You probably know a close family member, relative, friend, co-worker, friend of a friend or somebody else who is suffering from depression. And I’m not talking about the kind of depression you get once in a while.
Nobody really knows the exact cause(s) of depression. There are many causes that have been listed, so for the purpose of this article, the type of depression being discussed here is not the type caused by genetic or biological factors. The type of depression I’m talking about stems from the environment in which we live in today.
Depression is becoming less and less of a taboo subject nowadays. More people are beginning to open up about their depression as they realize more and more that they are not alone. And they are right. They are not alone. Even the people who seem to “have it all” seem to suffer from it as well.
The question then arises. What are the specific causes in the environment today that result in the depression that people seem to have?
Here are some of the usual suspects that come about.
Media
Consumerism
Social Isolation
Breakdown of the Family Unit
Sedentary Lifestyle
Financial Worry
Let’s briefly discuss each of them.
Media
People are always quick to point fingers at the media as to why people are so depressed these days. Television, magazines, newspapers always seem to portray high standards of lifestyle and body image which in turn makes people feel inadequate about themselves and their lives. Add to that, the media always seemed to be filled with bad news – murders, kidnappings, scandals. We are constantly bombarded with these types of messages on a daily basis thanks to advancements in technology which greatly influences how we see ourselves and the world around us without us even knowing it.
Consumerism
Consumerism is closely linked to media as that’s where it’s primarily relayed through. Consumerism manipulates advertising to toy with people’s emotions to make them feel inferior if they don’t buy this product or that. What happens then is that people get caught up in the rat race of consumerism. They work in jobs they hate so they can buy things to feel good about themselves, but the high only lasts a little while and the cycle continues and they can’t get out because they need the finances from their current job to maintain their expensive habits and to pay off the debt that inevitably gets incurred.
Social Isolation
With the advent of technology in communication, we would assume that it improve our social life, but in effect, it has seemingly isolated us from one another even more. We have computer screens, cell phones, webcams, email that separate us from face to face interaction and because of that, many find comfort in staying at home and socializing online, reducing time spent in real human interaction.
You walk down any city street these days and half the people walking there are living in their own little world, chatting on their cell phones, listening to their ipod, or checking their email on their Blackberry. People unknowingly are using technology to create barriers from one another, making it difficult for others to attempt to create new relationships, which only contributes to more loneliness on both sides.
Breakdown of the Family Unit
Many kids are growing up in single parent homes these days and even if they do grow up with both parents, those two parents usually both end up working to make ends meet. There is little time to properly raise children and this proves even more difficult for single parents. Divorce is on the rise. Add to that, technology has made infidelity extremely easy to commit. There is no stable family unit anymore.
Sedentary Lifestyle
Technology has us sitting at our desks 9-5 and sitting on our couches when we get home to watch what we recorded on TIVO. There is no need to exercise in order to survive. There is no soil to plow, no wood to chop, no animals to hunt.
Financial Worry
Jobs are not as stable as they were before. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening and the middle class itself is shrinking. Many are an illness or firing away from financial disaster. Not to mention the massive credit card debt from consumerism. Due to globalization and high technology, work is being outsourced and people are being replaced by machines.
One could infer that technology seems to be the common thread among these listed causes but the fact is that all these factors all intertwine with one other, and I’m sure there are more factors out there that weren’t included.
The truth is, our environment will always change all the time as we progress as a civilization. Technology will always advance, everything will always be in a state of flux but the one thing that never changes is our power of choice and personal responsibility and therein lies two of our most powerful weapons against depression.
The reason why depression is on the rise is that fewer and fewer people are exercising their power of choice and personal responsibility.
Everybody just wants to get medicated without taking a hard look at their life to see what’s causing their depression in the first place and figuring out ways to solve it. And before you bring up the claim that the cause of depression is a chemical imbalance, let me remind you that this article is NOT about those cases of depression stemming from genetic or biological factors. Only the ones caused by the environment and I have a feeling that people know deep down inside which cause their depression stems from.
The best thing you can do right now is to define who you are, who you want to be, what you believe in, what you stand for, what you want to do with your life, in other words to create your own center, your own foundation, to work on yourself and your life.
Create the life you want to live because once you do that, you become solid. You are whole. You have mass and you will not be so easily tossed here and there by forces outside of you. There has to be a center where your world can be created around. If you have no center, anybody and anything can toss you around like a ball here and there, leaving you confused, dazed, and ultimately not in control which helps contribute to your depression.
It amazes me that people spend enormous time and energy in planning events that last for a day such as a birthday party, anniversary, or wedding, but when it comes to planning their LIFE, very few people will put in that same amount of time and energy.
Rather, people “float” through life, doing this and that, being easily manipulated by those forces around them to the point where they feel they have no control. No center. No anchor. No foundation.
Clear your schedule for a day. Sit down with a piece of paper and decide what kind of person you want to be. The best way to do this is to imagine your own funeral and write down what you want your friend to say about you. What you want your parents to say about you. Your boss. Your clients. Your co-workers. Your relatives. This will give you something to strive for, a sense of identity that is yours, instead of slapping on identities that the media and corporations have sold us on.
Imagine the work you want to do. Work accounts for half our life so if you have to work, which you must, you might as well do work you love and enjoy. Work that you hate doing is probably one of the biggest causes in the environment that contribute to depression.
When you start doing this, when you start sculpting who you want to be, what you want to do, what you stand for, you have effectively cast an anchor overboard and grounded yourself in this tumultuous sea we call life.
You now have a destination to aim for and a course to chart and you slowly use your engines to help get you there. Sure, storms will come and go but they will not become the focus. The focus will be on the journey and the destination.
When you do this, then you’ll find all the pieces you need that will help you fit together the picture you’ve created in your mind. You’ll find new friends that will fit into your lifestyle, work that fits into your lifestyle and your environment will slowly conform to support YOUR vision of your life.
And nothing outside of you in the environment can adversely affect you because you have already determined from within the kind of person you are and wish to be and the life you want to live.
When you start doing all this, all the messages from the media will have little or no influence on you because you have already filled the needs it’s trying to cultivate within you. You’ll render the power of consumerism impotent because you have filled the very hole it claims it can fill. As you start becoming the type of person you described in your funeral exercise, you’ll start developing deep and meaningful relationships with people in your lives and social isolation will be a thing of the past. You’ll take care of your health and exercise, thereby releasing those feel good endorphins that help counter depression. Because consumerism and the media don’t play a role in your life, your finances will be in order and you can start to figure out and do the work that you want to do, instead of being chained to the work you don’t.
Too many people are jumping on meds much too soon without taking the time to work on their life first, to figure out what the cause of their depression is. Figure out what’s causing the depression. More often than not, it’s a result of letting the environment dictate your life as you have not clearly defined who you are, what you want to do, who you want to be, and what you want to do. Everybody is just going through the motions in their lives, living lives without any real purpose. All I’m saying is to try and work on yourself and your life FIRST.
You have something to focus on and when you focus on that, everything else around you tunes out and becomes static. The environment has no power over you anymore because you have direction.
So exercise your power of choice and personal responsibility. Stop blaming things outside of you. Take control of your life. Meds should be a last resort. Sure you could pop a pill and everything would be fine and dandy, but you wouldn’t be treating the root cause (unless it’s purely medical). You would just be treating a symptom. You know your situation the best so figure out what the real cause of your depression is.
Is it because you don’t like your job? Getting on meds won’t solve that problem. It just cures the symptom. It’s like a small band aid on a deep cut. Find your passion. Find a new job. That will cure your depression, not the meds.
Not happy about your body? Meds are not going to make you lose weight. Exercise, self discipline, and a healthy diet will.
Getting in credit card debt because you buy things to feel good about yourself? How about defining yourself on your own terms so that you no longer need to buy “things” to define you?
It’s typical of today’s mentality of instant gratification to pop a pill and have all your troubles go away. Nobody wants to do any hard work anymore.
The point I want to make is that it’s really easy to point the finger at your environment to blame for your depression. When you do that, you rob yourself of personal power because you are essentially saying you have no control and that the things outside of you do.
The media has control over you. Technology has control over you. Material things have control over you and sadly enough, all those things do have control over a lot of people and rather than take back that control, they give it all up.
We have let ourselves be shaped by the environment around us, letting it define our lives rather than us defining our own.
So take back control of your life. Create your center. Create your own life. And start to define the world you want to live in and what you’ll find is that the world will conform to your wishes.
