How to get past depression & into the right headspace

Getting through depression

 

I’m joined by someone that we’ve just shot a YouTube video with. He’s extremely funny. He’s a comedian, and his name is Jason Farone. And funnily enough, we’re here to talk about depression. And I’m saying depression because we know this is the most depressing time of the year.  Let’s face it. It’s rubbish. Everyone is broke after Christmas. No one’s making any money. It’s dark and cloudy and it’s raining all the time. And it’s cold. And it’s just been Christmas and New Year’s. And it’s soon to be Valentine’s Day. So how do you get in the right headspace?

The problem is, it’s so easy to suddenly find a couple of days have gone by and you’re not feeling right. So you just did a video about depression?

 

Jason

I just talked about this on my channel. Comedians are no stranger to depression. It’s been in the news. We’ve seen a lot within the last year, Robin Williams. For years we’ve associated comedians with having this funny come out from a dark place. Comedian or not, at the end of January, we have an emotional build-up to the holidays and forget being broke. It feels like the rug is swept from under you. And people start to go down.

 

Hayley

I spoke a lot over the Christmas period how this is a confrontational time for people. You’re forced to evaluate what has happened. And a lot of the time you don’t have a great year. My 2015 sucked. So then you look at it and think you are in the same position you were in last year, nothing’s changed. So you get a real Groundhog Day sensation. Then add into that the natural things that make us feel low in energy, like shorter days, cold, or rainy, or weather. And then Valentine’s Day!

Instead of the holiday season, they should call it the self-judgement. That’s what you wind up doing. You judge yourself. You judge everyone.

 

Jason

That’s such a good point to make. There’s such alone feeling that comes with depression. And it’s the furthest thing from alone you could be. You might be physically alone, but so many people are experiencing such similar emotions at this time. And sometimes knowing that you’re in this big body of people that are all affected, that in itself can help to alleviate the emptiness that you think you’re the only one experiencing.

[…]

Hayley

I lost my baby last year. So don’t talk to me about loss. I know. Yet you think you see me and you’d be, Oh, look at her. She’s a woman. She’s travelling the world in the sunshine. Everyone has bullshit that they have to deal through. No one is immune from that kind of stuff.

I was up early, I was rattling around, I’ve worked my butt off all day, I felt a bit sad and lonely. I’m out here for three or four weeks solo. And whilst that’s amazing, and I like the headspace, a lot of the time, I have little patches and moments like, Oh, actually, it would be quite nice to be with someone. And I’m saying it like this because I put pictures on Facebook, you know, and I’m so aware of the culture of looking at other people around us. We create a story, right in our minds is that they don’t even have to say they’re having a great time, we can just look at it and go, Oh, my God, they must be perfect. They’re having a fabulous life.

And then I’m just sad here, and I’m struggling. A part of that is to grow self-awareness. A little tip for managing dark, bad thoughts, is writing them down. As soon as they’re not fluttering around your head, and you actually have them physically intangibly on paper, they become easier to overcome.

 

Jason

Great that you brought that up because there’s a match. I just did that video and I had a little trick I used. That little moment where the bell goes off in your head and you know something’s wrong. You’re not depressed yet. Certainly not over the hump. You’re not manic yet. But what I find for myself, and I bet a lot of people could relate to this is the catalyst for my sadness usually stems from anger.

There’s this window of time, right before, I like to call it the click, click, a roller coaster. You don’t know how bad the drop is going to be, but you know it’s coming. When you’re right in that real tenuous precarious click moment, what you can do is label the problem out loud. And this is a really important thing to remember. When you’re doing this, you’ll have the inkling to judge yourself.

You have to remember, that’s not the purpose of the activity. The purpose is to simply label the problem. So you strip it of its power. Once the unknown becomes known, it loses the ability to really affect you as much as when it was an unknown issue. The reason that we slip into depression is that we gloss over the moment where we get really angry. Instead of labelling it, we slide through it. Instead of taking that moment to self reflect, we go right into depression, we go right into mania. It’s this cycle that we have to break simply just answering the unknown.

[…]

 

Put bluntly it is EASY for love to get you down and the problem is you won’t find the right kind of romance unless you’re in the right kind of headspace. So take a listen and if you like the podcast please subscribe here.

For more exclusive advice on not only how to be in the right headspace and beat depression, check out my Hayley Quinn Club!