One of the biggest roadblocks you will ever come across in life is yourself. We are our own worst enemy. For every risky decision that comes your way, you have to debate with yourself whether it’s a good idea for you to push yourself forward, or to avoid the risk and stay comfortable.
Everyone has a comfort zone, and everyone usually pushes themselves as far as their comfort zone limit lies and then, then they stop. Pushing beyond that zone entails risk and stress, and many people out there aren’t going to push themselves into a position of stress, because it can impact their mental health.
No one likes to deal with the anxiety of whether a decision was a good idea or not. They would rather stay in their comfort zone and look at life moving into risks and stresses around them. The comfort zone is adept at making feel trundle on through life without too much incident, and it’s only when you push past the limits of your comfort zone that your emotional bubble pops and life gets that little bit stressful.
Do you really want to live that way?!
You will feel comfortable in your own zone for a good reason, but a life without risk is one without excitement as much as it is without undue stress.
Life is going to have its stresses, whether you step outside your limits or not. Work stress, where you are dealing with office politics and a hard commute every day. Social stress, where your relationships are not working out and your friendships are drifting away. Health stress, where you get bad news of an illness that’s going to change your life unless you look at Poseida.com today and get as much information about immunotherapy as possible.
All of it is going to hit you in some way and at some point or another. How you handle it can determine whether you gain that courage to stop being your own roadblock and move forward as a different but more evolved person.
You see, your comfort zone is the place where you’re used to being. It’s calm, warm and cozy in there. But it doesn’t push you to be different. It doesn’t propel you forward for success or put the fizz of adrenaline coursing through your veins.
It keeps you safe. Except that it doesn’t protect you from yourself. It doesn’t stop your mental health from being affected by life that continues outside that comfort zone. When you have a high-pressure job or a marriage on the rocks, your mental health is going to be in turmoil, even if you don’t plan for it all to happen that way.
Often, when you struggle with depression, the advice that you get is to push past your comfort zone and keep plowing on through life.
Unfortunately, that’s not always good advice. Pushing through doesn’t help you to deal with the reason behind the depression in the first place. Often, people will say that they don’t know why they feel the way that they feel, but there is always something behind it.
When you suffer from depression, you can often miss one crucial question: why. Why are you feeling low? Why did you feel okay yesterday and then today, it’s all gone wrong? The one thing you can’t do while you try to figure out why you are in a low is pushing yourself past your comfort zone.
Exploration of the comfort zone is what’s going to tell you how you feel because that’s where you live. Your work life, your social life, your health – it’s all comfortable and it’s all a reason, right?
Wrong! Depression has less to do with the events that go on in your life than it does the way that your brain is wired. Depression doesn’t have a reason to manifest most of the time, but your lifestyle and the events that occur in your life? They can trigger something in your brain which kicks off the way that your circuitry is running.
Therapy and medication can take you some of the ways to feeling lighter and better on the inside, but until you can identify why you feel the way that you feel, they’re only going to mask the problem. It’s so normal to feel blue sometimes.
Life has a way of making us all feel low and sad every now and again. Most of the time, this feeling doesn’t linger, but sometimes it can start to get worse, leaching into everyday life for you and affecting the way you function.
It slows you down and it makes you sludge through life instead of moving forward. It’s a common psychological issue, depression, but that doesn’t make it okay to cope with. It’s not simple in any way to figure out why you feel the way that you do, but there are causes. Causes that come from your current life events, your genes, and your daily routines.
The six reasons below are the most common causes behind depression. How many of these can you relate to?
Six Common Reasons Behind Depression
Stress
Some life stresses can be good for you, but the stress that gets too much is known as chronic stress. It can lead to cortisol ricocheting around your body and the decrease of serotonin in your blood which stops you from calming down effectively. Your body has many chemicals that work together to keep you calm and when these stop feeling balanced, it’s harder to feel better. These can affect your sleep, your sex life and the way that you interact with other people. Don’t put off seeking help for your stress, you could end up waking up to a paralyzed face, like I did! Depression can also be the result of the stress response going wonky. If you have a lot of stress in your life, this can affect you massively. Find ways to combat your stress.
Debt
Money makes the world go around, but when it goes wrong, depression can set in. Losing your job, not being able to pay the mortgage and missing payments can lead to a spiral of depression if not managed well. It’s not one debt or a lack of money that leads to a depressive period, but the constant owing of money to others. Debt can feel like you are drowning. Stress that comes from debt can also lead to depression and fear that there isn’t a way out. It can be debilitating to cope with and the panic response that you feel? That’s the body kicking into fight or flight.
Health
When you get bad news or shocking news about an illness, you go through a rainbow of emotions. If your prognosis is bleak, it’s very easy to slip into a depression and this can be difficult to manage. Anything from poor body image to a cancer diagnosis can change the way you feel about yourself and the world, and this is where talking therapy comes in. If you are diagnosed with a condition that is not easy to overcome, you should be offered therapy for your emotions as well as medication for your condition.
Divorce
Not just divorce, but the breakdown of a relationship can trigger a depression. I have personally gone through devastating breakups, including a divorce. It’s stressful to break your life away from someone else, and it’s stressful to feel broken hearted. You rely on a person to keep you feeling loved and confident, and when that goes away you have feelings of grief that manifest. This all happens whether or not the separation was warranted. The emotional torment that you feel can come from a lack of hope that you will find someone else.
Death
Grief is a natural emotion, but it doesn’t feel particularly natural. You can feel grief physically, but you also feel it in your heart and in your soul. Your mind feels grief and reacts to it accordingly. If you don’t deal with grief properly, it leads to chronic depression and that can stop you in your tracks.
My father passed when I was 20 years old. It was sudden and completely unexpected. Being the firstborn in the family, I took it upon myself to take care of others. I made sure that the family had someone who was strong and “keeping it together” as much as possible. All of this ended up hurting me. I set my own healing aside. It took me a good few years before I really let myself deal with everything. Dealing with grief correctly can mean that you see a light in life and you learn how precious it is.
Finding why you are feeling depressed starts by looking at your comfort zone and all the things in your life that impact your emotional wellbeing. At some point or another, you will come across one of the six causes for depression above.
Life works in a way that means that you can’t avoid it but how you face it makes a huge difference in the way your depression works. It may feel like it’s easier to climb into bed and hide from the world, but you only get one life to live, and spending it under a cloud?
That’s just not ideal in the slightest. Some of the best coping mechanisms in your life will come from exercise, your family and friends and their support, the hobbies you enjoy and laughter. Laughter affects your bodily chemicals in the same way stress chemicals mess with your body. Laughing can help you to feel better, and it takes people around you to make that happen. Depression won’t go away overnight, but you can fight to make sure that you understand why it’s happening to you.
Start a Howl!