Depression can certainly be fixed if you are willing to get in touch with you. You can always take charge of you. You can always look inside you and start to identify those things that are making you unhappy.

Depression isn't an infection cured by medication. Medication isn't there to fix you; it's there to make the pain tolerable while you fix yourself. So it's a temporary stopgap. But do not go off that stuff cold turkey: you MUST NOT go off cold turkey. That's when people pour diesel over themselves and set themselves on fire. Psychoactive medication is not a flu tablet. It will change the functioning of your brain so you must taper off.

Depression is a garbage bin term for all sorts of different problems, and the pill is there to take the pain away of the problems - but if you are doing this alone you're going to have to change some fundamental views.

You need to stop calling it depression, for instance, and start saying 'i'm unhappy!'

Then you need to ask 'why am I unhappy?' Often the answer is 'because my life sucks!'

So - why does it suck? What is it about it, that sucks? Don't compare yourself to other people, what bugs you may not bug them. And what bugs you now may not bug you later. you need to take your problems seriously and look at them, and be caring towards yourself and find ways to fix the things that aren't working for you in your life.

And also don't go into "oh but I can't..." We all have made giant messups in our lives and the important thing to do is not bewail them, but say 'okay here I am, here, now. This is what I've got. What can I do with THAT?'

If you are lonely you need to join something. Don't sit at home being lonely; and I know that being lonely makes you have no motivation to get out so you have to push past that.

Humans have had feelings for millennia. Ever since we were mammals. Which is to say, we've been managing our feelings as homo sapiens for ten thousand years. Only in the last fifty years have there been any such things as antidepressants.

How did we do it for the first 10,000 yrs? We did that by being simple. By takeing our feelings at face value. By automatically feeling our feelings, and not turning them into something we shouldn't have to go through. And by understanding that all feelings pass.

You can do this and you'll come out far more aware and much wiser than you would be if you didn't.

....you do realize it's been scientifically proven depression is a chemical imbalance that can be genetic, right? It's not just a feeling.

Bridgi.
Wow I must say I am inspired by your reply. I would have to ask though as I believe we are still mammals? I feel life is so much more complicated and we human beings have done it to ourselves in the name of progress. The world is nothing, but competition against each other. Turn on the TV and you will see adds everywhere that teach you to be this way or that and what a normal person should do or look like.

I myself have a dream of moving way out into the middle of now were and staying away from most people. I want my family there and a few friends to come visit, but I feel its the rat race of live that drives depression deeper and often makes it worse. Another thought about all those years ago when anti-depressants were not around people handled things much differently and there were less laws to protect the undesirerable people.

Your post was very insightfull and thank you for that.

I suffered from MDD for many years. No one can understand if they haven't had it. One day I thought I would start to eat organic and I loved it. I guess a year or so later I realized I wasn't suffering from depression or anxiety anymore! My doctor is now weaning me off the meds!! It's because I'm eating clean healthy food. Our immune system is in our gut. We have a healthy gut we have a healthy immune system which also effects our brain. Some doctors are catching on but very few. Diet is everything!

You can't just snap your fingers and fix depression. Those who say you can aren't helping the situation.

No you can't but you have to identify your problems.

I totally get where Linda's coming from - I think that's probably a huge part of it, because otherwise how could I take vitamins and lose anxiety attacks? We're malnourished from bad food, and that's a known fact. There are ted talks on micronutrients being better for you than antidepressants.

But we have to ask ourselves if the word 'depression' is DISEMPOWERING word. And it is. It's a truly disempowering word. Whatever skills or powers we might have had against unhappiness or woe, or grief - we don't have them against 'depression' because depression is a chemical imbalance, or a disease.

Grief is something we'd know we had to get through. NAMING this feeling would be half the battle. Wouldn't it. But hey, naming depression doesn't help at all. Because it locks you down, you're stuck in the mud.

This is why you have to reject the word to escape. I had to reject it. I had to learn a LOT about myself.

I had to learn when I was being melodramatic. When I was letting my panic run away with my mind. When I was letting my grief run away with my mind. I had to learn how to feel feelings without letting my head get involved.

I had to learn to process emotion like an electric shock: relax, earth myself... wait and get through the pain without fighting.

I had to learn to give myself processing time. Quiet time. Walking home from work. Time without events, but just slow pleasant scenery... bucolic walks home.

I had to learn not to believe my thoughts. I had to learn self control.
I had to learn to push through hell, and keep going to work. Keep faking it, fake it till I made it.
i had to learn that the 100+ 'drive off the cliff' and 'shoot yourself' visions I had a day were just my brain shitting itself. And not to be taken seriously.

I had to learn a lot about my physiology, my psychology, my body. Don't get me wrong. Getting better is not a piece of cake. But it certainly is a thing that can be done. If you've got the balls to confront yourself.

And it doesn't help if you call it depression. It's not one big giant monster called depression. It's a huge number of smaller, easier, discrete issues and lessons and problems that have to be handled separately, on their own terms.

JMHO obviously. But there you have it. That's what I think.

Alexanna you say it's a chemical problem and I agree. it's a biochemical problem. it's a blockage made of many twigs and branches, damming your ability to function. If you don't address your stuff, where do the chemical reactions that processing releases go? They stay in your body. Of course it becomes chemical. Crying would release them. But they're still in your body.

you can cry, or you can take pills. But don't imagine that your body was designed to need those pills. 10,000 yrs of evolution have taken place without those pills. In fact, that's only how long homos apiens sapiens has been around. Mammals have been around millions of years, evolving to function with their emotions, without prozac. So how were they doing it?

No point saying the world's more violent today. HEELL NO. How many tigers, bears, lions and other humans did you kill this week? HELL NO. Much more relaxed. Much less violent. Much easier to survive.

What we've got are fewer problems - but we're not handling the problems we do have.