What is Depression? What is Positive Thinking? - Am I Depressed Quiz

If you have ever believed or felt that life was meant to be hard and full of lessons with little or no reward, then you can be sure that you can see one side of the coin. The question that you must ask if you want to be happy is: can you still remember how to see the other side?


Can you still feel ambitious? Excited? Adventurous? Inspired? Brilliant?

To lose sight of the joy in life is to accept depression as the norm. As you read this, billions of people of all languages, are confusing depression with "being realistic". 

What is depression? 

What is the difference between being negative and being realistic? 

What is being realistic?

One of the biggest problems with depression is the confusion in recognising it. 


To be clear, let's agree that

• the claim of "being realistic" is totally subjective, and depends on one's belief system and up-bringing

• in fact, the claim to be realistic has absolutely no grounds for reference beyond habit or cultural custom

• only this... lets call it tradition, is the criteria in deciding that a certain way of thinking is "realistic", and a certain other way of thinking is "unrealistic"

If we agree on these points, it is easy to understand how a successful person has attempted a certain aspect of happiness and succeeded, believing it to be "realistic", while an unsuccessful person may have attempted the same aspect of happiness and given up, or never have attempt at all, believing that it is "unrealistic". Another difference between these two people - I will come back to this - is the successful one knows how to use positive thinking to focus on the solution; the unsuccessful one only focusses on the problem.


In my practice alone, about half the cases of depression that I treat, do not believe that they are depressed. Their denial is based on their belief that their expectations of mediocrity are "realistic", and that other people or circumstances are to blame for their anger or stress. The bitter-sweet truth is, that the person who believes that happiness is realistic, achieves it, and the person who gives up, never achieves it.


Defining "realistic" is impossible - the concept is based entirely on belief systems - therefore the only way to discern between being negative and "being realistic", is to define depression. We can identify the signs, and recognise the symptoms. 


What is Depression?
Principle causes and symptoms of depression require an entire chapter. The "Am I Depressed? Quiz - 20 causes and symptoms to test if you have depression - with solutions!" defines the details. The link opens in a new tab, so you can easily return to this article.


Medical Treatment
Recognising and accepting depression, or hearing the diagnosis from a doctor, should signify the beginning of the journey to emotional balance. But instead of being pointed in the right direction, depression patients are made to feel more confused and hopeless by a system that dis-empowers the individual, and seems to be based more on profits than on common sense.

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