Sad or Depressed? Do You Know The Difference?

 

Are you really depressed or are you just sad? If you’ve been told you’re depressed, don't be so quick to believe it.   Learn the difference between clinical depression and normal sadness.

1. Life is a mixture of both happy and sad. This is normal and natural.

• To accept life in its fullness is to understand that life is a mixture of both happy and sad.
• Many professionals do not understand this and immediately diagnose sadness as depression.
• When you immediately medicate yourself against sadness, you miss the opportunity to work through issues in an alive and healthy way.

1. It is okay to be sad because sometimes things are sad.

• We are okay with happy, but we have trouble with sad.
• There are as many opportunities in a day to be sad as there are to be happy.
• Happiness and sadness are equal sides of yin and yang.  You cannot have one without having the other.

1. Depression results when you do not deal with your sadness.

• We often think our sadness is depression, but it is not. We get depressed when we don’t deal with our sadness.
• Sadness is part of every human life.  There is NOTHING wrong with you if you get sad.
• When we lose something we get sad and when someone dies we get sad.

1. Anti-depressants take away the pain (really the anxiety), but keep us numb.

• You will always feel anxious BEFORE you feel your feeling.
• Anxiety is the feeling that signals a feeling is coming up. (A feeling you are not used to feeling)
• When you feel nothing (flat-lined from taking medication), that means the feeling has been stuffed back inside.

1. You must “feel” to get healthy.

• The only way to heal is to feel.
• Embrace your sadness as part of life; a way you get to learn more about yourself.
• Everything is attitude.  Our depth is created by our ability to deal with both happiness and sadness.

Comments

[A Girl]

Just wanted to say I liked this article and wrote about it in my blog but I couldn't make the trackback link work.

[PM]

About time someone spoke up and said it's okay to be sad. The other side of the coin. I fully concur on meds - taking an antidepressant and not following through with talk therapy or feeling is like taking a pain pill for a nail in your foot. Dig your practical, common sense approach. Brava.