The Power of Gratitude in Coping with Depression
What exactly do we mean by depression? Depression is a mental condition that makes you feel sad, empty and hopeless. Depression can make you feel uninterested in the things you used to enjoy, it’s like having a heavy weight on your mind and body that would not go away. Depression is not just about feeling sad sometimes, it's a persistent condition that needs attention and support.
Most times depression could be as a result of so many things and could have an adverse effect in the lives of people. Most times certain things are allowed to happen in our lives for us to learn, depression often distorts our view of reality making us to believe that everything is hopeless and bleak.
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Just like the saying “every cloud has a silver lining” there is always a positive side in every difficult situation but just that most people fail to see these good side, we get carried away with what we face and fail to be grateful for the little things we have, this mid-set alone brings anxiety and depression.
Something happened last week in my neighborhood, one of my neighbor's had a wife who was pregnant, after going through the nine months of pregnancy, she was due for delivery and about to put to birth, the husband had to take her to the hospital, she was in labour for three days and finally delivered of a baby but the baby died during delivery while the woman lived.
The husband was so grieved, that baby was supposed to be their first child, the man was really depressed. After some days he was cheerful again, I went to him to sympathize with what happened, he said “even though their first child died and he spent a lot of money, he was grateful that the wife was still alive and that was what gave him hope”. I was surprised at his response, and that taught me a great lesson, even when he was faced with such a difficult moment but yet he choose to look at the other side, he choose to be grateful for the life of his wife instead of feeling hopeless. I am sure this act of gratitude helped him to cope with depression, I am glad he was able to move on after the loss.
“GRATITUDE” is one of the key strategy to coping with depression, it helps us to find joy in the midst of chaos, when we focus on what we are thankful for we begin to shift our perspective and that is where the magic happens.
When we are depressed our brains can get stuck in a cycle of negative thinking, we focus on what is going wrong, what we do not have and what is not working out but gratitude helps us to gradually get rid of negative thoughts. Gratitude helps us to see that there is still good in the world even on the darkest days.
To crown it all, gratitude is one of the master strategies to coping with depression, please dear friends let’s learn the art of gratitude it heals and will always help whenever we are depressed.
Thank you for reading.
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