There’s a sort of heaviness to depression. You feel lethargic and sluggish. You feel down and out, you have the general feeling of “I’m depressed”. You feel heavy and tired and just want to stop fighting with gravity and just lie down and stay there for as long as you can.

What is the best cure for feeling like this?? Lying down and resting? No!!! The best thing is physical movement – some activity. Get up, take the dog for a walk, wash the car, clean the house.

I know when you are feeling like this, these are the last things you feel like doing, but amazingly enough you DO actually feel better after doing them.

You need to get your energy moving, it definately helps the feelings of depression to get your energy moving. Doing something productive helps even more, that way you have a sense of achievement when you’ve finished which will lift your spirits a bit. You will get the boost of accomplishment as well as the boost of movement.

But you don’t have the energy to get up and do anything!! Trust me I know how you feel! But you can’t wait for the energy to come – it wont, so don’t wait until you feel like you have the energy to do it – start moving and then the energy will come. Its a bit like the supply and demand theory, energy follows demand. When we demand the energy by getting up and starting a physical activity, it is there.

DEPRESSION?

‘ MOVE IT TO LOSE IT’

If you find that coping with everyday challenges is getting the best of you, it may be time to reassess your emotional well-being. Although life can be stressful, at times, and external events can and do influence mood, it may be that you are suffering from a condition that afflicts millions of people each year. Depression symptoms may be influencing the way you perceive life and how you react to it. You may, in fact, be suffering from depression.

When it comes to recognizing symptoms for depression, surprisingly, these can be missed. Feeling frustrated or irritable is common and many people have, at times, experienced exhaustion, so people suffering from depression may live with a particular set of symptoms that persist for years, failing to recognize that something more serious is at work. “This is just the way I am. Doesn’t everyone feel this way?” a sufferer might ask. People are often harder on themselves than they would be with others and this also can influence how they view their emotional state. “I don’t want to be too soft on myself,” they think, downplaying their symptoms of depression.

When discussing depression symptoms, it is important to realize that these are multi-faceted and wide-ranging. Intense sadness can mar existence. Anxiety can feel alarming. Confidence may be lacking, which can make social functioning difficult. Life may be viewed as a series of mishaps. Preoccupation with personal mistakes or self-criticism can be ongoing. Small tasks can sometimes feel larger than life. Lack of energy and feeling exhausted can be accompanied by sleep disturbances that don’t ease that tired feeling. Irritation and anger may have the upper hand. Loss of interest in everyday activities may make it seem that life is dull, something that has to be gotten through. Hope may have fled and it may be hard to picture a satisfying future with these symptoms for depression can seriously impact quality of life.

Thankfully, when it comes to treatment for symptoms of depression, help is readily available. Conventional treatment may draw on medication and psychotherapy and these two methods may prove helpful. Alternative treatments have also been shown to be very effective in treating and alleviating depression. Natural supplementation is becoming popular because it doesn’t necessarily present the same side effects.

Research has shed light on neurotransmitter, brain, and nervous system malfunctioning and has provided insights on how nutritional deficiencies can play a role in how and why imbalances occur. Natural remedies act to correct malfunctioning and restore balance, there-by improving mood and well being, reducing depression symptoms.

Natural, good quality supplements contain vitamins, minerals, and co-factors, amino acids and enzymes, herbal extracts, and specialty supplements. Specific ingredients may include ginkgo biloba, for concentration and mental clarity, beneficial for treatment of cognitive decline and depression symptoms; green tea with polyphenols, used for improved cognitive performance; valerian which has been used to treat restlessness and anxiety-induced sleep disorders, insomnia, and depression; B6, which supports nerve tissues and is used in the treatment of depression. Natural remedies incorporate essential and effective ingredients that reduce symptoms for depression sufferers.

For someone who has never suffered from depression it can be very difficult to understand. Many people still look at someone with depression as a whiner and often wonder ‘what have they got to be depressed about’.

Whether a person actually seems to have something to be depressed about or not is completely irrelevant. For someone suffering from chronic or endogenous depression, the illness is part of their lives even though they may not appear to have anything overly stressful going on in their life at the particular time.

This is really hard to understand if you have never suffered from depression. It may feel like this person is always down and you don’t really want to be around them anymore. However, this is when they need you around the most.

For someone suffering from depression, they often lose interest in social activities and just want to stay home and ‘mope’. This feeling is very hard to overcome. When you have a chemical imbalance in your brain caused by chronic depression, it is very hard to reverse that imbalance. Due to this imbalance there is a lot of negative energy in the body and the more negative energy there is, the stronger the negative energy becomes.

It’s like a vicious circle. Negativity breeds negativity. This is why when you are in a depression that deep it is very hard to get out of. You tend to think negative thoughts all day and find it very hard to get those thoughts out of your head.

So although a person with depression may not want to be social, it is important to keep encouraging them to be social. Invite them out with you to a movie or dinner or just drop around for coffee.

Be there to listen to them if they need someone to talk to. At the same time try to remain happy yourself to give that happy or positive vibe that may just lift their spirits that little bit.

Encourage them to be positive and to try and think positively. Listen to what they need to say and then try to show them how to maybe look at that situation in a different way. Every situation can be looked at in different ways and the way you look at things can make a huge difference to the outcome of how you feel about it.

People with depression always tend to look at things in the most negative way so if they can be shown another way to look at a situation this can be a huge help in making them feel more positive.

The worst thing you can do for a friend that suffers from depression is to walk away and ‘leave them to it’, to decide not to be their friend because they are always so negative.

Try to remember this is when they need you the most. By walking away, their depression could become worse.

Remember – a friend in need is a friend indeed.