Thank you, Kathleen! I am pretty sure that people who experience depression are born with it. It does not happen, it's a part of us. Sometimes it sleeps until it finds proper conditions to manifest itself. It has been with me since I was a kid, although I had a happy childhood and I never looked depressed. I kind of learned how to live with it and I am working on minimizing its effects. But I am among the lucky ones, I know some people become totally dysfunctional because of it. Human mind is such a complex place, I don't know if it can ever be fully understood...
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I know there is an ongoing debate about the usefulness of chemical solutions; from what I can tell they don't seem to work very well, but we have no other tools. I know one person who became depressive after a long illness - as though the repeated patterns of fear and negative thinking had become permanent. Could it be that negative patterns of thought start in early childhood and eventually the person so identifies with them they they are the "normal" and the person gets stuck in them?
The medicine for mental health functions a bit different than the "normal" medicine. I never needed it, but one of my friends had an ugly breakdown once. She had her treatment changed a few times before they found something that worked for her. A psychologist told me then that it is always like that, because even if the symptoms are the same, the cause is different for each and every patient. So is with depression too. We found a name for it, because the symptoms are similar, but the mechanisms behind it are different and sometimes hard to identify. I said that we are born with it not like we are born depressed, but rather that our brains are more sensitive. Some people are more susceptible to mental health problems than others. Our bodies are processing the negative inputs in very different ways.
Ah. I am glad you were able to avoid medicine which, as you mention, can have unpleasant side effects. An Indian sage I once new told us that the natural condition for humans is contentment. After 20 years of meditation practice, I was able to attain that simple condition. It took every day practice of reprogramming my mind, but the results eventually came. It only worked because I actually enjoy meditation; otherwise I never would have been able to force myself to do it.
That is pretty amazing if you can manage to feel that level of contentment via meditation, any time I try to meditate my mind just takes over, any advice? :-)
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Hi @georgemason. It looks like you are in England. I belong to an international meditation group called "Heartfulness". We have centers in India and many other countries including the U.K. Here is a source of information: https://www.heartfulness.uk/ The meditation classes are free. You may want to give it a try. It worked for me. Best to you.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of overlooking our own uniqueness but it’s true, those treatments and how they are prescribed point to the fact that our mind is extremely complex. Our genetic makeup combined with our life experience creates an infinity of combinations which determine our emotional baseline.