we are privileged, that we are unique and deserve the best in life. However, life can be ruthless at times. And when such situations come, we find ourselves in a state of shock and discover our incapability to handle everything. We are unable to deal with our failures- finally, the same inborn feelings of “I am limited” surfaces. All these feelings of shock, failure, shame, guilt, and helplessness result in depression.
Depression is far more prevalent today than ever before. The pressure of being excellent and successful all the time is a burden on people. Making mistakes and failures has become a big NO, leaving no space to being human.
This space of being human is being snatched away from us when we are forced to ‘behave well’ as kids and not allowed to scoreless in our exams or when people judge us for expressing anger sometimes.
What is wrong with being number 2 or number 100? Is it possible that everyone comes first? Alternatively, instead, why is it important to be first and best? What is the problem if we are not?
Please allow yourself to be human not because you are not capable, but because it’s okay to be a little less in some areas than others as we all have our position in life. Life is a constant work in progress, and that’s fun.
An in-depth spiritual process can help us overcome depression. We must be open and willing for the change.
Check out how I helped myself and others through the science of Science of Gyanyog.
Author: Shalini Kamboj
