Depression
Are you stressed out of your mind? Would rather stay at home and hide away? Is someone you know not acting like their usual self? These are all signs of: Depression
What is Depression?
Depression is a downward change in your mood to emotions of sadness and hopelessness- feeling your lowest (worst). Many people who feel emotionally down can often can snap out of it but with depression they can’t, they need the help and time to recover. You can tell if you are feeling depression if you find yourself losing interest in doing stuff you usually like doing or if you are shutting yourself away, isolating yourself from your loved ones.
What causes Depression?
Depression is caused through feeling at least one or a few of the following feelings: high amounts of stress, having low self-esteem (low self-confidence), self-loathing (self-hate), being lonely or struggling with another health condition (could be physical or mental). This all stems from looking back into the past at something you did, something that happened to you or something you are doing now. It never comes from what will happen in the future as that is where anxiety comes from.
How do I manage Depression?
Managing Depression is all about maintaining your MIND and BODY whilst knowing what to do if you need to HELP ANOTHER. Aspie Heroes has put each of these things into sections down below to help.
Mind
How does maintaining my “Mind” help my Depression?
Your Mind is the first thing to be affected by Depression, if you feel depressed in your mind then you won’t want to do stuff with your Body. Whatever the Mind does the Body follows so if you maintain your Mind you can then work on maintaining your Body. You can find strategies on how to maintain your Mind by using the tabs above.
How do I “Maintain my Mind” whilst having Depression?
There are 3 areas we can look at to help you with Maintaining your Mind. These are: Understand your Situation, Gain Perspective and Talking Therapy. We have broken each of these areas down in the tabs above.
How do I “Understand my Situation”?
Understanding your Situation is about working out what is making you depressed. Down below, you can find different situations that make people depressed, see if any match with yours. These situations are:
Stressful Events
Stress is one of the biggest causes of depression which can come from difficult, Stressful Events in our lives such as a family bereavement (a death), a relationship breaking down, being made redundant from work (forced to leave) or even something you have failed at. A lot of the time, the stress we feel from these events comes from us trying to juggle the other things in our lives whilst dealing with these events.
Personality
Everyone’s Personality is different, some people have strong personalities allowing them to easily deal with depression but many more people aren’t like this. Most people have low self-esteem (low self-confidence) and are self-critical, in fact autistic people are the biggest self-critics on the planet as we will always mentally beat ourselves up over our inability to do and deal with things the way we see other people do more successfully than us. We can get this way from our earlier life experiences such as being bullied which can make us feel like we are less of a person than we truly are.
Family History
If there is someone else in your family that you know has depression, you may have inherited from them as depression can run in our genes. If you are not sure if other family members have suffered with depression or if they know members who have suffered, then ask them.
Pregnancy & Menopause
Women can become depressed from Pregnancy or Menopause in their periods. Depression from Pregnancy is better known as Prenatal/Antenatal Depression (during pregnancy) or Postnatal Depression (after giving birth), these stem from the difficultly to accept responsibility for a new life and whether or not you will do a good job at it. Menopause is when your periods stop due to low hormone levels, it also causes you to struggle to come to terms with the changes your body is going through.
Loneliness
Being on your own for a long period of time is very unhealthy for your mental health. With no one to talk to or be around, you will hold in all your emotions, feeling and thoughts inside yourself which will painfully eat away at you until you explode either in anger or sadness. You maybe alone willingly or even worse, you may have been cut off from your friends and family. The only way to deal with loneliness is to find company, you can look for social groups to go or you need to try to make up with your friends and family.
Illness
You are likely to feel more depressed when you are suffering from a long-standing or life threatening illness such as heart disease or cancer. Now everything in your life has to stop and revolve around dealing with this illness you didn’t need or ask for in your life but now it is here and must be dealt with to avoid further complications in later life.
Midlife Crisis
When you reach the ages between 40-60, you may start feeling depressed about your life’s journey up to your current age. This is called a Midlife Crisis, where you start questioning the things you have done and the choices you have made up until this point in your life. One way of expressing this, is trying to dress up or do things in ways that make you feel younger.
How do I “Gain Perspective”?
Gaining Perspective is about making it easier to understand all the issues that are causing depression by visualising them. By visualising these issues, you will now be able to see exactly how many issues you actually have. In order to help you do this, Aspie Heroes has put together a step by step guide down below.
Write Everything Down
The first thing to do is to get some paper or open a word processing software and write a list of everything down that is making you feel depressed. It doesn’t matter how big, small, major or minor it is; just write it all down so it is now out of your mind and on paper. You now have a list of all your issues in one place that you can visualise. Now, we need to start working on them.
Work out what you can Change
Go through each issue on your list, one by one. Ask yourself, What can I do to change this issue? For example, if you have a gap in your skills, can you find a qualification to learn these skills. If you can’t change the issue, is there an alternative solution to the problem such as if you can’t get a qualification, you can try to learn the skills either online or through volunteering. Another example is if you are unable to drive because you are not allowed to or have been denied a license, you cannot change this, so an alternative to this is to get a travel pass to lessen the financial issues with travel.
Forget what you can’t Change
If there is something you can’t change and there is no alternative solution to it then you need to forget about it. It is pointless to worry about something you can’t change, so forget about it: push it out of your mind, take it off your list and focus on what you can change, not what you can’t change.
Put them in order of Priority
Now that all you have left are the issues you can change or have an alternative solution, you need to make a new list prioritising the issues in order of how you will tackle them. You first need to consider if there are any issues that have a deadline to them (needing to be done within a certain time) as these will HAVE to come first whether you like it or not. Also you need to think logically, as for example if your issue is looking for a job but you don’t have the skills to do that job, then you need to prioritise getting the skills first.
Work on One Issue at a Time
It’s just a matter of working on your issues now. Remember, focus on getting one issue sorted at a time because taking too many things on at once is what played a big part in your depression in the first place and this will then only add to your depression. Once one issue is sorted, move on to the next and the next until they are all sorted.
How do I use “Talking Therapy” to help my Depression?
Talking Therapy is one of the best ways get help with your depression. By talking to someone else about it, you are offloading your issues and allowing someone else to know you are feeling depressed. Through Talking Therapy you can get advice for your issues and simply even having a good ear to listen to you maybe all you actually need. Aspie Heroes has created a list of ideas, to help you find Talking Therapy, down below.
Phone
The easiest way to get Talking Therapy is to simply pick up the Phone and call either a friend or a family member. Your friends and especially your family know you better than anyone else on the planet, this means that they will more likely be able to give you the best advice that will work for you whereas someone like a Doctor would only be able to give general advice.
In Person
It’s even better if you can arrange to meet your friend or family member in person as many people are uncomfortable talking about their issues over the phone and it can be harder to explain yourself over the phone as you can’t see each other’s faces properly. In person you can talk as long as you like without running up an expensive phone bill and you can even show things that can help explain your issues.
Doctors
One of the best people to see especially when you have severe depression is your Doctor. Your Doctor can help you through prescribing medication, social prescribing and referring you to places that offer counselling. How much help you will get from your Doctor depends on how much you tell them about your depression and what they think is best for you.
Helplines
Seeing a Doctor is a must if you have severe depression but they only work certain hours and you may have to wait for an appointment. This is were helplines come in, they are available from your phone, are operated by people who are willing to listen and advise you in an emergency especially if you are in a crisis. One of these helplines are The Samaritans on 116 123 who are available 24/7 and are free to call from any phone.
Social Groups
Social Groups are informal environments where you can meet like minded people without the pressure of the formalities that come with various mental health treatments. Some groups simply offer you a place to socialise, other groups such as “Ladders of Life” and ‘Autistic Spectrum Collective” are ran for people with autism by those with autism who offer what is known as “Peer Support” where you can hear from and be advised by people who have also dealt with the same issues you have.
Councillors
Councillors are experts in psychology (how the mind works) and it is their job to help those with mental health issues such as depression. If you need a more formal safe environment to discuss your issues then seeing a Councillor maybe the best thing for you. A Councillor will treat you with dignity, respect and everything discussed is completely confidential (remains between you and the Councillor). They may not know you personally but they know how people think and sometimes an outside opinion may work better than a friend/family opinion.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Unfortunately, it takes time to deal with Depression. If you try to rush through solving your issues, you will only make your Depression worse. In order to deal with Depression, you have to take your time. You need to take the time to deal with each issue properly so that they don’t keep coming back and most importantly, you need to make time for yourself so you can heal, rest and avoid being burned out by your issues.