On Feeling Depressed - How to Manage it and Bounce Back Fast
In today’s post, I’d like to talk about how to manage depression and not let negative emotions wreck your life.
Keep in mind, I don’t have major depressive disorder so I’m not qualified to speak on that. But I have felt very depressed many times in my life. And I know a lot of guys struggle with this as well.
Over the years I have become much better at managing depressive moods and I can typically get myself out of rut very fast nowadays.
But I can still vividly remember feeling depressed for days and weeks on end whenever life let me down in the past.
I remember feeling so depressed I didn’t want to get out of bed for days; I remember feeling depressed and shoving junk food down my throat until my stomach hurt; I remember being depressed and isolating myself socially because I was so ashamed of my own weakness.
And I’m not special. I still get depressed sometimes. The difference is now I’m a lot better at managing it.
Last week, I randomly ran into my ex 3 times in the same week (fuck you too, god) and we ignored each other every time.
I thought I had put the breakup behind me but realizing we are just dead to each other now made me feel heartbroken all over again. I was depressed for a day and a half after the third time. On the next day, I was so sad that I canceled my date and smoked a ton of weed at home instead. I even ordered comfort food and skipped the gym.
That was my first time skipping gym in 2 months!
In the past, something like this would send me into a downward spiral and I’d be depressed for the whole week. But this time I bounced back after the second day.
I can be better at managing depression still (I still think I took an L on the second day) but I’ve made a lot of progress already. This is what I currently do to regain control over my mood and life whenever I feel very low.
You need to realize that everyone gets depressed sometimes. You need to be very compassionate to yourself when you are in this vulnerable state and never judge yourself for feeling bad.
You need to understand that emotions will come and go. You don’t need to give too much importance to how you feel. To be a competent man you need to feel nervous/afraid/tired/sad and do what you are supposed to do anyway. I’m not perfect at this yet but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far.
You need to take responsibility for your life and make sure you don’t completely give in to your negative emotions. After I woke up on the third day with a weed hangover and bloated face I was still feeling pretty low. But I made a conscious decision to stop all that self-destructive bullshit dead in the tracks. This is the most important part. You simply need to say: “NO, fuck this! I refuse! I refuse to let emotions run my life”. Once I said that in my mind, I drank some coffee and went to my condo gym right away. I was barely holding back my tears at the condo gym and I was not alone there. Also soon as I finished my workout I rushed home and jumped on my exercise bike. Put on some G-Eazy breakup songs and cried my eyes out for 30 mins straight. I felt so much better after that epic crying session lmao. I showered and made a healthy lunch. Going back to my diet made me feel good about myself and helped with my mood. I even did a ZOOM meeting with my marketing guy after lunch and my depressive mood was completely gone by then.
So to recap. Feeling depressed is a very common experience a lot of people go through. Never beat yourself up when you are feeling low. You are not weak or broken for feeling depressed. But it’s very easy to let yourself go and give in to your emotions when you are depressed. And that’s a sure way to go into a downward spiral and it can go on for days and weeks if you don’t intervene consciously.
Because I had been that sad fuck who would smoke weed and eat junk food for days and weeks on end in the past. I have a lot of painful reminders of how depression can wreck my life if goes uncontrolled. So now it’s easy for me to step up and nip that shit in the bud. Again, I never dealt with clinical depression so what I’m saying here may not apply to people who suffer from MDD.
But if you ever get into a depressive mood due to external circumstances, this is what you can do to bounce back from it ASAP. You simply have to say: “No, fuck this shit. I got things to do and I refuse to let emotions run my life”.