Depression: What is depression, and how do we treat it?
What is depression?
Depression is when we feel stuck in sadness, emptiness, or heaviness for a while and cannot simply snap out of it. We feel hopeless, worthless, and guilty. We find it hard to concentrate, and the things that used to give us some joy have lost their shine. We feel tired, irritable and trapped. Sometimes we think of suicide or have ongoing thoughts about death.
How to manage your feelings without shutting down or blowing up
We often think of “managing our feelings” as something that involves controlling them — getting a grip, calming down, moving on. But the reality is more complex — and far more useful.
The way through a difficult feeling is not around it, but through it. That idea shows up again and again in the work I do with clients — the moment someone stops trying to argue their way out of an emotion and instead lets themselves actually feel it is almost always the moment something shifts. Either the feeling changes – or their relationship to the feeling does. Emotions aren’t static to be managed away. They’re information. And the way we resist them tends to cause far more suffering than the feelings themselves.
Rest isn’t laziness: Reclaiming being in a world obsessed with doing
We like to believe that rest is something we earn — a reward waiting at the end of the to-do list, once everything is finished, once we’ve achieved enough. But the to-do list never actually ends. There’s always one more task, one more goal, one more version of “successful” just out of reach. And somewhere in the chasing, we forget the most basic truth of who we are.
We are human beings. Not human doings.
Anxiety: What is it, and how do we treat it?
What is anxiety?
Simply put, anxiety is the fear of things that could go wrong. Anxiety’s function is survival by worrying about everything that might not go to plan. It’s like being in a large room looking for an exit. You’ve convinced yourself you are trapped, you keep looking for a way out, seeing every door and then not walking through any of them. So, you stay trapped, certain that the room will catch fire and you won’t be able to exit.