Depression and Brooding - Emotionally Arousing Introspection

An aspect of Depression I used to hate was this business of waking up early.

While you're asleep, at least you're 'out of it,' as it were. Yes, you're dreaming, but at least you're not suffering the pangs of Depression. Now let's be clear about this. From the point of view of your general health, your body's doing you a favour by waking up before you think you should. For the life of you, you can't go back to sleep, can you? Try as you might, you lie there like a lump, watching those darned numbers on your digital clock click away.

However, this is probably the body's way of cutting down on over-dreaming, thereby lessening the Depression. The poor old body's trying its best for us, so we shouldn't become too upset by waking up like this.

As the day wears on, our hormones replenish themselves and our energy level, such as it is, increases. We become better able to motivate ourselves, but I must admit that in deep Depression, motivation is a word in a foreign language!

What's sometimes called the Stress Hormone, Cortisol, is far higher in depressed people. Just a word about this hormone.

It's secreted by the adrenal glands, and is involved in proper glucose metabolism, the regulation of blood pressure, Insulin release for blood sugar maintenance, Immune function and Inflammatory responses. Under normal circumstances, the levels are higher in the morning than at night.

All right. Believe it or not, we've taken an important step forward. We are able now to see with certainty what maintains the symptoms of clinical depression. It's the emotionally arousing introspection. Brooding, by any other name. Okay. We know the cause, we know what to do about it, don't we? Cut down drastically on the emotional arousal.

Before going any further, though, I want to explain the purpose of these articles on Depression. I hope you'll agree that the more you know about something, the better able you are to deal with it. This is just as important with any mental condition as it is with any other matter. Knowledge is power. Equally, it's a little difficult to put a roof on a house when there aren't any walls!

So yes, this will be an extended learning curve. I feel strongly that I'd be selling you short were I to simply say; "Suffer from Depression? Well, take this pill, have a spot of therapy and you'll be fine." Wouldn't be terribly helpful, would it?

So this will be a fairly extended series of articles and of course there'll be in depth explanations of how to deal with the condition. What I'm striving for is that when you do rid yourself of the miserable condition, it stays away permanently.