The antidote to depression is action

Anything but more rumination.

Photo by Madison Ore.

In a recent article we explored the notion depression is a message from our unconscious mind. If we pay attention to the things we ruminate over they may contain useful insights that help us make changes to improve life.

Some disagree. The medical model of depression still holds sway after all, promoting the view depression is a chemical imbalance requiring pharmaceutical intervention. Low mood serves no purpose and represents a flaw in the brain requiring drugs to rebalance, an experience to avoid.

Whatever the truth, one of these approaches blots out pain with drugs while the other can trigger behavioural changes that may benefit us in the long run.

How does this formulation help? How can facing up to low mood do anything? If it is a message from some dark part of the mind are we meant to passively listen? If it were that easy surely everyone would welcome depression rather than dread it? They’d all be taking notes instead of pills.

Depression is hated for a reason. What is the point of looking into the abyss in this way when an entire culture is telling us to avoid it?

Depression equals withdrawal

A key observation about depression is we often retreat from life. We stop going out, having fun or socializing. We withdraw.

The things we once enjoyed become a chore. Watching a favourite show, going out with friends or even walking the dog. What is the point?

We notice the second-order effects too. We gain weight, we become hermits and rarely leave the house. Our social calendar withers. People stop inviting us to events. Many feel less healthy, exacerbating the decline.

We can let ourselves go very easily. As we get fatter and less sociable we look it too. Why bother ironing clothes you’ll never wear?

Before long we can retreat into a social vacuum of our own making. There is no point doing anything, and when nothing gets done no one is there to kick your ass into gear. Vicious circles aren’t great places to be.

Surely little good can come of this? Notions of using depressions as psychological tools to gain insight into the murky depths of our soul is all well and good for articles, but out here in the real world we are moping about in rumpled clothes, peering through our curtains at the hostile world beyond, and obsessing over the horrors of our past.

Depression is depressing, and it triggers a retreat that is difficult to escape. No wonder people want to blot it all out with drugs.

Inward focus and rumination

As we withdraw from the world we look inward. And as we look inward we refocus. We end up inside our own minds.

This is rumination, a key characteristic of depression. We delve into our own inner world. We think of something bad or disturbing and it reminds us of some other negative thing, a difficult memory or painful event recalled in detail. Dark moods can trigger doom clusters like this. Before long we are lost in a vortex of despair.

Depression begets depression and many cannot escape this doom loop. We then push everything away as we become lost in this mental prison, the outside world further away than ever.

This becomes our life for a while. But real life doesn’t happen in our heads. It unfolds in the physical world with which we interact. This is the true horror of depression and low mood. It traps us in a mind prison that mimics aspects of real life and feels real despite being a projection.

The goal is always to escape this, something that can feel impossible. But before we do we must make sense of what this inward looking affliction gives us.

Inward focus has a purpose

One way to look at withdrawal is your mind is preparing you for the battle ahead. You are turning away from distractions requiring energy, activities that are not relevant to your immediate purpose.

This provides an opportunity to examine what is troubling us. What are you ruminating about? What are you avoiding? What aren’t you tackling in life? What is it that really bothers you?

All those activities you now don’t want to do, what were they about? What was the TV bingeing covering up? What about the comfort eating or the myriad of distractions like your phone and social media?

Rumination can trap us in negative cul-de-sacs. It is one of the characteristics of depression. But it can be useful too. Something is triggering us. We are avoiding some deeper problem.

Our goal is to use our tendency to withdraw and look inward to identify the source of our depression.

Is it your job, your relationships, your lifestyle? What is bothering you and why? Is it something vague like loss of autonomy, a feeling you don’t really control your life?

Are you comparing yourself against others and coming up short? What do your thoughts keep returning to?

This process is challenging. It involves recasting negatives like withdrawal and temporary distaste of enjoyable activities as a positive opportunity to examine life afresh. It takes distance and discipline. It is not easy. Almost no one does it.

Use the clarity and insight

In this view the purpose of rumination and rejection of normality is to look inward for insights. The goal is clarity, to understand more than before.

Is it your lifestyle, your job, your spouse? Do you feel stuck or dissatisfied with life?  If so, why? What is going on? What isn’t going on?

Even minimal insights give us something to work with. But the goal is to use these insights and act on the world. Get moving, get doing, get to it.

Any action helps. All action is anti-rumination. It operates on real life, unlike thinking. It must accommodate constraints and reality, both natural corrective mechanisms we need that are absent when lost inside our minds.

Almost anything counts as action. Get on a diet, clear the junk food out of the fridge. Start walking or running. Do it quickly, don’t pause to buy fancy new running gear.

Act on the world. Get moving. Literally anything counts as long as it isn’t moping around and thinking.

Even massive problems have some actions. Thrown your life away? Make a resolve, it stops today; no more rot. That is an action in itself, even if it seems insignificant when compared to the carnage of your messed up life.

But we rarely destroy our lives in one all-out act of destruction. Life is made up of thousands of microdecisions that led to here. The solution is the same. Lots of small things make for big changes. Therefore, resolve to do something then do it. Just get started.

The process of acting on the world is itself often an antidote to the stuckness of being depressed. You are doing something, however small.

The most effective actions align with the source of the depression. This in turn can be unearthed through that painful process of inward analysis.

Depressed about your body or weight gain? Get on a diet and get to the gym. Dead end job constantly getting you down? Start making moves. Deep down you probably know what you need to do, it is just off-putting. Learn new skills, improve your CV. Apply for something better.

If you had a gun at your head you’d understand your next move, the most important action to take. Most of us know what we need to do to improve our lives and alleviate some of the pain that is triggering the depression. We just have convenient reasons to never try.

It can be difficult to do this because everything starts with a single step. This itself can depress us as that first step seems pointless, barely worth the effort. We understand most fixes to our problems are multi-step actions, even multi-year projects.

This in turn triggers more depression. Everything seems impossible. Nothing is easy. Even modest accomplishments seem months away. This makes it all the harder to see anything positive.

Much of the positive requires a method to push through. Bloody-mindedness is the technique. It isn’t fancy. It is crude. I’m doing this and that’s that. Then seeing it through even if you feel lost. Honouring your promises to yourself and slowly building trust in your own ability to make decisions and stick to them.

But it all begins by accepting depressive episodes have a kind of sequence that begins with withdrawal. Using that withdrawal to understand more of what is wrong informs future actions.

But it is the actions that provide the escape route. We can’t think our way out of low mood and depression. We must fight our way out using action.

Displacement is a cure

Most “cures” to depression simply replace the rumination, pushing it out of consciousness. Running, talking, gardening, walking the dog or shouting at your spouse. None of them are fancy and none involve carefully thinking our way out of trouble.

Ideally our actions are informed by the source of the depression. But much of it seems to be a basic displacement mechanism. You only have room in your head for so much.

Being depressed about a situation, event, circumstance, trend or theme in your life is a sign from the deepest parts of your mind. So the point here is the depression is a signpost you need to change something. It may feel bad but it could be a gift.

Some life changing transformations are preceded by periods of deep sadness, lethargy and confusion and then progress to become a time of great energy and positive change.

For some this is what depression is, a target to focus energy. An instinctive awareness that where the discomfort and pain resides is where the greatest change is to be found, and the greatest prize, a new, better life more aligned with our outlook and purpose.

This is the work of a lifetime, but our minds are helping us. Alas their help can come disguised as low mood, fear, anxiety and doom loops we struggle to escape from. In all cases action is the cure. Act on the world to watch it change, and then see yourself change too.

Don’t believe the hype. Depression or low mood is a mental process that can be exploited to improve our lives. It often points the way forward as our unconscious mind dwells on what is really ailing us since it has no mechanism to distract or lie to itself.

Those who learn to pay attention to these signals and act on them are the ones we see adapt, change and transform themselves and their lives in ways that sometimes amaze us. All of us can join in if we are prepared to act.

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Does this resonate with you? Have you tried this yourself, facing up to the depression to plumb its depths and find insight at the bottom?

Have you acted on your ideas? Has it helped? Do you agree the antidote to depression is not drugs to manage symptoms but to act and perhaps to change your life?

Please share your own experiences below. If enough people show an interest I may create an open thread to discuss this more.