Consider this: Unraveling depression

There are events that occur over the course of one’s life that have the potential to cause depression — going through a painful divorce, adjusting to widowhood, living with chronic illness, becoming a caregiver for an ill parent or life partner, losing your job and struggling to find another.

Sometimes depression takes root, not as a result of an external event but from biological changes within one’s brain. But we are so used to looking within our life circumstances for the cause of our depressed mood that we may ignore the role played by biology in our depression.

In an effort to figure out what life circumstances may have led to depression, we may create an exhaustive mental list of everything that seems to be going wrong with our life, from dissatisfaction with our relationships with friends and family, to our performance in school, job, or our career.

Once we convince ourselves that it is our awful life that is depressing us, we may develop tunnel vision, blinding us to all of the rewarding aspects to our life, ignoring all of our successes. Focusing exclusively on negative data, we may not be able to recognize when our life is actually going okay.

When you conclude that your life is awful, when you are unable to recognize any rewarding aspects to your life, your depression is more likely to persist.

We need a way to differentiate between depression caused by external circumstances and one caused by biological factors. If your life has not changed significantly (e.g., fired from your job) but you are nevertheless suffering with a depressed mood, biology is the most likely explanation.

Although your life circumstances may not have triggered your current depressed mood, what you tell yourself about the events in your life, how you frame your experience in your mind, strongly influences how you perceive an event; some ways of making sense of your life directly contribute to depression.

To determine whether you are realistically appraising an event or whether you have conferred meaning to an event more likely to lead to depression, you must learn to track your thoughts.

Let’s say your best friend hasn’t called you for several weeks and you notice the thought popping into your mind, “I must have done something really awful to upset her or she would have called me.”

As a result of this thought, you are more likely to feel defensive and insecure about your friendship.Your mood becomes irritable. And when your friend finally calls, you might either jump down their throat for shutting you out of their life or make endless apologies for any imagined wrong doing.

If these responses strain your friendship, you might notice other negative thoughts, such as “I don’t deserve friends. I just bring everyone down,” which causes you to withdraw from your friends, which weakens your support network, and as a result, you may become more depressed.

On the other hand, if your explanation for your friend not calling you is benign—“Maybe her dad has suffered another stroke”— you are more likely to feel sympathetic, reach out to offer support, and view yourself as a caring friend.

Challenging negative thoughts and learning to frame your experience in a positive way, is an excellent tool to promote happiness, rather than depression.

Another way to alter your perception of your life circumstances is to practice gratitude.

If you want to become more grateful:

• Value your relationships, especially the people who act in a thoughtful manner, more than your prosperity or the material goods that you possess.

• Recognize the conditions for happiness that already exist in your life rather than fantasizing how happy you would be if you could only live someone’s more glamorous life.

• Replace the cynical view that people will only look out for their own selfish interests with the optimistic view that people often treat each other in a thoughtful manner.

• Value acts of generosity, kindness, and helpfulness as a gift, given to you freely, rather than something “due you” because you are so much more important than everyone around you.

Keep a gratitude journal:

• Make a conscious decision (set your intention) to become happier and more grateful and view the act of journaling as a valuable tool to get you there.

• Focus on acts of kindness rather than the things people have given you or you’ve acquired.

• Reflect on what your life would have been like without certain blessings that you’ve received.

• Record events that were unexpected or surprising as these often elicit higher levels of gratitude.

• Keep the experience “fresh” by writing in your journal just once or twice a week.

• Take the time to really relish and savor the gifts of thoughtfulness that you receive. - Robert Emmons