I think it’s very important to mention first and foremost that I have faced depression in my life, so much so, that I’ve also been suicidal.

I know how it feels to have been diagnosed with depression and I also know how to build a life where you can find peace of mind, healing, and restoration. I recovered from my depression.

Let me first tell you that I was living alone and I didn’t have the blessing of having friends or family coming to visit me or checking up on me. And I didn’t exactly feel like reaching out to someone telling them “hey, I’m depressed, can you come over?” because I felt drained, ashamed, and tired of everything. I blamed many people for my depression which is normal to do when you have suffered from trauma that is out of your control as a child.

I wasn’t eating well, at one point I didn’t even have a job, I didn’t feel like exercising or going out at all. During a depression, everything seemed pointless, life seemed so meaningless and I couldn’t find joy in almost anything. I cried most of the time and felt as if I was all alone in this world and that no one was ever going to love me, see me or care for me again. I thought that it wouldn’t matter to anyone if I was gone, if I wasn’t here. So, therefore, what is the point of living a life like mine, a life which I’m doomed to be lonely and miserable. I used to think about the mean words people have said about me.

“You are not good enough, you are not responsible enough and you are lazy. You won’t ever find the man of your dreams because you are not that great. You should be happy with whatever you get”. These are just some of many more nasty things I had to hear from people in my life and these words haunted me like a ghost. And I thought to myself, maybe they are right. Maybe there’s really something wrong with me and maybe I’m really not worth the happiness, love and peace that so many people get to have in their lives.

If I have earned your trust by telling you about a part of my past that was really difficult at the time, then I have some real words of wisdom for you. I talk about trust because I really need you to trust me when I say that I know how it feels, I’ve been there, I haven’t experienced exactly what you have/are but I bet the feelings you feel I’ve felt too. I really want you to listen to what I’m about to say because if you do it could help you and you can begin the healing process that will set you free from suffering and pain. We all feel pain, we all suffer every now and then, we are all in this together and I want to show you how I got out of my depression.

1. Never ever believe people’s nasty opinions about you. People like to talk; some of them like to talk when they shouldn’t. When someone says something nasty to you, you must understand that it has much more to do with them than with you. Many people will try to tell you who you are and what you should do and what you deserve and don’t. These people more than often tend to show up when we are vulnerable and hurt. Bottom-line is, don’t believe their opinions, especially when they are negative and about you! They want to put you in a box like many people tried doing to me and I believed them at times because unfortunately I had too few people who could tell me otherwise. But see it doesn’t matter if you feel like the whole world is against you, there will ALWAYS be someone who loves you and likes you and you need to hang around people like that, the way I chose to do.
2. Get far, far, far away from people who put you down and are negative to your spirit. It doesn’t matter if these people are your family, friends, or only people you hang out with. You need to get away from them if you ever want to get out of feeling depressed. They are toxic to your spirit, to your heart, and instead of lifting you up they will drag you down to the bottom of the ocean because that’s usually where people who put others down live. So you need to get out of negative relationships, negative environments, and if you can’t leave then keep a distance, a huge one. I know it can be hard but you will realize that this is one of the best things you can do for yourself to focus on healing yourself and loving yourself.
3. Feel your pain and set yourself free. I was alone and felt my stomach turning out of fear of loneliness and other strange feelings which I didn’t understand at the time. I did what my therapist told me; let the feelings come, allow yourself to be in the moment with your emotions. Doing this will help you to heal. You will set yourself free every time you allow yourself to feel whatever it is that you are actually feeling. Feel all the sensations in your body, maybe it’s your heart beating faster, maybe it’s tears rolling down your cheeks, maybe it’s a sense of pain in your chest or head. It doesn’t matter what or where you feel the pain, what matters is that you feel it, completely and fully. It might feel strange that allowing the pain to be there in the moment can actually make you suffer less but that’s how it really is. Try it next time and see for yourself. Suffering only comes when we avoid pain and pain is going to be there throughout life in one form or the other just like pleasurable emotions. Instead of running away from it or distracting ourselves with TV, drugs, alcohol, sex, food, etc. it is much more constructive and healing to just allow yourself to feel the pain. With facing the pain you may also hear answers from within you of what direction you need to take next or how you can love and forgive yourself in order to begin healing.
4. Depression can’t be cured with love, but it can be cured with therapy and self-love. I used to think that if someone would only care about me enough to invite me to their home or love me enough to just call and check up on me, then I wouldn’t be so depressed. Well let me tell you, no one will check up on you if you don’t. No one will call you, embrace you, and take care of you unless you do. And even if you do find someone who is willing to love all of you the way you are, you will still feel depressed because you are unsatisfied with yourself. You have unfinished business within yourself that no one can come and solve for you. No one can “love” you out of your depression; it would be an illusion to think that it can happen. My therapist showed me love, but with it came a guidance that was all about how I have to practice loving myself. Every time we met she gave me tools, techniques, books that all had to do with loving yourself. She asked me if I had been nice to myself today or not. I never truly understood the concept of having a relationship with myself before. Until someone told me you can. You got to start with yourself, start treating yourself the way you want others to treat you.
5. Please remember that you are worth all the love, happiness, and peace in the world. I cannot stress the “please” enough here. Actually I cannot stress this entire sentence enough. Being depressed doesn’t mean you are not worthy of having anything that you want. Don’t fall for the trap that society, (in many cases) family, friends, Facebook/social media in general, etc. is trying to put up for you.
6. Everybody has voices in the head that tells lies. You have to be very careful with the voices you hear in your mind. Especially the negative ones because they are not true. These voices usually come from parents or other caregivers who have criticized you through your life or in childhood maybe. Their voices can easily get internalized as your own voice. But the critical voice (especially when you recognize it as your parent’s words) is not your voice. If you have been criticized a lot as a child, shamed, screamed at, ignored, disrespected this leads to psychological trauma. For this it is important for you to seek help and I would be happy to begin your healing journey with you. You can reach me through the contact page and I always answer all emails within 24 hours.
7. Write your truth. Write down your new truth about who you are, who you really are, who you want to be, what you want to have in your life and how you want to feel on a daily basis. For change to happen you must be willing to do something to change it and this right here is an incredible way of making the change take place. Ask yourself the big questions. Like whom do you want to be? What do you wish to achieve in your life? What makes you truly happy? What can you do to get what you want? Depression is not your identity, depression is just a state of mind you are feeling right now. But what you want to ask yourself is who are you when you are happy, free and peaceful? Who were you when you were not depressed? Who would you be or want to be if you were not depressed? It is time for you to set yourself free from the stupid and false labels the society and your environment have tried putting on you. You are incredible and you don’t fit into any box and I bet you are tired of people telling you what you can do and what you can’t. I bet you are tired of people telling you what you deserve and what you “should” be doing with your life. You can influence your own path in life, you can decide what the real truth is and you do it by writing down on a piece of paper what you want your truth to be like from now on.
8. Conditioning your mind to work for you not against you. Once I understood this concept I really started to see my entire life differently. When you are depressed we tend to focus on everything that’s bad in our life. You think of the mistakes we have made, things we wished we did differently, and how sad we feel for all the bad stuff and news we hear about each day. You think about what people have done to you, what you have been through and how unfair and sad it all was. You think about what was and that the future might look very dark or even like there is none for us. You feel there is no point to do anything since everything is going to end one day anyway so why even try. Back up back up back up! All this thinking is making your own mind work against you. What if you started thinking the complete opposite? And by doing so you will automatically train your own mind to work for you.
9. Your thoughts are completely in your control. You might think your thoughts are not in your control and everything you feel is just coming to you by some unknown force. You do have the ability to influence your own thoughts to a large extent. I agree you cannot control the outer circumstances of life but you can control how you choose to look at them. A book I highly recommend that you read more than one time is “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” by Robin Sharma. I want to share a beautiful quote from that book and it goes like this “Wage war against the weaker thoughts that have crept into the palace of your mind. They will see that they are unwanted and leave like unwelcome visitors”. Techniques that will help you train your mind to have pure thoughts are daily meditation, being kind to yourself, following your passion and doing what you truly want in life. Therapy works for one of the same purposes, to heal, recover, restore your traumatized mind and body. If you would like to work with me contact me through the contact page, I always answer within 24 hours.
10. How to start the process of conditioning your mind. Let’s take the phrase “I’m not good enough” as an example. Ask yourself, not good enough for what exactly? Who said you’re not good enough? Do you really think that’s a fact, or could it be a false belief you need to change? You feel sad or angry or hurt about something that went wrong but did you ever ask what valuable lesson you got out of that situation? My purpose of having gone through a lifetime of trauma and difficulties was so that I can help others to change their lives, so that I can be of service to the world by sharing my story of how I turned my pain and struggle into a blog that helps people around the world. I have worked to heal those traumas through therapy and studied psychology and now I work as a trauma coach helping other people to heal their traumas.
    You are much more than any diagnosis that some doctor gave you saying “depressed”. Did you know that when the doctor told me I was depressed and gave me a bunch of pills to eat I didn’t eat them, why? Because deep down I believed I didn’t need these to get better, I didn’t want to rely on pills to get me out of this. What I did instead was to see a therapist who helped me heal the past wounds that haunted me so. The pills might have worked and I’m not saying that we should not rely on pills at times, but addressing the underlying psychological pain and trauma that many times is the cause for depression and anxiety creates a long-term lasting healing and recovering effect. Sometimes combining medication with therapy can be an effective way of dealing with depression as well.
11. Stop comparing yourself to other people. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone; you are not supposed to look like someone else, be like someone else, or live like someone else. Nobody’s life is better than yours, or worse than yours, this is all an illusion we create in our head. We “think” someone is better or worse than someone else. The only thing that is, is what you choose, what you create in your mind. Your mind and body is your most powerful resources, through healing you can create a life that brings with it more peace of mind, happiness that is defined by your standards, and love.

Last but not least I want to tell you that there is nothing wrong with being in depression. I know it might sound contradictory since all I have been talking about above is how to get out of depression. I know despite of knowing what to do and sometimes doing the right things you can still feel depressed. I know how it feels, I’ve been there and that’s completely fine. Depression has its reason to be there, something needs healing, listening to and restoration in you.

Whatever you have been through will take some time to heal and that’s normal, it’s how it’s supposed to be. All my love goes out to you. If you’d like to get help with your depression do not hesitate to contact me, I would love to help you, through trauma therapy and be part of your healing process at www.khanselma.com/contact. I answer all emails within 24 hours.

I hope this article was helpful to you. If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends and do leave a comment!

With Love,

Selma

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