EMBRACING RATHER THAN FIGHTING

DEPRESSION

Depression is defined by Merriam Webster as a mood disorder marked especially by

sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in
appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal
tendencies. We are taught with many things to avoid depression. Sometimes others who are
suffering from depression are placed in rehabilitation center just to address the said issue.

According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people
around the world present with symptoms of depression, while depressive disorders constitute
nearly 4.3% of the global burden of all diseases. In the Philippines, 3.3 million Filipinos or 3.3
percent of the total population in 2012 suffered from depressive disorders. The medical doctor
said the worst consequence of depression is suicide. Of which, 92 individuals or 85 percent were
males and 15-16 percent were females.

Statistically speaking, people who are experiencing depression is increasing, and it is

increasing rapidly. That is why Health officials are taking necessary steps to address the issue.
Prevention is better than cure as they say, but depression can’t be prevented. Human as we are,
are vulnerable to depression even in the simplest way. We experience depression on daily basis,
it is only a matter of stress tolerance on how much capacity a human can handle. That is why this
paper is entitled “Embracing rather than Fighting Depression” to explain to you how Depression
can help us to be a human today and to the future.

People suffering from depression isolate themselves to other people, even with their
family. We usually view the tendency to self-isolate as a troubling symptom of depression. When
placed in a situation that for them has no solutions, some commit suicide. According to WHO,
close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds.
Suicide is a global phenomenon and occurs throughout the lifespan. Effective and evidence-
based interventions can be implemented at population, sub-population and individual levels to
prevent suicide and suicide attempts. There are indications that for each adult who died by
suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide. Depression impairs our
ability to empathize properly with other people.

Also people suffering from depression are in a sad mood and always overthinking things
which results to anxiety. They work themselves up too much that they always think negatively.
Depression seems to rob us of desire and motivation. Most advice about depression is designed
to reduce it, and there’s certainly a need for that. But in our quest to avoid depression, we often
end up alienating ourselves from ourselves, by cutting off big parts of our mental-emotional
lives. This is where the quest to overcome depression often gets us into even more trouble. The
social isolation of depression is bad enough without also disconnecting from who we really are.

Depression as described by others is a broad and serious illness in which it can affect in
almost every aspect of our lives. But through my research, I realized that there’s more to
depression than just an illness. Depression can help us shape our life. Allow me to offer my view
on why it is better to embrace depression rather than fight it.

Let me start my arguments with Sun Tzu’s quote – “In the midst of chaos, there is also
opportunity. The symptoms of depression — from apathy to social isolation, anhedonia to
emptiness, sleeplessness to ruminations. They can be scary, overwhelming, demoralizing and
straight-up embarrassing. They can distance us from ourselves and our loved ones, and creep into
everyday life like a miasmic fog. In some cases, they can grind life to a halt. The mind is a lot
more complicated than that, and clinical depression is a real phenomenon. Every person requires
a different approach, source of help and set of values to treat it effectively.

DEPRESSION ALLOWS US TO GET DEEP AND FOCUS. Gasper & Clore (2002),
in their study entitled “Attending to the big picture: mood and global versus local processing of
visual information” from Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, which
looked at how depression affects the processing of visual information. When it came to viewing
the world, researchers found that happier moods promote a greater focus on the “forest,” while
sadder moods promote a greater focus on the “trees.” When given a drawing task, individuals in
“sad” moods were less likely than those in “happy” moods to use a global concept to reproduce a
drawing from memory. Similarly, when asked to classify geometric figures, those in sad moods
were less likely to classify figures on the basis of global features. In other words, those in
depressed states drew on detail and specificity, rather than on bigger-picture mental concepts.
 Depression actually makes us more detail-oriented, more attentive to specificity, and
more willing to analytically break down large problems into their component tasks. We tend to
focus more on small details which might help in analyzing problems we are facing or situation
we are into. Depression envelopes us in a cocoon of deep concentration that can lead to major
insights and productivity.

DEPRESSION CAN IMPROVE OUR JUDGEMENT, ESPECIALLY ARROUND

PEOPLE. Forgas (2014) on his published article about “Four Ways Sadness May Be Good for
You”, In an experiment, participants rated the likely truth of 25 true and 25 false general
knowledge trivia statements, and, afterwards, they were told if each claim was actually true. Two
weeks later, only sad participants were able to correctly distinguish between the true and false
claims they had seen previously. Those in happier moods tended to rate all previously seen
claims as true, confirming that a happy mood increases—and a sad mood reduces—the tendency
to believe that what is familiar is actually true.

Sad moods reduce other common judgmental biases. Negative moods can also reduce
another judgmental bias, primacy effects—when people place too much emphasis on early
information and ignore later details. So negative mood can improve the accuracy of impression
formation judgments, by promoting a more detailed and attentive thinking style. When people
are sad, they removed their biases and prejudice and focus more on the important details and not
only on what is on the surface.

Depression promotes a more detailed, accurate and attentive style of judgment, which is a
huge asset in a society that is often trying to persuade or mislead us. The blues might in fact be
nature’s way of helping us combat the deception it knows we’ll encounter in the world.

DEPRESSION BUILDS EMPATHY. Cao et al. (2017) on their study entitled “Low
Mood Leads to Increased Empathic Distress at Seeing Others’ Pain” from School of Psychology,
University of Queensland, One of those experiments showed that depressed participants had a
heightened reaction toward others’ distress, which could contribute to symptoms like social
withdrawal and avoidance. Another found that while depressed people often have normal or
elevated levels of empathy, they also often blame themselves — unrealistically — for other
people’s pain.

People suffering from depression know just how distressing the experience is — have a
greater capacity to relate to other people going through a tough time. Since they came from the
same situations, they tend to relate themselves to other person. That empathy held tribes and
families together, and it now holds communities, companies and couples together.

When we embrace our emotional challenges, we can use them to appreciate what the
people around us are going through. We can offer them perspective and hope, and we can
remember that we’re not alone in that experience. The evidence seems to suggest that depression,
for all its difficulties, is also the “glue” that holds us together. This is the lifeblood of deep
relationships. It’s also the key to trust and foundation to a strong bond to other person.

EMBRACING DEPRESSION HELP US COPE WITH EMOTIONAL

CHALLENGES. McGuirk et al. (2017) on their article “Does a Culture of Happiness Increase
Rumination over Failure?” from the University of Melbourne, over-promoting happiness actually
increases rumination in response to failure. At the same time, promoting the avoidance of
negative emotional states also correlated with increased rumination, with downstream
ramifications for overall well-being.

When we obsess about being happy and actively avoid being depressed, we impair our
ability to respond effectively to negative emotional experiences. When we are too happy we
forgot how to confront and how people feel when they are sad and in tragic moment. Cliché as it
seems, they say that when people are too happy, what comes next is a very sad event. That is
why other people are scared of being too happy because of the fear that they will be feeling after
they’ve experience too much happiness.

DEPRESSION ENHANCES RESILIENCE. On the face of it, depression seems to rob

us of desire and motivation. But people who have wrestled with depression — including
hundreds of our clients and listeners — point to their struggles with depression as a key element
of their long-term resilience.

The reason, of course, is that resilience only grows in response to adversity — just as
muscles grow in response to weight — and depression is one of the most profound sources of
adversity we’ll encounter. When we view depression as inherently bad and automatically
traumatic — which is easy to do when the symptoms are so difficult — we immediately form a
relationship to our mood that chips away at our resilience. This is why depression, when it goes
unexamined, becomes devastating. When our thoughts about depression don’t change,
depression has free rein to keep us away of who we really are. But when we choose to look at
our depression as an opportunity to learn, which starts by looking at what it can offer us, we
simultaneously build our resilience.

We discover strength, patience and curiosity. We find interesting questions and arrive at
meaningful answers. And not just because we’ve been through it already, but because we know
that the process can actually help us grow as human beings to be a better version of ourselves in
the future.

A WAY BACK TO OURSELVES. Most advice about depression is designed to reduce

it, and there’s certainly a need for that. But in our quest to avoid depression, we often end up
alienating ourselves from ourselves, by cutting off big parts of our mental-emotional lives. This
is where the quest to overcome depression often gets us into even more trouble. The social
isolation of depression is bad enough without also disconnecting from who we really are. But on
the other side, it gives more time for ourselves for reflection and to have self-assessment to
improve ourselves. Understanding and constantly acknowledging the hidden benefits of
depression brings us one step closer back to ourselves.

This is not to say that we should submit to depression, or that it’s a fixed fact of life, or
that it’s the only defining characteristic we have. But it is to say that we don’t need to have a
detour in our adventure in life in order to heal ourselves. By embracing our depression, we can
embrace other parts of ourselves we would have missed. We can find a teacher where we would
have only found a problem.

When we are in a situation we don’t like or outside our comfort zone, we have a lot of
questions. Why me? Why do I feel like this? What can I do to not feel so bad? Practically
speaking, those questions will come first into our mind. But there are other questions we aren’t
taught to ask. What does this have to teach me? How does it make me more of who I am? How
can I use it to my advantage?
 That is why for me, instead of fighting depression, why don’t we take time to analyze and
understand it, the reasons why we are in that position, and what idea or lessons it might give us.
We experience depression on daily basis, it is only a matter of stress tolerance on how much
capacity a human can handle. That is why this paper is entitled “Embracing rather than Fighting
Depression” to show that there is more to depression than just sadness, social-isolation, or worse
suicide. It is a matter on what perspective we are looking to. Accepting the fact that we suffer
depression even in simplest form or how low our stress tolerance is, is one way that can help not
to resist depression but rather embracing it to have it understood. Depression can help us to be a
human today and to the future.

To end this, let me to present to you an excerpt from a poem entitled “The Guest House”
by Rumi;

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

We might not need to cure depression in order to overcome it. We might just need
to allow it, and discover that it’s part of a much bigger picture and help us to be a better version
of ourselves.