Depression: The way out could be in changing the way you perceive the world around you.

There is an illness all around me in modern society that seems
to be spreading like the Black Plague once did in Europe so long ago.
It's called depression, have you heard of it? Has it affected you? The
more I look, the more I see it in so many people in my life, including
myself. Depression sucks. It's a real drag, and I mean real drag. It is
different from the feelings of unhappiness that all humans have to deal
with in their lives. It is being in a solitary prison where you are the
only one who can see the walls; you are the jailor, the guard, and the
prisoner all rolled into one. Sounds like fun huh? Well, we better
become more aware of it because there are certain aspects of
contemporary life that are causing more and more souls to lock
themselves up, some believing that they have no hope of ever finding
the key out.

If you look up depression on the Internet through a Google
search query you will find a lot of different ways and means to manage
or treat the problem. There are Eastern and Western approaches,
psychological and spiritual; today there are 15,400,000 links about the
subject. It seems to be on everybody's mind and yet we don't give it
the general social awareness that we do for other illnesses. This is
probably because there are so many stigmas around faults with the human
mind. Broken bones and cancer we can understand or at least think we
do; but we touch on a soft spot when we find a problem with that
infinitely complex, helpful, magical device we call the brain.

Recently I went to a public talk by a world famous Psychologist
named Dorothy Rowe who was selling her new book, 'Depression: The way
out of your prison". I'm not going to tell you that she has all the
answers, but I did like the different approach that she took to the
illness. She's not against modern medication, but she feels that it can
be only part of the solution. Of course there are types of intense
clinical depression that need certain chemicals to rebalance the brain
to a 'normal' working order, but for all depression she feels that the
focus could be shifted from a management to a prevention paradigm.

Dr Rowe focuses on the assertion that depression comes when
one's structure of interpreting the world around you has been affected
by some deeply negative occurrences (usually in one's youth). Her
theory suggests that if a certain event happens to one hundred people,
they will all probably interpret the experience in an individual,
different way; the perceived 'reality' having been a resulting
construct from one's life experiences. For example: Let's say you get
fired from your job. Just about everyone is going to feel a general
unhappiness and grieve over the subsequent period. However, many people
have built positive, optimistic ways of seeing life and will just go on
and feel as though the layoff was another necessary step or a momentary
setback on the way to their life's goals and dreams. "Whatever doesn't
kill me, makes me stronger." is a common sentiment from this type of
personality.

However, a person who is prone to perceiving the world around
them as threatening and dangerous (maybe their parents never gave them
positive affirmations as a child, or even put them down emotionally)
may believe that the loss of this job is a relative 'destruction' of
their world, their safety, their confidence. This is where the illness
of depression can dig its sharp teeth in. This is a pretty mellow
analogy; in reality some people have gone through hellish childhoods
filled with abuse, neglect and addiction. When this type of person then
has to deal with the loss of a loved one or relationship break-up, you
can imagine that they would be much more prone to perceiving the
experience as deeply negative. Dr. Rowe believes that these constructed
structures of perceiving what happens to you can be altered, thus
giving rise to a new way of seeing reality. The main idea is based
around the idea that we must learn to change the ways in which we see
ourselves.

If we can learn to accept ourselves with all our faults and
imperfections, and realize that if we are doing our best to be a loving
and giving person everyday, then we can see ourselves as being worthy,
and that all is well. Then if someone else treats us badly, ignores us,
or says we aren't good enough, we can know and acknowledge that they
are the person with the problem and that we don't necessarily need
their affirmation or acceptance. We can then wait for positive people
to come into our lives, as like attracts like. Soon enough we will find
that there is a group of people that will stand by our side and support
us when things get bad because we do the same for ourselves and for
them.

One of the most powerful insights I had from this experience
was the sheer number of people in the room for Dr. Rowe's speech. Each
and every one had been or known someone close who had been depressed at
one time in their life, thinking that they were completely alone in the
world. When you see a big group of people together whom have all felt
alone, you might just see into the true paradox of reality? If everyone
who got depressed realized that it is a common occurrence, and
connected to others in similar cases, it definitely could be a step
towards healing. Could the Internet take a leading role in this
process?