Depression - How to reset your mindset

Depression – How to reset your mindset

Halle Berry contemplated suicide after the end of her first marriage in 1996. She said Ï was sitting in my car and I knew the gas was coming when I had an image of my mother finding me. She sacrificed so much for her children and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do. My sense of worth was so low. I had to reprogram myself to see the good in me. Because someone didn’t love me didn’t mean I was unlovable.”

Sheryl Crow on her depression:- “I suffer from depression and at its worst, there was a six-month period in my twenties when I couldn’t dress, days when I couldn’t leave the house. Antidepressants helped and so did therapy, but depression is a chemical thing that some people go through. It’s always been part of my life.”

Something I read a while ago really resonated with me. It explained that people who said they were depressed or have experienced depression, revealed that their life was a disappointment compared to what they hoped or expected it to be.

So, in order for us to feel disappointed, we must first have a preconceived thought of what we think something, or someone is going to be like.

For example, have you ever gone shopping for something like a dress or a pair of shoes and you have an idea of what you are looking for? You end up coming home and saying “I just didn’t find what I was looking for.” Or you order a meal at a restaurant and someone says, “What’s it like?” and you reply “It’s not really what I expected?” Or we might be looking for a new car or a new home, and we go searching and we try to match the reality in the outside world with the constructed image that we have in our mind.

Because what we thought and envisaged in our mind, compared to what we experienced in reality, don’t match up, we can then feel disappointed. I’ll use the example of being in a relationship Over time the feeling of disappointment turns into sadness and then of course, the longer we stay in the relationship or in a situation, we feel depressed.

Deep down, when we are being honest with ourselves, we know that we are not being congruent with our beliefs, core values or ethics. That we have been putting up with or tolerating a person or a situation because we settled for second best and in some cases, we settled for the complete opposite of what we knew was right for us long term.

We may be feeling sad or depressed because in fact we are in conflict with ourselves. We are in a tug-of-war game – with ourselves. We are not actually being true to ourselves about our self-worth and what we know we deserve, what we know is right for us. We may not be congruent with what we know we should be doing and saying. This disharmony, this conflict we are having with ourselves is telling us that we are not being consistent with our beliefs.

So, what is one way we can reset our mindset if we find ourselves feeling really sad or depressed? I think Lady GaGa explained it really well when she revealed in Harper’s Bazaar her difficulties in dealing with depression saying “I learned that my sadness never destroyed what was great about me. You just have to go back to that greatness, find that one little light that’s left. I’m lucky I found one little glimmer stored away.”

When we continue to tune into, when we focus on and remember what is great about us and relight our little glimmers stored away, it allows us to immediately go back to our greatness. When we focus long term, when we understand our true worth, we come to a place where we can get a positive handle on and turn around our thinking and therefore our actions and tap into a life that truly resonates with us. Where we can be in harmony with ourselves.

Because settling for second best

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