Depression is Not a Life Sentence

Candice Fraser The Kindness Couch

As a therapist a big part of my job is taking the voodoo out of mental health. So, let’s chat depression!

Essentially depression happens when we run out of, let’s call them JOY neurochemicals. These joy neurochemicals in day-to-day life balance out the stress type neurochemicals, but unfortunately, we don’t have an endless supply of joy neurochemicals and they take time to build back up once depleted. Simplistically, depression is depletion.

Think of a car. You notice a little clunking sound, but the car still runs so you ignore it. Then over time the clunk gets a little louder and a rattle sound starts, and it shakes a bit, but the car still runs so you ignore it. Until eventually the car stops working and the engine needs major repairs. You take it to the mechanics; they fix it and then you follow the required maintenance The car continues to run smoothly because at the first clunking noise you get it fixed immediately

Depression works in a similar way to the car metaphor above There is warning ‘clunks’ in our life but we don’t recognise the signs until it’s too late The good news is if you go through it once, you can learn to recognise the clunks and develop your own personal wellbeing manual and it’s not a lifelong sentence Therapy is great for this Depression can happen to anyone – even Ferrari’s get clucks and need maintenance!