THE SHACKLE CALLED DEPRESSION

“Depression is a disorder that can affects everything you do in your daily life”.

Depression is an extended emotional state dominating an individual’s look and mood. Moods of sadness, grief and sorrow can progress into a depressed mental state.

Depression has the power to impact every area of one’s life, which includes our education and career, relationships, health, and our leisure and sleeping hours. It has the power to affect our friends, family, co-workers and everyone around us.

For those neck-deep in depression, please understand that you are not alone in your feelings. When you are depressed, you are miserable. A lot of people suffer from depression, but do not know it, some are uncomfortable, but do not know why. So, they suffer in silence, hoping and praying for deliverance and the consequence of doing nothing often result in further complications.

Depression weakens the immune system’s power to attack cancer cells and other health problems. When you are depressed, the symptoms are sadness, loss of social interest, sleep disturbances, inability to concentrate, feelings of excess guilt and worthlessness, feelings of fatigue and morbid thoughts of death or suicide. 

Depression is the ascendancy and tyranny of our emotions over our lives, and understanding the causes of depression is very helpful to finding the solution. Depression can have its source in our body, soul and spirit. Our body can affect our soul and spirit. They are members that are supposed to work together as one.

As fog veils a beautiful day, so does depression clouds our beautiful life. Our existence becomes dreary and gloomy. A merry heart does good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. (Proverb 17:21).

·         WAYS TO BE FREE FROM THE SHACKLE OF DEPRESSION:

Eat foods as close to the way God created them; raw, whole and processed. The brain requires a constant supply of blood sugar to function properly.

1.       Lifestyle: Regular exercise and sleep are necessary to combat depression. Direct exposure to sunlight can help the nervous system. Live a life of joy and happiness. You must never lose your joy, because there would always be trials and tribulation. And in order to never lose your joy, live a lifestyle that is full of things that will bring you happiness. Learn to be real, only then can you be free and enjoy the beauties of life.

2.       Thought Processing: How we handle bad or disappointing news have a profound on our health. Positive thinking is more important for overall health than almost everything else. We focus on the enjoyable and wonderful things of life. This is scriptural, uplifting and mind boosting. You must learn to discipline every members of your body.

3.       Meditating on God’s Word: We must all search out the things that are true, honest, just and pure, and as soon as an unconstructive negative thought is realized, a positive thought must take its place. We must not allow ourselves to entertain negative thoughts, even if it is true and we are wrong. We must learn to live a positive life with the hope and truth found in the word of God.

Locate and identify the negative thoughts in your thinking, argue against the negative thoughts, learn to avoid the constant churning of thoughts in your mind, replace the negative thoughts with the positive thoughts.

Temporary disappointment or sadness is natural. Don’t get trap thinking that God has promised us perfect peace at all times. There will be times of struggles, temptations and tribulations.

4.       Spiritual Direction: Depression can have a spiritual source if we live in sin or harbor anger or resent against someone. We have to be willing to forgive ourselves and others, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. We forgive because we have already been forgiven. 

Regular spiritual exercise requires using the frontal lobe of the brain to commune with him, think his thoughts, sense his presence and know his Will. We go through some situations because the lord is taking us to our next level of maturity and it can be perplexing and painful, but you must be patient and determined. Transformation is not an instantaneous act of God, it is a life-long process.

God allows and uses life’s events to teach us about misplaced dependencies, so that we can finally grasp the concept that Christ is our one true sufficiency. I pray we find rest in Christ.

In God’s Love,

©Okunola Peace.