Black holes of the mind.

~Gargi Kaushik

---

When you’re stressed, in anger or just simply overwhelmed, there is a common statement we all make which is “I’m feeling the blues today” or “I’m depressed”. But, are we really depressed?

Depression is described as a mental state of low mood and aversion to activity, but honestly I feel we all are always a bit depressed. When we don’t get into our dream college or we don’t have a good lunch or just simply having a bad day makes us feel depressed. However, our depression is not really depression, we just use that word as an exaggeration. People who are actually diagnosed with this illness truly know what it is like to live with this condition.

Imagine a voice inside your head that constantly demotivates you, makes you feel alone, does not let you trust anyone…that’s depression. It’s a monster that lives rent-free in your mind and keeps dominating your true self. A person with depression has the special ability to turn everything good into something bad, and that’s sarcasm. A depressed mind fails to see the happiness, the goodness that people around it is providing, that monster in your mind keeps making you believe it is all lies. As the depression grows, the voices start increasing and becoming louder and louder. The person suffering does know that they need to ask for help but they feel guilty for doing so, a feeling of being a burden.

Depression is not something that goes away with medication, its an ongoing issue that can be triggered by the smallest of things. Just like other mental conditions, there is no specific cure for depression, though there are many ways that help to reduce the effect. I’ll be listing down a few at the end of the blog. Since there is no cure, there is no specific cause too. Feelings of depression may last for a few days, weeks or months and once they are gone…it is quite easy to relapse. The sad thing about depression is that it can affect anyone of any age, a 13 year old teen to an 18 year old college student to a 26 year old adult, which includes both female and male.

To conclude this blog, all I want to say is that mental conditions like these is not the fault of the person suffering, its the environment around, past trauma, stress, etc that leads to it. Asking for help is not a crime, helping yourself heal and becoming a healthy person shows how brave you are. Now some of the cures as I promised earlier, but before that it is not at all compulsory to follow any of these, these are some that I think can be helpful.

1. Following a good sleep pattern is very helpful since sleep and mood go hand in hand.

2. Eating food that makes you happy because as we all know good food = good mood.

3. Maintaining a daily routine so that you don’t go off track.

4. Exercising daily helps to energise our body and mind.

5. Trying out new things that interest you or make you feel motivated

6. Talking about how you feel, your thoughts and emotions, sharing them with someone close helps calm down your restless mind

These are only some of the remedies, there are many more that you can explore about. A gentle reminder to everyone, your a strong person and just because things are not going good doesn't mean everything is bad, I’m sure it will get better :)