Mental Health
Here’s How I Eliminated Depressive/Suicidal Feelings in 7 Steps in My Younger Years
Let’s create more awareness for suicide prevention in September with a holistic mental health approach.
“The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.” — Juliette Lewis [American actress and singer]
Purpose of the Story
This is my personal story of transforming depressive thoughts into joyful ones with healthy lifestyle habits aiming to contribute to National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.
My focus is on holistic health, covering psychosomatic (body and mind) with support from loved ones and qualified healthcare professionals. I only focus on lifestyle factors; however, some of us might need medical intervention.
I acknowledge that everyone’s condition is unique and different. Thus, something working for one might not work for another.
I wrote this piece for information, inspiration, and awareness purposes. It does not include health advice.
Inspiration for the Post
September is suicide prevention month. I read several articles and blog posts on social media reflecting meaningful messages for those with depressive thoughts.
One of the recent stories in my publication was by Nicole Dake, who is a top writer in Parenting, owner of a lifestyle blog, award-winning author, and YouTuber. Nicole also posted an inspiring video on her Youtube channel.
Here is the link to Nicole’s inspiring story, September 2022 is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month: Help raise awareness so that we can all help those who are struggling.
Since 2005, depression has significantly risen globally. “Approximately 280 million people in the world have depression,” according to World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO informs that “700,000+ people die due to suicide yearly, mainly caused by depression. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in 15–29-year-olds.”
As documented in this review paper, “Suicide is a growing public health problem, with the national rate in the United States increasing by 30% from 2000 to 2016.”
Living with anhedonia was disheartening for me. But even feeling the pain became meaningless during that time. Our lives are precious and need monitoring to prevent destructive thoughts and feelings.
In subsequent sections, I provide a high-level approach that I used in my younger years to defeat and prevent suicidal thoughts. I only focus on the critical items that genuinely made a difference in my life.
First, I’d like to give a brief background on suicidal thoughts and feelings.
Known Causes and Signs of Suicidal Thoughts and Feelings
Suicidal thoughts and feelings might have many causes. The primary issue happens when we think and feel that we cannot cope with depressing thoughts and feelings.
When I reviewed the literature, the common causes in summary include:
Living in a hostile and discriminatory environment,
Having underlying psychiatric disorders such as major depression, bipolar disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder,
Feeling pessimistic, hopeless, frustrated, socially isolated, lonely, and worthless,
Having substance abuse problems,
Lacking fundamental health requirements such as sleep deprivation, nutritional deficiencies, and sedentary life.
As informed by Mayo Clinic, “Warning signs aren’t always obvious, and they may vary from person to person. Some people clear their intentions, while others keep suicidal thoughts and feelings secret.”
I summarise the signs of suicidal thoughts and feelings as documented by Mayo Clinic to give a helpful perspective.
“1 — Talking about suicide and getting the means to take one’s own life, such as buying a gun or stockpiling pills
2 — Withdrawing from social contact and wanting to be left alone, and feeling trapped or hopeless about a situation
3 — Having mood swings and being preoccupied with death, dying, or violence and changing regular routines such as eating or sleeping patterns
4 — Increasing use of alcohol or drugs and doing risky or self-destructive things, such as using drugs or driving recklessly
5 — Giving away belongings or getting affairs in order when there’s no other logical explanation for doing this and saying goodbye to people as if they won’t be seen again
6 — Developing personality changes or being severely anxious or agitated.”
Here’s a summary of my protocol to eliminate suicidal thoughts and feelings in seven steps in my younger years. Gratefully, these steps empowered my physical and mental health. Thus, I feel obliged to pass along my tacit knowledge and experience.
1 — Life is Life! The Rest is the Meaning We Add to It.
Creating a neutral view of life empowered me to think beyond the box. I understood that everything in life has a polarity, including positive and negative ends. I found true love on the neutral side.
Our thoughts, emotions, moods, and behavior give meaning to our lives. For me, optimism and a growth mindset created the necessary framework.
Rather than taking blessings in my life for granted, I embraced gratitude and kindness. Feeding my karma account gave me a sense of purpose and enhanced my resilience.
Scheduling fun erased my depressive thoughts.
2 — Unique Focus on Nutrition and Eating Regimen
After a growth mindset, the most critical contributor to defeating depressive thoughts and feelings was fixing my nutritional issues. This approach helped me balance my hormones and neurotransmitters.
Restrictive diets limiting our nutritional needs and taxing our energy are the root cause of metabolic and mental health issues. For me, low-fat diets and cutting bioavailable proteins, and only depending on plants was a severe issue. Seeing diet as a health matter rather than an ethical one contributed to my recovery.
Customizing my diet with support from qualified healthcare professionals such as certified dieticians, naturopaths, and integrative medicine doctors fixed my nutritional problems sustainably.
I am delighted that many distinguished psychiatrists highlight the importance of nutrition on mental health and only use medication when needed. My solution has been a well-formulated ketogenic diet, particularly keto-carnivore. Plant eaters mention the value of keto-vegan for ketosis.
In addition to a customized diet, moving from frequent meals to time-restricted eating has been an excellent contributor to my mental health. The key mechanism was the power of ketosis and increased BDNF. Short and long-term fasting changed my brain chemistry.
3 — Personalized exercise was a natural medicine for my brain.
I have always been active in my life. However, I was doing the wrong exercise that putting my body in a vulnerable state in restricted diets. Bodily stress can also create excessive mental stress.
My solution was to move from excessive cardio to resistance and high-intensity training. Calisthenics worked well and became a lifestyle choice. I also moved from long-distance running to HIIT.
Including joyful exercises like trampoline, yoga, and pilates nurtured my brain. While intensifying ketosis, these workouts also removed the toxins from the body by activating the lymphatic system.
4 — Restorative sleep is crucial for mental health.
Sleep deprivation is a critical issue for mental health. The brain heavily relies on restorative sleep to remove metabolic toxins and build memories daily. I documented my experience in a story titled Here’s How I Corrected My Sleep Issues in 7 Steps and Reaped Many Health Benefits.
Due to ambition, lack of knowledge, and wrong assumptions about sleep, my cortisol levels (stress hormone) elevated and caused severe physical and mental issues.
As soon as I fixed my sleep issues using various methods such as a mindful approach, regular meditation, working in a flow state, and adequate sun exposure (increasing vitamin D), my cortisol levels were optimized, and depressive thoughts and feelings were replaced with joyful ones.
5 — Defeating Chronic Stress and Inflammation
Reducing cortisol levels with healthy lifestyle habits reduced my chronic stress. Stress affects us at a genetic level.
When I lowered stress, my chronic inflammation disappeared. It was adversely affecting my metabolic and mental health, causing autoimmune issues, brain fog, and leaky gut and leaky brain.
I documented my experience of chronic inflammation in a story titled Here Is How I Defeated Chronic Inflammation via 9 Lifestyle Habits.
Understanding the impact and implications of chronic inflammation on physical and mental health and learning practical ways to manage it with simple lifestyle changes can be a game-changer for everyone.
6 — Cognitive Flexibility and Emotional Regulation
Understanding the importance of daily thoughts and feelings in determining our behavior and habits was vital for me. Managing them made me unflappable amid challenging situations.
I understood that setbacks, especially in the form of rejections, never leave us alone from a very young age. All of us, small or big, face setbacks daily. Setbacks are inevitable in our lives.
I neutralized and turned setbacks and rejections into opportunities by gaining cognitive flexibility and regulating my emotions intentionally.
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust our thinking when facing multiple variables in an event or situation. Creating mental flexibility allows us to observe, understand, and assess our thoughts before they turn into emotions.
Emotional regulation is consciously observing, understanding, assessing, and managing our emotions timely.
The opposite state of emotional regulation is emotional dysregulation. It is a condition in which people cannot describe, understand, or manage emotions effectively. People with suicidal thoughts experience emotional dysregulation.
We can gain emotional maturity with cognitive flexibility and constantly regulating emotions. I provided three tips to regulate emotions.
7 — Activating Self-Healing Capability of the Body and Mind Naturally and Sustainably
The previous items in this post all contribute to activating our self-healing systems. I used a methodical approach to initiate the body’s and mind’s self-healing capabilities.
1 — Accepted the conditions and took personal responsibility.
3 — Strengthened mitochondria and enabled mitochondrial decoupling for cellular health.
4 — Leveraged the power of thermogenesis (cold and hot).
5 — Lowered refined carbs and replaced them with healthy fats.
6 — Personalized my diet and workouts and supplemented them with meditation.
7 — Focussed on restorative sleep, rest, and fun.
8 —I stopped smoking and alcohol to reduce toxins.
9 — Detoxified the body naturally.
10 — Used psychotherapy to address childhood traumas and improve mental health.
11 — Measured the health progress with health tests.
12 — Obtained timely help and support from qualified professionals.
I explained these steps in an article titled Here’s How to Activate Self-Healing with Self-Love.
All these items helped a lot. But thermogenesis and ketosis made a significant impact on creating the self-healing mechanism of the body and mind. Cold and heat exposure (saunas) was a game changer for my mental health.
From my experience, I firmly believe that A Cold Shower a Day Might Keep the Doctor Away in My Experience.
Conclusions and Takeaways
There is no shame in having depressive/suicidal thoughts and feelings. Everyone might have them caused by various factors. Observing our thoughts and expressing our emotions is essential to prevent them from destroying our lives.
Being transparent to our loved ones and seeking timely support from qualified healthcare professionals are necessary. In addition to our family doctors, getting a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist can be invaluable.
While depressive thoughts and feelings are usually considered mental issues, they might also originate from physical and spiritual health issues such as not meeting fundamentals (e.g., sleep, nutrition, exercise, rest, relationships, social connections, and fun).
It is known that addictions leading to major depression are one of the root causes of suicidal thoughts, as I explained in an article titled Here’s Why Depression Has More to Do with Addictions and Less with Economic Conditions.
To raise awareness, I also explained why understanding the concept of ΔFosB in an article titled What DeltaFosB Is and Why It Matters in Solving Addiction Problems. I also documented a case study titled Here’s How Georgia Defeated Clinical Depression in 10 Steps.
Behavior therapy seems to be effective in dealing with suicidal thoughts. For example, a systematic review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine titled “Treatments for the Prevention and Management of Suicide” concluded that:
“Both CBT and DBT showed modest benefit in reducing suicidal ideation compared with TAU or wait-list control, and CBT also reduced suicide attempts compared with TAU. Ketamine and lithium reduced the rate of suicide compared with placebo, but there was limited information on harms. Limited data are available to support the efficacy of other nonpharmacologic or pharmacologic interventions.”
As psychiatrist Karl A. Menninger articulated, “Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.”
If you or someone you know has suicidal thoughts, call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800–273-TALK (8255) or call 911 immediately. For a list of International suicide hotline numbers, please check out these Resources.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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