Depression and internal monologue
A key feature of depression is the internal monologue going on inside the depressed person′s head. When people are depressed, they spend a lot of time and energy on a daily basis telling themselves how crap their lives are, how much everything sucks and how much they hate it.
The negative voice in your head
When you are depressed, there are usually very real and important things in your life that you are not satisfied with. Maybe you are in an unhappy relationship. Maybe you feel stuck in your current job. Or maybe you feel that you are simply not living the life that you were supposed to be living.
As this shows you don′t just become depressed for no reason. Instead, you become depressed because there is a true gap – which can often be quite easily identified – between the life that you want and the life that you have.
Be that as it may, the voice in your head is not a former world class athlete turned life coach, who will rationally lay out how to get from A to B in order for you to escape depression and reach happiness. Instead, the voice in your head is a frustrated, disillusioned and negative character that has given up hope that things will ever get better.
The internal monologue in your head does not think in terms of solutions and practical steps to getting better. Rather, it only focuses on all the problems and all the negatives. This it does in a highly circular manner, where variations of the same negative thoughts run through your head over and over.
So in this way, the internal monologue does not produce any knew knowledge. Instead, it is like a song on repeat, telling yourself again and again how miserable life is right now, and how far it is from the life that you actually want.
As this shows, the internal monologue prevents you from thinking critically and problem solving oriented about the difficult situation you are in. Instead, it reinforces the feeling that everything is hopeless, and that there is nothing you can do about it.
Step 1: Do the opposite of what the depression wants you to
Having this negative internal monologue in your head is not healthy. In fact, the more you expose your brain to it, the higher the risk you have of developing depression. Considering this, it is important that you do something to interrupt and stop this monologue.
The internal monologue usually pops up in your brain, when you are alone, or when you are not communicating with other people. Also, it appears when you are not doing anything – or when you are doing things that require only a minimum amount of effort on your part.
Unfortunately, these are all typical traits of being depressed: Being alone, not wanting to talk to others and not doing much for most of the day.
This, of course, is also the reason why the internal monologue has such fertile conditions in the mind of the depressed. But, if you want to get better, you need to go in the opposite direction, even though it feels uncomfortable at first.
Consequently, in order to limit your exposure to the internal monologue, you need to try to not be alone for many hours a day. Talking to other people. And engaging yourself with activities and projects that actually requires an effort on your part.
Doing these things will not be easy. But if you are able to, you will find that the strength of the internal monologue will diminish quite rapidly, and that soon you will be able to think more clearly and rationally again.
Step 2: Identify your unhappiness
The second part of ridding yourself of depression and the internal monologue is to identify the underlying sources of your unhappiness.
Is it your current relationship that is frustrating you? Are you unhappily in love with someone? Are you lonely? Do you hate your job? Have you lost someone? Or do you feel that you are failing your dreams?
After you have identified what exactly it is that you are unhappy about, it is crucial that you do something to reverse it. If you are in an unhappy relationship, do something to fix it or else leave it. If you dislike your job, start applying for new ones. And if you have an unfulfilled dream, see what concrete steps you can take to get closer to it – even if they are small.
Changing your life is never easy. In fact, it is probably the most difficult thing for a human being to do. But if you want to quit your depression for good and actually have a shot of being happy, you need to be realistic about what you want in life – and what it will take to attain it.
Copyright ? Jens Lindberg Jensen 2019. All rights reserved.