PREVENTING DEPRESSION:
Before we can treat depression, we should first of all avoid or prevent it if possible. It is very hard to treat depression as it could take a decade or more to treat it, not minding the cost involve. Prevention is better than treating a cause so they said. However, the following tips if properly applied can reduce the possible cause of depression by 70%.
STEP 1: The battle begins from our inner most minds, when we begin to allow negative images and distorted information occupies our minds. When this information takes their roots, they form the basis of our thoughts, reasoning, perception and other mental behavior. The problem is not our brain rather our minds, our mind lead and guide us, while our brains only process, store and retrieve stored information. Depression begin to slowly to gain ground inside of us when we able to guide our mind from stimuli capable of distorting our image. This is because depression don’t just start overnight; it comes as a result of accumulated errors, mistake and frustrations that are pushed down our unconscious mind that later manifest beyond the ordinary state of health of the individual. It is all about us, what we do for ourselves, our reaction to external and internal psychological events determine the state of our health.
STEP 2: We must be able to understand our thoughts and how they influence or affect our emotions and our willpower. When negative thought which are toxic to our souls and bodies are allowed to take place in our consciousness, they begin to kill our sense of purpose and direction and replace them with frustration and confusions. These negatives thoughts comes in many ways such as lack of belief, unnecessary fear that develop to phobia, excessive anxiety, procrastination, lack of self identity, doubt of the self, wrong role modeling, and many more distorted ideology and wrong perceptions. These wrong ideations have the potential to depress you to the barest minimum point. When you are able to discover yourself, you will be able to define and give yourself a purpose and know where you are going to. Depression is for the looser not men with a purpose, missioners, and winners. God didn’t create to be a victim of depression in any form whatsoever.
STEP 3: Self motivation is an inner tool to elevate your drive and spirit at all the time, nobody gives it to you, stop sympathizing yourself or display yourself for others to sympathized. The ability to succeed and fail depends on your ability and inability to stand or give in to nothing. Try as much as possible to decongest your mind and fill it with anything worth honest, whatever things that are true, whatever things that are pure, whatever things that are just, whatever things that are godly, whatever things that are lovely, whatever things that are of good report, if there be anything of good virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy put your mind on those things, because out of the abundances of life are those things. Whatever you do today is the only differences between your today and yesterday, you can change or damage it, is all about you.
STEP 4: This is another factor you must give utmost consideration, whether you are Christian, Muslim, moralist, traditionalist, in respect of your belief. There is God and there is Satan, Satan purpose on earth after the defeat in heaven was nothing other than to infect people with all sort of spiritual and psychological maladies ranging from depression, cancer, stroke, mental disorders such as psychosis, Alzheimer, and many others, thought of suicide, and many negative ideologies, more so to take away your God giving joy, freedom, good health and peace of the mind, prosperity, long life ,…… what you need at this point is genuine prayer life not just any kind of prayer one that will discomfort heaven. This can only be done when you acknowledge God as your sovereignty and supreme deity, and Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. By this you will receive the Holy Ghost power to stand and demonstrate you God-giving power as in II Timothy 1:7, God has not giving us the spirit of fear, but the power and of love and sound mind including depression.
STEP 5: After the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden, humanity has never remain the same I mean his original state of perfection and holiness, sin took over the true nature of mankind, failure became the outcome of every man’s action. In other words, we are bound to fail, it is one thing to fail but it is another thing to refuse to become a failure. In fact, many great men have made failure the academic field of study, according to Henry C. Link, mistakes are lessons of wisdom, and that the past cannot be changed, the future is yet in your power. We should be ready to learn from our mistakes, by so doing we become more equip spiritually and psychologically than he who tried once and succeeded once. The secrets of learning from our mistakes and failures lies in our ability to combines them with happiness in each occasion we found ourselves.
STEP 6: The number one killing machines of our modern era is stress. Stress kills more than two in every ten mostly in sub African region where people work round the clock without adequate care, sleep, poor dieting, lack of proper rest, no medical consultation, high cost of medical expert’ services. The secret is this, you can do something without spending any single dine, let’s say there is twenty four hours a day, learn to wake up at least four thirty in the morning, exercise for like thirty minutes, take a bath and go to work by 6:30 a:m. while at work, why not create like thirty minute rest. Yes you can do better than this, it is a culture you can develop, and it is just a matter of time. More so, why not create personal time for social activities and gathering like playing scrabble, cheese, playing ball, visit recreational centers with loved ones, watch movies and comedies that make you laugh, listen to radical preacher like T.D Jakes, Bishop Noel John, and music that make you feel like jumping, I like Kirk Franklyn's music.
STEP 7: Do not depend much on substances like drugs for relief, it is the leading cause of depression mostly in the United Stated and Europe where people are becoming addicted to drugs and other related substances. Let me tip you on this, happiness and joy are just a state of the mind, nobody give it to you, not even drugs, they emanate from the base of the inside of the mind. You don’t expect people to make you happy when you cannot accommodate true happiness inside of you. My greatest regret goes to smokers and drinkers who seek solace in depending on these lethal substances because when they say let me manage one stick or just a bottle; they end up finishing a packet of cigarette or a carton of drink. You can take a stand against these toxic and deadly substances, they can not only make you depress but subject you to a technical slavery. All these substances you consume have potential force to alter your psychological and physiological state of mind and body. drugs introduced into the body has the ability to destroy bacteria, and other diseases, including easing pain. For example drugs like paroxetine (trade name Seroxat), citalopram (Cipramil) and escitalopram (Cipralex) may have side effects, including nausea, headache, sleep disturbance, stomach upsets and increased anxiety. At the same time, drugs alter our state of mind, overt behaviors and emotions. It is important to realize that sometimes different kinds of drugs combination may likely cause serious toxic effects or even leading to deformation of our systems unknowingly and causing death. Drugs in most cases restructure our body mechanisms such that we cannot do without taking these drugs, a condition called drug dependency. Drug dependency causes the individual taking the drug to begin to experience some psychological and physiological changes, the victim mostly feel detached from reality or get discomfort without taking his medication. There is no drug on earth that has no side effect, if they don’t impair your vision, they could affect your respiratory system, still they could impair your digestive system, your sexual libido could also be affected, including your immune systems.
STEP 8: Happy is the man who walk in the way or in the integrity of God, his ways are upright and never walk in the integrity or the counsel of the wicked. One thing about depression is that it makes us more pessimistic and less optimistic; the only thing we need is the presence of God- visit http://therighteousnation.blogspot.com/presence_of_god. You need to acknowledge God through Jesus Christ in all you do, your health, your career, education, family, and anything you can mention. Galatians 4:7-8, put it this way, therefore you are no longer a slave (a slave to depression) but a son and a heir of God through Christ, in verse 8, but then, indeed, when you did not know God, you serve those which by nature are not gods. Here the bible is telling about drugs and substances you depended for relief that you made you gods, so that you can get relief of the mind yet you were compounded your state of depression.
STEP 9: Learn to forgive; each time you forgive you do two things, (1) you liberate a soul from condemnation and (2) you liberate and loose your mind from extraneous variables or burdens capable of hindering your blessings from God. learn to keep your mind on those thing that are pure, moral, just, holy, excellence, lovely, in fact anything worthy of praise and adoration to the Almighty God. Learn to be happy at all time, each time you are happy you recreate and refresh your body cells but when you are sad, unhappy, moody and pessimistic you destroy more than one thousand body cells for every minute. Imagine how many brain cells you destroy for just sixty minutes, no wonder sad and gloomy people always develop twisted skin. Most importantly, you reduced your life span by 10% each time you get depressed and moody. That is the leading cause of untimely death in our today world.
STEP 10. Many still neglect that depression is spiritual; the issue of spiritual explanation of depression must not be neglected. If we believe there is God, we must also believe there a spiritual power called Satan. His sole purpose is to inflate human being with ill health and problems. The bible did not say the devil came to give life and happiness but to steal and to destroy and to kill. Depression is a spiritual disorder designed to take away our state of joy, happiness, riches, wealth and health. Each time you feel discomfort, simply go down on your knees, and start talking to God in prayer. It is your number one weapon to conquer stress related condition. A prayerful soul is a powerful soul and withstands any calamity.
STEP 11: We must learn the art and act of forgiveness, it heal faster and easier than any form of therapy. Unforgiving soul is a soul harbor with toxic. When we refuse to forgive others, we indirectly refused to forgive ourselves because we first of all hurt ourselves before hurting others.
