WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The answer to this question will be determined by things like your doctor, your medication, where you were when you started to get help, your support system, and all sorts of other things. But, if you suffer from depression, some of the things that I can tell you are:

• Your present situation indicates you should stay with your doctors and therapists. Depression is too dangerous to play with.
• Do not play with reducing your medicine, changing the way you take it, or discontinuing it. Also, don't fall into the "I can self-medicate with homeopathic remedies and don't want to keep taking the prescription medicines" trap. If it is working for you now, do not change it unless your doctor changes your medicine. Everyone knows more than your doctor, and all of them have advice and can tell you how to get over it and get on with your life. If it's working for you, don't change it. If it's not working, tell your doctor or therapist.

Don't self-medicate with street drugs or alcohol. They will kill you. If you think that you know better, read this:

"Findings from psychological autopsy (PA) studies, where the individual’s state of mind prior to the suicide is determined through extensive interviews and review of medical history, indicate that about 90 percent of persons who completed suicides in all age groups had a diagnosable mental or substance abuse disorder. In other words, having a mental or substance abuse disorder is nearly a necessary condition for suicide to occur."

To me, this means that if you have a mental disorder and add substance abuse to it, you will greatly increase your chances of dying from suicide.

When you hear the words, "Take Care," think to "take care" of yourself. If watching television news upsets you, avoid it. If country music brings you down, avoid it. "Take care" of yourself in other ways too, like brush your teeth, wear your seat belt, have safe sex, get enough sleep, and do all the things that keep you and everyone else knowing that you are taking care of yourself. Show self-pride, even if you have to fake it for awhile. By doing so, you will have a healthier self-opinion. If need be, you can get self-improvement tapes and CD's to help you.

Don't forget to sometimes do things for yourself. That's part of taking care of yourself. You may not feel that you deserve it, but do it and don't feel guilty about it. You are worth it and need to do things for yourself too.

Here are a few other helpful tips:

• Let your light shine. I donate money to women that are raising children by themselves. Not a lot, but I pick 2 or 3 every Christmas and give them a card with cash in it. I use lots of cards and quotations and jokes, and poems for other people that have family and job changes and deaths. Those people usually become friends if they weren't already my friends. You can do these small things for others and pray for them, and those things will benefit you even if the other people don't know that you did it. I think that the less we try to get from others and the more small favors we can do for them, the more we are rewarded.
• Avoid living your life like a soap opera, and find a place and person to share your life with in a pleasant manner without all the turmoil that comes with some people. Find work that is less stressful and learn to spend more time relaxing. Depression can handicap us to the point that we may have to redefine success to fit our capabilities. We don't have to run a major corporation to be happy.
• Intimacy - well, let's just kinda get to it. We need to have intimacy. Not sex, but someone that we can tell anything to, that will not condemn us for what we said, but can accept us for who we are. That person also should be able to confide in us too and find acceptance from us in whatever they tell us. Sometimes this person will be our spouse and sometimes not.

  We do have to find those people and to do so, we have to trust and have the courage to be "emotionally honest" (a little at a time) and show someone else our deepest darkest thoughts, feelings, and desires. And be our real selves. And trust. And we have to get acceptance from them, not necessarily approval, but at least acceptance. Scary huh?

  Sometimes we are disappointed because the person that we choose is not able to accept our intimate thoughts and feelings. But we have to take that chance. At least we don't have to do that immediately, when we first meet someone, and we can take the time to get to know if they are worthy of our trust. If intimacy is not available from your spouse, family counseling may help; or eventually, one of you may seek intimacy elsewhere.

  You may be the one who can't be intimate. Don't rush this! Take your time. Don't tackle too much at once; that is a sure way to fail. What we get from this is acceptance and that tells us that we are not worthless people. Then too, we get understanding which validates our thought processes. We also get to know how others think and feel and that further increases our abilities to be honest and open-minded more often with other people.

  Emotional honesty is something we have to develop because many of us are not in the habit of letting anyone know our real selves. Sometimes, we find that our parents didn't have intimacy or emotional honesty either (if that's the situation, don't try to change it. Some things are better left alone.). It is important to remember that we are social beings and that we need other people to let us know that we are okay and that we are people too. Every person deserves to know that he is okay and that he has a right to be accepted by his fellow human beings.

Some of these things are not for you to start doing until you have the depression under control and you are feeling better. Do not try to start too much at the same time. Your own answers may be different, but this site is to get you going in a direction to help yourself. I know that these things work. They have worked for me and have worked for others too.

Successful Living - is doing the things that it takes
to make our lives better.

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