“Words of encouragement, praise and connecting human to human helps! Getting plenty of sunlight and fresh air helps. Finding ways to lessen the isolation that depression brings helps.

“Getting loved ones on board to encourage the depressed helps. Emphasizing they are not alone helps.

“Planting a garden and tending to it helps! Implementing a daily routine of self-care helps! Staying busy doing meaningful activities helps. Helping others helps!

“These are just a few non-medicinal techniques I have used with clients.”

- Carol Cronin, Founder/Owner at Happy, Joyous & Free Recovery & Life Coaching, San Francisco Bay Area

For the next few blogs, I’ll relate some of the answers.

“I have severe OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] which fluctuates, but I got over clinical depression 15 years ago by doing the following:

1. I saw a homeopath who knew how to help those with OCD and depression and she helped me to talk about the things which really upset me. Talking to her made me realize exactly what I wanted to achieve though it took me a couple of years to get there.
2. My main aim was to go to University and get a BA at least. It took 11 years but I got a BA, an MA and a PhD. It was hard work and I almost gave up many times but the research was a great help for stopping my depression from returning and keeping my OCD under control because it occupied my brain, leaving less time for ruminating.
3. I spend most of my spare time gardening as it is such a nurturing hobby. Growing plants and watching them flourish is very satisfying and the challenges which gardening brings helps to get things into perspective. Making the garden into a tranquil safe place has had huge benefits in that it has attracted wild life (birds and small mammals) which I can watch from my windows when the weather is bad.
4. These pursuits have made a huge difference to my life. The depression never returned and I do have respite from my OCD for long periods, as well as wonderful absorbing hobbies to help bring it under control.
5. I have some online forums which I run which bring together people with OCD as well as depression, anxiety and other disorders. Sharing and talking about hobbies really helps. Sufferers reap huge rewards from sharing as it helps to end isolation.”                                                                                         Anne Watkins, editor of The OCD Project, Exeter, United Kingdom

I have a friend who has been depressed since he was sixteen years old and one day settled into a moderate stage of depression he could live with most of the time.

He once told me of a time when he was in major depression and, even with antidepressants, was having a difficult time functioning. One evening, he was watching the 5:30 evening news by himself, deep in depression, when for no apparent reason, the depression suddenly lifted, and the darkness was replaced by light. It startled him.

The point of my telling this story is to never give up – never, ever give up. Just when you least expect it, your depression could lift like the curtain of a movie screen, and the dark of the night within you replaced by the light of a glorious day. Take heart. It could happen to you.

May 28, 2008

How long, O Lord, how long,
Will I be depressed and anxious forever?
My eyes are flooded with tears,
My stomach a knot within me.

O, that I had never been born,
Or had died as a baby.
There is nothing left of me.
Please, God, I need a miracle.

November 2012

You are the song in me today,
With all I think and all I say,
With all events that come my way.

Your melody my spirit plays;
I’ll tune within and humbly praise
Your presence in me all my days.

It’s not what I achieve for You;
I’ll strive no more in all I do.
It’s only what You do through me;
I’ll wait for You on bended knee.

God is good!

Researchers from a German hospital have implanted pacemaker electrodes into the medial forebrain bundle in the brains of patients suffering from major depression with amazing results: in six out of seven patients, symptoms improved both considerably and rapidly for periods of up to 18 months after the intervention. The method of Deep Brain Stimulation had already been tested on various other structures within the brain, but with less dramatic effects. The only drawback is that the new procedure will take time to become part of standard therapy.

What a development!  Just when there seems to be no hope, yet there is hope. I would have been thrilled with the anticipation of this procedure becoming available six years ago when I was in major depression and had no hope of recovery.

I still have the same things happen to me today, but I have the tools to deal with them. For every negative thought I have, I think of something positive. Or I use the cognitive behavioral therapy concepts I learned: in the long run, it doesn’t really make any difference anyway, I can always backtrack on the commitment, I can apologize to my friend and perhaps we’ll grow closer as a result, and such “changing my stinking thinking” self-talk.

Or I can use the stimulus – response concept I covered in blogs 60, 61, and 62. That has been most important to me. Or I can change the scenery by listening to music, reading an engrossing novel, meeting with a friend, or watching a favorite movie. You get the picture. It is not easy to stop thinking negative thoughts; you need to replace them with something else.

• Playing an instrument allows depressed people to express themselves nonverbally when they are not comfortable talking about how they feel. I know of people in depression who have been almost miraculously healed by playing the piano or a violin.
• Listening to soothing music helps an anxious or depressed person let go of feelings that are troubling. To keep the black cloud of depression far from me, I listen to Christian and classical music before going to bed at night and during the day if I become stressed or just need a time out.
• Sharing a deep-felt musical experience with a psychotherapist may help uncover deep hurts that have held one captive to depression…or suggest an inner understanding of deep healing motifs.

For clients I coach who are depressed, music is the one staple I suggest to every one of them, for the reasons above, but also as a jump start in moving a person out of the left hemisphere of their brain (the language venue) into the right hemisphere (the spatial, non-verbal venue).

Like bipolar disorder, cyclothymia has high and low phases, though the highs are not as high and the lows not as low as full-blown bipolar.

The upbeat phase features symptoms such as elevated mood, increased self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, an increase in goal-directed activity, and excessive involvement in pleasurable activities. These symptoms may last 4 or 5 days and are followed by an alternate phase of mild depression symptoms such as sadness, pessimism, fatigue, feeling guilty, trouble concentrating and changes in sleep or appetite.

Though these symptoms may be manageable, if they persist for two years or more, intervention should be taken because 50% of those with cyclothymia end up with bipolar disorder, and major depression is also a higher risk.

The American Psychiatric Association estimates that 2.2 million U.S. adults have cyclothymia, about half as many as those with bipolar disorder. But as bipolar disorders have gained visibility in the clinical community and popular culture, cyclothymia is being identified and treated more often.

After a couple years of terrible suffering and a hope that I would be struck dead by a large truck swerving into my lane on the highway, I finally came to my senses. This was no way to live. I needed something else.

That something else was Jesus Christ. I knew He was already my Savior but didn’t realize He was also the One who could heal me. When that awakening came, I held onto Him, like a man whose body is halfway down a great pit clings to the only branch that keeps him from sliding to the bottom.

My evening prayer became: “Be Thou by me, even as a mother sits by the bedside of her ailing child through the long night. Only be Thou nearer to me, even in my very soul, and watch over the world of my dreams.” I still pray that before turning in for the night and feel great peace that He is right there with me.

Then came a day when, not with a resounding voice, but more with a whimper, I cried out, “This is enough. I give up.” And so started my healing, not because I pulled myself up by my bootstraps but because I knew I had to depend on forces outside of myself – medication, psychotherapy, friends, and the Holy Spirit.

I stand before you today healed of depression and with a ministry to help those who are on the same track I was on, with that terrible affliction of soul called depression.