You can say two things about the emotional upheaval that happens with loss, rejection, or disappointment. First, these emotions are normal. Second, these emotions are not only normal, but they are also important. These feelings tell you that you are experiencing distress in some area of your life that really matters. They are inviting you to pay attention and to take care of yourself.
But the sadness that goes along with this emotional upheaval can lead to depression. How does that happen?
How can normal and important feelings lead to the despair of depression?
Depression begins with your feelings.
So, it is important to be more fully aware of your feelings. People will often say, “I am sad” or “I am depressed.” Sometimes it is good to broaden the description of your feelings. Here are some of the ways you often hear depression described: blue, down, downhearted, despondent, miserable. When people share these words with me, it can be meaningful to explore their meaning. It gives some depth and texture to what they are experiencing.
Again, these are normal feelings in response to emotional upheaval. Depression begins to show up when these normal feelings begin to cluster around other feelings like fear, anxiety, despair, or hopelessness. Notice, these feelings are not part of the original emotional upheaval; they are a response to it. It is important to make this distinction because it is these other feelings that can lead to depression.
The presence of depression grows with your thoughts.
In their book, The Mindful Way Through Depression, Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn offer this scenario. “You are walking a familiar street…You see someone you know on the other side of the street…You smile and wave…The person makes no response…just doesn’t seem to notice you…walks right past without any sign of recognizing your existence (20).
The authors invite you to imagine the scene as vividly as you can and to ask: How does this make you feel? What thoughts or images go through your mind? They are inviting you to consider that your specific feelings, and the intensity of them, come from the thoughts, the story you tell about the incident. If you were to share this scenario with a group of family or friends, you would probably get a variety of responses. And those responses would be based on the thoughts, the stories they are telling about the incident.
When you struggle with depression, your self-talk has negative, judgmental, and self-critical tendencies. This self-talk grows into a picture of yourself that only worsens your depression. Using the example above, the person to whom you wave “makes no response.” That is a description of that person’s behavior. From there it is easy to conclude, “This person is deliberately ignoring me.” But if you don’t stop there, the depressive thoughts cascade over you. “There must be something wrong with me…No one really likes me…I’ll never have any real relationships…I am such a loser.”
A significant part of the work I do in depression treatment is to help people be mindful, and even accepting, of these thoughts. I invite people to look AT their thoughts instead of THROUGH their thoughts. When you can do this, you get enough space and flexibility to choose differently, even in the presence of the depression.
The power of these feelings and thoughts impacts your actions.
Struggling with the feelings and thoughts that are part of depression can leave you feeling tired, even exhausted. And yet, you still have a job to do, or a family to attend to. So you begin to eliminate activities that are “non-essential.” The problem is many of these activities are also the ones that rejuvenate you and give you pleasure. And even if you manage to continue some of these activities, the joy and meaning you find in them is lessened…because of the thoughts and feelings of the depression.
As you defuse from the thoughts and feelings of depression, you are able to choose activities that express your values, and you can do these activities even with the presence of the depression.
Feelings…thoughts…actions. This is how the normal and important emotional upheavals in your life can become depression. I invite you to visit my depression treatment specialty page to learn more about how counseling can help you with your depression.