Do We Truly Understand Depression?

What makes us happy? We may say, good health, smooth relationships, stable finances, or a good job. We may also say a high socio-economic status, a high salary, and a big title. We indeed may even add, the way the economy is going, the direction of the stock market, a promotion at our job, or our kids, partner, and family being happy, or the situation in the country. All of us can easily come up with hundreds or even thousands of reasons to explain why we are happy. Yet, this raises the following questions:

1. Do we sometimes have those things that we say make us happy, and still feel unhappy?

2. Do we sometimes NOT have those things that we say will make us happy, and still feel happy, nonetheless?

All of us, regardless of our age, socio-economic status, profession, title, ethnicity, or cultural background, will always answer “yes” to the above two questions. Yes, sometimes we find ourselves feeling unhappy despite our marriage working, despite recently getting promoted, and despite the stock market skyrocketing. All we then do, in these cases, is ask ourselves, “why am I unhappy?” meaning, why is it that despite having what I think makes me happy, I still am unhappy?

And yes, sometimes the stock market is not going in the desired direction, sometimes the money is not coming in as much or as fast as desired, and sometimes our relationships may not be the best, yet, we find ourselves feeling happy. Under these circumstances, very few of us stop and ask, “Why am I feeling happy?” meaning, “why is it that I don’t really have the things I want, yet, I am still feeling happy?” Very few of us ask this question under these circumstances as opposed to under the previous circumstances. Regardless of the questions we ask ourselves, one thing is clear: All the things we say make us happy are not really responsible for our happiness. If they were we would always be happy when we have them, while we would always be unhappy when we don’t. But we are all living proof that it does not work that way.

What does that all mean then?

This essentially means that we have all been socialized and programmed into a system of thinking about happiness that has not been proven to be the case in our own lives. This system of thinking about happiness has not been without its implications. It also means we have been conditioning our happiness and unhappiness upon erroneous systems of thinking. In other words, we have been living our lives trying to be happy and trying to avoid being unhappy, and that process just doesn’t seem to have been working.

The above-cited implications are only the icing on the cake. The most virulent and obvious implications of this thinking have been in our field of mental health. None of our patients come to us without being unhappy “because of something.” Even when they come for their “anxiety,” it is because they are unhappy “because of their anxiety,” and they have to fix their anxiety so they can be happy, “again.” The latter example is the most palpable when a patient automatically feels better the moment you help them understand what anxiety is all about. The anxiety did not really go away. But the anxiety is no longer the cause of their unhappiness. But wait, if the anxiety is still there, yet it is no longer the cause of their happiness, can we really say the anxiety had ever been the cause of the unhappiness to start with?

This last question takes us to the last part of this article where we will end by making the following points:

All those things we say make us happy and all those things we say make us unhappy are all just variables. They are variables because sometimes when the things that we think make us happy are not around, we may still, however surprisingly, find ourselves to be happy. They are variables because sometimes when the things that we think make us unhappy are around, we still, however surprisingly, find ourselves to be happy.

Now, if all the things that we think make us happy or unhappy do not consistently lead to our happiness or unhappiness, respectively, there must be a constant. And this constant is happiness. In other words, happiness is a constant, not a variable. It is not dependent on anything else. The things we condition happiness upon, however, are the variables, because they do shift at times.

If you think you have just found a treasure, an insight, a wisdom, an understanding, something that resonates with every fiber of your being, then congratulations. For it means you are ready to delve into a deep understanding of the number one cause of disabilities in the world for individuals under the age of 60, and as you may have well guessed, this is depression. Congratulations to you because you are ready to learn an effective way to help your patients and clients, your loved ones, or yourself, with depression.

Have you ever wondered why the rate of depression has been climbing at the same proportion as the number of our psychotherapies and psychopharmacological agents? If so, once again, congratulations. For the best scientists are the ones with the best questions and not the ones with the best answers.

As you will recall, Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” We have been trying to understand and treat depression based on the erroneous thinking system outlined above. Yet, we wonder why our success rate has been rather limited. We are, indeed, unable to perpetually be doing the same thing while expecting a different result.

This means, for us to effectively help those with depression, we ought to start doing things differently. And for us to start doing things differently as it relates to depression, we ought to understand it differently. We ought to understand where depression really comes from, be willing to go to the source, beyond our psychology and our biology, and which are merely an effect and never the cause.

We are inviting you to join us for a full day CEU webinar where we will understand:

1. What depression really is

2. Why we, our loved ones, our patients, and clients get depressed

3. Why our heroic efforts to alleviate depression have been limited, at best

We are inviting you to join us for a full day CEU webinar where we will learn:

1. Where does happiness really come from

2. Why happiness is a constant

3. How to be part of that constant instead of the variables

Yes, we are inviting you to join us for a full day CEU webinar where we will find out

1. How to bypass biology and psychology for an effective and lasting treatment of depression

2. How to go the root of depression and solve it accordingly

3. How to help alleviate suffering in the world by decreasing the nonstop climb of depression rates throughout the world

You will be learning the revolutionary findings that have yet to make it to clinical practice due to the unfortunate 25-year gap between research and clinical implementation. You will have a taste of what our biology and our psychology really mean, how to empower yourself in this regard, as a clinician, and how to help your patients and clients do the same. You will be learning, mastering, and finding out about all this and much more.

Are you ready for this? If you are interested in truly understating depression, learning how to provide effective and efficient treatment, and helping cease suffering for yourself, your loved ones, and your patients and clients, then you can join us now, by registering here.

We look forward to seeing you. And we welcome you to a new way of practicing, and again, congratulations.

Karen and Mardoche