Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

come homeless for the first time in my life. I was walking around town with no shoes, bleeding feet, and tattered clothes, freezing to death with nothing but a hoodie in the middle of winter. I was sleeping under trees to avoid getting pelted by rain and hail, and eating out of garbage cans at night when nobody was around.It was objectively the worst position I’ve ever been in, and yet, I distinctly remember that I wasn’t sad, or depressed.I was angry, and I was humored.I found it hilarious that my life ended up at such a f*cked up place, given the fact that I was born with so many fortunate things like stable parents, supportive siblings, and great friends. I was also angry at myself for letting this happen, for not taking care of myself to the point where I was on the brink of wasting away.And that’s when I realized that my depression was more of an addiction than a disease because, at that moment, I wasn’t depressed. In all honesty, I was tired of being depressed. It was boring to me. I wanted nothing more than to do everything in my power to change my circumstances, to get a job, to start working out, and to stop beating myself up over things I couldn’t control.I made an active choice to not let depression dominate my mode of thinking.I’ve made that same choice every day since then, and I now have a better job that I don’t hate, a better relationship with my parents and friends than I’ve ever had before, and actual aspirations for my future. So in that sense, my depression is an addiction, not a disease, because I can still feel that urge inside me to revert back to isolation and self-pity, to give up on my goals and accept defeat in the face of life’s adversities.But it’s a decision I have to make every day not to succumb to those thoughts, to fight them and keep trying to move forward.<h2 id="4614">2. Physical trauma builds muscle. Mental trauma builds resilience</h2>If I had tried to tell the 18-year-old version of myself that in the next 5 years, I would survive depression, multiple suicide attempts, abusive relationships, homelessness, and a whole litany of other things I can’t even think to mention, I would’ve called myself crazy.At 18, I didn’t think much of myself. I wasn’t confident in my skills or my body, I put way too much value in what other people thought about me, and I couldn’t figure out the first step to changing who I was so that one day I could be proud of myself. I didn’t think I was strong enough to get through a breakup, let alone any of the other things I mentioned.But that’s the thing about growth: you’re never really ready for it. Growth doesn’t happen in the moment, where you can see it and acknowledge it for what it is. Oftentimes, we can only really see our growth in hindsight, after we’ve been through something. We look back at our actions and how we carried ourselves and think, “Wow, I did pretty good.”<p id=

Options

"5c56">Life is daunting when we stop and worry about how we’re going to get through it. But if we throw ourselves into the gray areas, and allow challenges into our lives despite our fear, it can lead to realizations about ourselves and our abilities that may never happen otherwise. And those realizations can motivate and enable us to actively seek out challenges because we know they’ll make us stronger in the end.<h2 id="6c6d">3. Desperation breeds discipline, not motivation</h2>One of the worst symptoms of depression is that it rips any and all motivation from your being. Everything becomes pointless, including long-term goals for your life, and short-term things like eating, showering, and going to work. There isn’t any energy or drive anymore to get things accomplished, because it feels like life isn’t going anywhere meaningful. You stagnate.But at that point in my life, life had beaten the sh*t out of me so much to the point that I didn’t care anymore what else it had to throw at me. I didn’t care how much I was hurt anymore, because barely anything could’ve fazed me. I didn’t need motivation to improve my life anymore. I had already seen the worst of the worst, and I had already tried to end my life to no avail. So if I was going to be alive, which I miraculously was, why not try and make myself better? Why not try and make life resemble my ideal? What else do I have to lose?I didn’t magically become motivated, I became disciplined. I started eating healthier, working out, finding a steady job, writing regularly, and socializing, not because I was motivated to do so, but because I knew these things would be beneficial for me, regardless of how I felt about them.Motivation is tied to your emotions; discipline isn’t.And the sneaky thing about depression is that it places so much value and importance on our thoughts and emotions, making us believe even the most irrational of things and using our feelings as evidence, as justification.But one of the most eye-opening revelations I had was that my thoughts and emotions could be egregiously wrong. I was wrong about how terrible life could actually get for me, and in the same breath, I was wrong about how capable I was of getting through it and persevering.<h2 id="e2a9">We can’t escape pain</h2>But one of the greatest perspectives to adopt in life is a lens of application; being able to look at our past experiences and wonder what lessons can be gleaned from them, and how they can help us move forward in the future.Depression’s goal is to keep us stuck in the past, but when you go through enough pain, or when you simply decide that you’ve gone through enough pain, you might be able to start treating depression like the lying bastard that it is. It might not ever leave you, but you don’t have to continue succumbing to its persuasion.And if that’s a fight we have to fight every day, then so be it.</article></body>

Hitting Rock Bottom Will Help You Kick Depression in the Nuts

3 lessons I learned from being at my lowest point

Listen, I’m not saying you should go throw yourself into the deepest and darkest pit you can find, just so that you can hit rock bottom and see what I’m talking about.

And I’m also not trying to glamorize struggle and pain as if we should blindly chase those things.

But one of the worst effects of depression is that it convinces us that life can’t get any worse. It persuades us to believe that regardless of what we do, nothing about our situation is going to change, and that we may as well just lay down and die.

And I learned that this is just dead wrong, the hard way.

Because when I thought I was at my lowest point… let’s just say, I had no idea just how bad things could get for me. I went from being a broke student attending a college I didn’t want to go to, having any realistic aspirations for the future, and being heartbroken over my first love, to being admitted to psychiatric wards multiple times for depressive and suicidal ideations, to being caught up in abusive relationships, to literally being homeless at one point.

So suffice it to say, every single time I thought my life couldn’t get any more f*cked up, life threw another curveball at me.

Yeah, there’s a lot of trauma to unpack in those years, but I don’t want to focus on that. I want to focus on the good that came out of all that pain, and I want to express just how grateful I am for those struggles because, without them, I never would have learned to overcome my underlying depression.

1. Depression is an addiction, not a disease

I’m not a doctor, so don’t take my statement as a medical fact, but I’ll explain what I mean.

I think a pretty common view of depression is that it’s a disease that afflicts you, its symptoms being loss of motivation, apathy, lethargy, suicidality, catastrophization, self-pity, etc. We’re taught several positive things to do that might benefit our mental health, like going to therapy, taking prescribed medication, and so on.

And I think there’s a lot of merit to this perspective of depression because as someone who has struggled with it since I was 13, it did feel like this for a long time. There were many days I couldn’t explain why I was sad, yet I was, to the point where I had to miss school and work, and couldn’t do anything except sleep the entire day away.

But about 6 months ago, something shifted for me.

It was right after I’d become homeless for the first time in my life. I was walking around town with no shoes, bleeding feet, and tattered clothes, freezing to death with nothing but a hoodie in the middle of winter. I was sleeping under trees to avoid getting pelted by rain and hail, and eating out of garbage cans at night when nobody was around.

It was objectively the worst position I’ve ever been in, and yet, I distinctly remember that I wasn’t sad, or depressed.

I was angry, and I was humored.

I found it hilarious that my life ended up at such a f*cked up place, given the fact that I was born with so many fortunate things like stable parents, supportive siblings, and great friends. I was also angry at myself for letting this happen, for not taking care of myself to the point where I was on the brink of wasting away.

And that’s when I realized that my depression was more of an addiction than a disease because, at that moment, I wasn’t depressed. In all honesty, I was tired of being depressed. It was boring to me. I wanted nothing more than to do everything in my power to change my circumstances, to get a job, to start working out, and to stop beating myself up over things I couldn’t control.

I made an active choice to not let depression dominate my mode of thinking.

I’ve made that same choice every day since then, and I now have a better job that I don’t hate, a better relationship with my parents and friends than I’ve ever had before, and actual aspirations for my future. So in that sense, my depression is an addiction, not a disease, because I can still feel that urge inside me to revert back to isolation and self-pity, to give up on my goals and accept defeat in the face of life’s adversities.

But it’s a decision I have to make every day not to succumb to those thoughts, to fight them and keep trying to move forward.

2. Physical trauma builds muscle. Mental trauma builds resilience

If I had tried to tell the 18-year-old version of myself that in the next 5 years, I would survive depression, multiple suicide attempts, abusive relationships, homelessness, and a whole litany of other things I can’t even think to mention, I would’ve called myself crazy.

At 18, I didn’t think much of myself. I wasn’t confident in my skills or my body, I put way too much value in what other people thought about me, and I couldn’t figure out the first step to changing who I was so that one day I could be proud of myself. I didn’t think I was strong enough to get through a breakup, let alone any of the other things I mentioned.

But that’s the thing about growth: you’re never really ready for it. Growth doesn’t happen in the moment, where you can see it and acknowledge it for what it is. Oftentimes, we can only really see our growth in hindsight, after we’ve been through something. We look back at our actions and how we carried ourselves and think, “Wow, I did pretty good.”

Life is daunting when we stop and worry about how we’re going to get through it. But if we throw ourselves into the gray areas, and allow challenges into our lives despite our fear, it can lead to realizations about ourselves and our abilities that may never happen otherwise. And those realizations can motivate and enable us to actively seek out challenges because we know they’ll make us stronger in the end.

3. Desperation breeds discipline, not motivation

One of the worst symptoms of depression is that it rips any and all motivation from your being. Everything becomes pointless, including long-term goals for your life, and short-term things like eating, showering, and going to work. There isn’t any energy or drive anymore to get things accomplished, because it feels like life isn’t going anywhere meaningful. You stagnate.

But at that point in my life, life had beaten the sh*t out of me so much to the point that I didn’t care anymore what else it had to throw at me. I didn’t care how much I was hurt anymore, because barely anything could’ve fazed me. I didn’t need motivation to improve my life anymore. I had already seen the worst of the worst, and I had already tried to end my life to no avail. So if I was going to be alive, which I miraculously was, why not try and make myself better? Why not try and make life resemble my ideal? What else do I have to lose?

I didn’t magically become motivated, I became disciplined. I started eating healthier, working out, finding a steady job, writing regularly, and socializing, not because I was motivated to do so, but because I knew these things would be beneficial for me, regardless of how I felt about them.

Motivation is tied to your emotions; discipline isn’t.

And the sneaky thing about depression is that it places so much value and importance on our thoughts and emotions, making us believe even the most irrational of things and using our feelings as evidence, as justification.

But one of the most eye-opening revelations I had was that my thoughts and emotions could be egregiously wrong. I was wrong about how terrible life could actually get for me, and in the same breath, I was wrong about how capable I was of getting through it and persevering.

We can’t escape pain

But one of the greatest perspectives to adopt in life is a lens of application; being able to look at our past experiences and wonder what lessons can be gleaned from them, and how they can help us move forward in the future.

Depression’s goal is to keep us stuck in the past, but when you go through enough pain, or when you simply decide that you’ve gone through enough pain, you might be able to start treating depression like the lying bastard that it is. It might not ever leave you, but you don’t have to continue succumbing to its persuasion.

And if that’s a fight we have to fight every day, then so be it.