Healthy Ways to Cope with Depression
Spiritually Minded Therapists
We now want to spend some time looking at solutions or at least ways of dealing with depression in a healthy manner. First of all, we have a need for spiritually minded therapists, or therapists who are appreciative of the spiritual culture, and most importantly, who are actually following such a culture. Although some of these mental challenges are physiological or biological, other mental disturbances stem from the mind, which means that talk therapy can help a person work through them. However, it can be dangerous to go to a therapist who does not understand or appreciate the spiritual dimension because they can even make one’s situation worse.
For instance, when a saintly person starts speaking in a spirit of humility, the average therapist will categorize this as low self-esteem and begin to treat the problem as low self-esteem. They do not understand that humility is a part of the wealth of a saintly person. The saint’s gra***ude and closeness to God ultimately make him or her humble. The aspiring spiritualist may be fixed in simplicity and renunciation, but the therapist may see this as anti-social behavior. The saint may be pursuing chas***y or celibacy, but the therapist may see this as unhealthy sexual repression. The list goes on and on. For these reasons, there is a need to have godly devotees with special expertise so that they can service their own communities and keep the devotional focus.
Maintaining Both the Body and Soul
We sometimes think that we can solve all of our problems simply through the execution of the rituals, and actually such practices can provide the essential help if we perform them with sufficient depth and purity. However, since such depth is very rare, additional help is needed to ***ist the prac***ioner in the removal of various blocks. As spiritual ins***utions and communities expand all around the world, we need to maintain body and soul together. The Vaishnava saint, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, explained that, in order to develop a healthy community, we need to balance the following four needs:
1. We need to take care of the body.
2. We need to properly stimulate the mind.
3. We need to have a sense of social well-being.
4. We need to study the sastra.
As we embark on the devotional path and experience certain types of challenges that go along with normal ***ociation, we should also seek out help, and if possible, search for those in the community who have a little more understanding of the physical and psychological needs as well as the spiritual aspects.
The Enemies of the Mind
Imagine a situation in which six enemies constantly surround you and incessantly wait for the opportune moment to attack when you put your guard down. The six enemies are lust, anger, greed, bewilderment, intoxication, and envy. These are some of the ways in which depression, anxiety, gloom, and frustration affect the mind. As soon as you become lackadaisical, they will swiftly approach. However, we can try to sufficiently reinforce ourselves and strengthen our weak spots if we know that maya will attack us in these weak areas. If we know the enemy’s hiding place—the mind, we can keep our distance instead of remaining in an insecure position or allowing the enemy to constantly attack from an ambush.
Many mental breakdowns deal with the mindset of lust because unsatisfied lust turns into anger and then turns into great illusion and confusion. We can also understand depression as anger turned toward oneself. Enviousness also creates an imbalance within us. We should be param-duhkha-duhkhi-kripam-buddhi which means that we should feel the misery of others as well as their happiness. We should feel happy for another person when we see something positive happen in their life. Actually, we should feel the same happiness for them that we would feel for our own selves in that same situation. This type of mindset can help prevent depression and mental disturbance. If we learn how to weed out these negative tendencies, we will find that it will lead to some wonderful solutions.
Relinquish Selfishness
If we find ourselves in a state of depression, we can also examine our degree of self-centeredness. There are two ways to play God. We play God when we see ourselves as superior and as the most important person. We also play God when we place ourselves in the center by thinking of ourselves as the most inferior or most unfortunate person. Other times people play God by considering that everything revolves around their problems. If you ask them, “How are you?” they will respond, “I am so glad you asked! I have a headache, stomachache, and a pain in my leg. I need a raise and my son is giving me such problems.” By focusing too much on our misfortunes, it will reinforce our problems rather than eliminate them. On the other hand, if we try to help someone else or try to go beyond our own immediate situation, we will see that Krishna will give us the help we need and even take away our own particular issues. Depression means that we are focusing too much on our own problems and withholding our love from others.
Faith is Most Important
We will not have the ability to persevere without faith but we cannot fake faith. When certain aspects of a person’s life are not going so well, his or her faith does get weaker. Our faith relates to what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present, and more directly with what we are anticipating in the future. If our past has been rough and our present is incoherent, our faith in the future will be weak. However, if we see positive events around us that we feel good about, we will have strong faith. Only a rare person can maintain strong faith when they have had a difficult past and a rocky present. In our communities, we want to create environments that will energize us and help increase our faith.
Gra***ude as a Way of Life
Sometimes our mental challenges become very stagnant because we do not move through them. We do not appreciate the past, but the more we have gra***ude, the more we create auspiciousness in the future. Sometimes the Supreme Personality of Godhead gives to us and sometimes He takes away. As devotees, we want to have such a grateful mindset that when God gives us so much wealth, we say thank you. When God takes it away and puts us into a state of impoverishment, we thank Him for protecting us from false pride. We thank Him for any situation that allows us to keep a simple life.
If we can just develop this consciousness and constantly thank the Supreme in any situation, we will be able to learn and grow from any circumstance. We will make the auspicious situations more auspicious and we will turn any inauspicious situations into auspicious ones. It will become a learning experience, and as we honor it with gra***ude, Krishna will naturally make arrangements for us.
Conclusion
The mind is the greatest enemy although we can make it our greatest friend. It all depends on at***ude. Setbacks happen in ins***utions, families, and to us individually but we want to avoid getting too depressed, discouraged, and disappointed. We should try to thank the Lord and try to learn from our circumstances. We wait for the Supreme to do more than we could have done for ourselves. This means that we need steady faith and perseverance. We can all encourage each other by first trying to have that faith and that faith will spill over and help someone else. In this way, we all inherit the Kingdom of God.
"Coping With Depression" by HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami Maharaja
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