by John Mcklain

Created on: September 14, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Depression is a period when the individual is not in their normal state of mind. I myself have taken prescribed medication with the intent of raising my mood to a level where daily life could become bearable. My doctor said that if I was at an appropriate level I would have the mental capacity to find strategies to help me cope with my social interactions. The difference with being on medication was it was like being the chiselled muscular guy in the 'after' shot of a weight loss shot. The idea was to get a taste of life in the 'after' shot then slowly reduce the medication when I knew how to get back into the 'after' mindset.

I was on medication for about 16 months when I decided to get off it. I felt comfortable that I knew my way back to the 'after' shot mindset. The irony here is just I was getting off medication, I started going to the gym! An attempted joke? No this is where my revelation started. While being at the gym I was doing a personal training course to help me lose weight. At my worst I was 25kg overweight. Not only was I mentally in the 'before' shot, but I was also in the physical 'before' shot. As I became more aware about fitness guidelines the weight was coming right off. When I realised that the personal training information helped me lose weight I thought to myself "what if I apply these principles to my mental problems?"

When I'm at the gym I am constantly assessing things such as my techique, my rest duration and the quality of my muscle contraction. If I wasn't aware about the wide array of training factors then the sight of the scale telling me that I did not lose weight would make me resign to the thought that "life is cruel" or "maybe I just wasn't destined for this". With my depression, instead of asking why I was depressed, I asked what factors contribute to me feeling depressed. I analysed my depression just as I analysed my weight problem. Instead of asking why, I asked what factors contribute to my mood. I feel that when we ask 'why' we are delegating the problem solving to someone else and not actively disecting the problem ourselves.

This was how I found peace with myself but is only a suggestion. When someone is deep in depression it can be excruciating to even attempt to think in a logical sense so it is important to find something that will bring you to a more level mood. If medication helps than it should be continued.

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