Depression – How I Overcame It
I have had many periods in my own life when I have been downright miserable and unhappy. The stress of everyday life has taken its toll and I have struggled to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Before I continue on with this article I would like to point out that I am not involved within the depression industry or sector, I personally work within business cost cutting, as well as offering various stammering treatments and on a part basis as a professional manual article submission service.
Over the last few months I have worked extremely hard to find solutions to eradicate my issues with depression. I am now much more able to cope with these type of situations. I still do find myself becoming down but now have various techniques and methods to help me to quickly return to happiness.
The first thing I do when I start to feel a bit down or unhappy is to write a list of all the things that are making me feel this way. Instead of doing what I used to do, which was to stress so much about each of them, which only makes each problem even bigger, I now look at each item on the list and try to find a solution.
This is not that easy to do but is essential in combating the demons in my mind which are trying to make me think in a negative way. Some of the items on the list are hard to find solutions for. I then try to tell myself that worrying is not the answer and that all I can do is to give it my best shot to improve the situation. At the end of the day what is the worst thing that can happen?
I have realised that I seem to get down and depressed when I am over tired. Now when I feel over-tired, I ensure that I go to bed a lot earlier than normal over the next few days and try to avoid drinks like coffee, late at night, which can keep me awake. To help me to sleep I always read a book which not only tires my eyes but also helps to take my mind off the things that I am worried about. I have also been known to have a small snooze in the afternoons to help me to catch up on any lost sleep.
I feel fortunate to have two young children. They seem to be full of life and do not seem to have a care in the world. Both children have totally changed my life in a positive way and are a bundle of fun and joy. When starting to feel a bit down and depressed, I spend as much time as I can with my children as they are what makes me happy and smile. I can soon forget my troubles and it also makes me appreciate what I have in life.
Coping With Stress In The Work Place
In the past I have worked for companies whose employees have made my life unbearable. These so called colleagues were very bitchy, hanged around in various clans and would stab people in the back at regular intervals. At times I would even dread going to work and would feel sick whilst travelling to my office.
I would return home feeling very drained and would have little energy to do anything in the evenings. I would then decide to go to bed early but would basically just lay their worrying about the next day. This could last for hours on end and at times would last all of the night.
Luckily I am now self-employed working within various sectors including stammering therapy, business cost reduction and offering to show people how to play the drifting guitar lesson.
I have read that plenty of sleep is a good way at reducing levels of stress, the question is, how does one get to sleep in the first place?
There was absolutely no way that I was paid anywhere near enough for the amount of stress that I was being put under – there must be more to life than this, I used to think to myself. I was less than impressed with the way in which my co-workers, including the management, treated me – I was worth more than this – they treated me at times like some piece of dirt at the bottom of their shoes. This period was a very unhappy stage of my life and my health started to become affected.
I wanted to leave this company a lot earlier than the time that I eventually did, the problem was that I did not feel that I could afford to. I decided to save up enough money over a period of about six months so that I could then make my escape. At the same time I started to look at finding alternative work and thought long and hard about which career path I wanted to take.
On the day that I left this job, I will never forget my journey home. I could not stop smiling, I was so relieved that this nightmare was over once and for all.
How To Cope With And Even Eradicate Stress
I have never been able to have a life which was free from anxiety and worry. I worry about almost every aspect of life and living this way has caused me a lot of problems including various bouts of ill health from time to time. I needed to find a way of coping with and reducing the amount of stress in my life and in this article I write about how I have managed to achieve this.
So what do I stress about? Well I suppose it is anything and everything. Women and my relationships with them; my financial position – having a lack of money and worrying about how I am going to be able to pay the bills etc. I also have anxiety over my career and my personal friendships. For whatever reason I also used to worry about what other people thought of me.
I am the kind of person who is classed as a thinker. I will be the first to admit that I over-think at times; some people would go as far as to call me a stress-head – others, no doubt, see me as some sort of freak. This thinking is very much in a negative manner and is a cycle which I have found hard to break.
About a year ago I was invited to appear on a national radio show to talk about my occupation which is website promotion and offering stuttering treatment, and also strangely enough helping an organisation to do with becoming a foster carer. I was due to talk live on this radio program at around 2pm. All morning as was my way of course, I was thinking and worrying about how I would come across to other people. I was afraid that I would make a fool of myself and would sound like a bit of an idiot. I also, for whatever reason, started to stress about whether I would be able to remember, under the amount of pressure that I was likely be under, the important aspects of my occupation which people would be interested in.
To say that I was becoming rather nervous would have been an understatement – there were a number of times when I picked up the phone to cancel the whole thing – before putting the telephone back down again. I then called up a good friend of mine who has always provided me with sound advice. I explained about the radio show and about my fears. He stated that I needed to relax and to even look forward to the experience. It would, he continued, be a chance to promote my own services and therefore was something to be grateful for.
He advised me that what I needed to do was to keep myself busy. If I am very busy, I would not have any time to think in my usual negative way. He stated that he believed that I needed to find things that would occupy my mind. He thought that I was spending the majority of the time stressing about this and that. If however I had a much busier life then I would not have so much time to think in this manner.
This is something I had realised a few years before but had in truth not acted on. I thought about what my friend had said and then decided to get stuck into some much needed gardening. Have a guess what? I managed to do very well on the radio; I even enjoyed it.
Successful Stress Management Techniques
Now I am sure that we would all admit to becoming a little stressed from time to time. It is knowing what to do about it which is the problem for most of us. I am the type of person who used to stress about the smallest of things, this stress affected my sleep, my skin and my work life. I now, after studying the subject of stress for the past two years, have come up with ways to help me to cope with and to reduce the amount that I stress. I am going to write about these ways in this article.
I have had a good chat with myself during recent times, having to admit various weaknesses if you like; one of which was my overall attitude to life. For whatever reason I always used to think in a very negative way; I was always rather down and depressed and believed that I was an unlucky person. In reality I was actually fine but as you may be able to tell I would feel sorry for myself.
I am now able to think in a far more positive light and this has helped me no end.
Meditation has also helped me to think in a more upbeat manner. The main area where I find meditation helps is to enable my mind to think in a much clearer manner.
Another successful stress reduction strategy is too start to exercise on a regular basis. This is good for many other reasons as well as stress including aiding fitness and weight loss. I have a pet dog now and taking it for around six walks a day helps to to keep fit and to also get out of the house when things start to get a bit stressed.
All of these things have helped me in many ways including to overcome stammering; this was a problem that I had to endure for eighteen years of my life. At the time, before the internet was born, it was quite difficult to receive credible stammering advice, which just added to the overall frustration.
I am now able to live a happy, confident, fluent life and am working as a well known web promotion specialist.