Questions About Depression

“Am I depressed?” is just one of the many questions you need to ask yourself in the course of your life and living. Nobody but you have the answer to that question because it is your life and nobody can live it for you, let alone giving you the answer to that simple but difficult question.

Ask and answer many more questions as you go along your life journey, thereby instrumental in awakening your self-enlightenment and understanding why you may have become depressed.

Some of these probing questions you may want to ask include the following:

Who am I? How would I describe myself?

What are my life passions? Why am I passionate about them?

What are my achievements in life to date?  Am I proud of them, and why?

Do I have a role model in my life?  Do I ever wish I were that role model?

Do I love myself? If not, why not?

At this point in my life, am I worried about my future?

The Depressed People

Depressed people may have the following in common:

Identity crisis

They do not know who they really are. That is, they may have falsely identified themselves with something in the world they are living in, such as “I am a successful business-man” or “I am a good mother.”

Once they have created false identities for themselves, they naturally feel the need to protect and preserve their self-created images. In doing so, they desperately want to control their destinies, such as avoiding what they fear may taint their identities, or repeating what they previously did in order to sustain and substantiate their identities.

The truth of the matter

You are who you are, and not who you would like to be.

To illustrate

A “successful businessman” may want to overwork in order to avoid in future all possible failures in his or her business, or to repeat in future all his or her past successful business endeavors.

A “good mother” may strive to control the behaviors of her children in order to control and shape them into the individuals she wants them to become to prove that she is a good mother.

In the process of avoiding failure and expecting success to repeat, stress is not only unduly created but also aggravated by outcomes falling short of their expectations. Nowadays, many people are living to escape yesterday’s pains and to anticipate tomorrow’s pleasures; unfortunately, they are on the road to more unhappiness, and not less.

Not letting go

Depressed people simply refuse to let go of what they think belong permanently to them, and anticipate what they think they rightly deserve through their efforts to control or influence outcomes of events in their daily lives. They are afraid of any unforeseeable change, especially death that puts an end to everything they have delusively created for themselves. They won’t let go of the past, whether it was pleasant or unpleasant.

My Way! No Way! Tao Is the Way shows you the wisdom to go through your depression instead of avoiding it with medications and other distractions.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau