Is Depression contagious?

I wonder about Depression.  Most of us have had a dose of it in our lives but we get out of it. I’m not talking about the clinical condition here, I’m talking about  the general malaise/feel sorry for ourselves kind of moments in our lives.

Fan Ho

I’ve had three dear friends call me up yesterday saying “they’re down and in a rut”. I never hear this from these normally upbeat people so naturally I was concerned.  Especially three at once!?! I gave my best advice, all my "daggy" affirmations to help one’s consciousness lift itself up but they fell on deaf ears, and I decided to buy them motivational books and flowers. I know they will enjoy the flowers but won’t read the books. Even if they flick it open to one page, they’d get something out of it. 

I'm concerned about my many teenager friends being depressed and they see no way out of it, get no help from their elders and take their own lives.  This is an altogether different type of depression and it disturbs me greatly because you are not aware of the wonders and beautiful things life holds before you. Don't let your situation overcome you that you cannot see a future.  So when I think about my friends problems, it makes me a little angry at the type of depression these "successful" friends have. But let this be a comfort to you. Depression happens to all of us. On all different levels. And there are ways to get over it.

Sometimes we just feel sad and depressed but they’re fleeting moments in normal human conditions but when it goes longer, for days,  it made me wonder if  some ‘normally healthy’ people just like to be that way.  Negative types. I think it’s self-absorbed and selfish. Get outside your own headspace and look at the News, look at the world around you and see the suffering and stop worrying about yourself. Worry and guilt are the greatest life-suppressants. Toxic! Go outside yourself and the square of your life and participate in LIFE. Assist in a charity. Do something nice to others. Go outside and smell the roses. Learn a new course.  Stop wallowing and take action.  Get outside your 5km radius and experience LIFE. I find my most depressing friends don’t do nothin'. I thank my parents for bringing me up in a way that made me ever curious of life’s buffet. Go to the theatre, a music festival, arrange dinner out with friends at a restaurant, climb a mountain, ride a bike, explore, read….just do SOMETHING! Plan activities. Sitting at home watching cable will kill your spirit and you. Heck, we only did that when we were wagging school. Don’t wag your life.

Mind you, I think the worst thing you could ever tell someone who is in a negative headspace is to “cheer up” and “get over it”. That’s being ignorant. If your friend has got the mean blues, be there for them, but try not to let it rub off on you. Put yourself in a white bubble and let their depression bounce off you rather than you absorbing it into your aura. I forgot my own advice yesterday.  But I thought writing this would help me, my friends, you and your friends. Sometimes, it’s actually worse than what your friendly ear and heart can offer and they need a session with a doctor or psychologist to help lift them out on the right step.

I’d make the worst psychotherapist only because I’d take the emotion home with me because now, as a result, I’m feeling sad, alone and a bit miserable. And I have no-one to talk too. 

Can Depression rub off on a basically happy and optimistic soul? Can I shower it off - down the drain with some tuberose and ylang ylang shower oil? Light a candle in my rose quartz candelabre, put on some soft music and drift off into a meditation? Probably. Because that’s my nature. Thankfully.

So for my sad friends, here are some personally experienced  learned tips and those I’ve gleaned from books and BIG friends and life itself. Pills and therapy aren’t necessarily always the only solution. They may hopefully help, but try these other options:

1. Get a cat or if you have a fence and not a big traveler, get a dog. The dog will help you get out of the house and make you run and walk. It will also make you get out of ‘yourself’ and think of something else; care for something else. The cat is self-sufficient and can handle you being away a few days away as long as you have a trusting cat-sitter. But to stroke it’s fur has been proven clinically therapeutic, let alone a dog.

2.  When I lived in grey, cold depressing Berlin in winter I would buy yellow flowers. Yellow is the cheerful colour.  It didn’t solve things but it sure helped. You have to help yourself often in life.

3. Listen to happy music. Latin beats are good for this.

4. Go to a dance class. Get your body moving. Raise those seratonin and endorphin levels. Because when you’re down you certainly don’t feel like loving, so a little self-help can kick start the ‘well being’ bits in your brain.

5. Get outside and go for a long walk in a park, botanical garden, mountain, by the beach or plan a weekend in the country. Nature is a great healer. If you can make it a daily habit, all the better.  Just get off the couch and out in the outdoors.

6. Burn these wonderfully uplifiting aromatherpeautic oils: rose geranium (self love), sweet bitter orange (uplifting), a dash of patchouli (grounding), and a  dozen splashes  of ylang-ylang (happiness).

7. Plan a holiday. Even if it’s in a year to a favourite place, plan it now. Put it on a calendar, remember it daily and look forward to it.

8. If you have no children, sponsor a child. I sponsor Nelio, a little boy in Mozambique who is looked after by his grandparents. My sponsorship supports his whole village. Last Christmas I bought him 10 chickens and school books. The year before, a cow. He sends me pictures of coloured in drawings of his house and how he wants to be a truck driver (eventhough my ego secretly hopes he will be the next Prime Minister). Noooo, I seriously don’t care other than the feeling of giving to someone  who appreciates and needs me. That’s gratifying in itself.

9. Brown. Get rid of it. Paint over it. Cover it. Remove it. It’s the evilest colour to escalate depression. Boring brown. Blah!  Any colour that makes you feel bad, remove it. Mind you, if you go for 70s all yellow, that’s too extreme banal headache overload. Just accents is enough on the yellow. Find a white or a soft pastel for the overhaul. But if you’re surrounded by brown. Remove right now.

10. If you have some items or anything in your home that is broken or makes you feel sad, fix it or toss it immediately.  Depression is often a subconsciously filtered vibration when you’re not even aware of it. Fix it. That you can do.

11. Start a Gratitude Journal – it will help you be grateful for the good things that happen, and pay attention to the small stuff.  And that, in turn, will lift your mood. You don’t have to tell anyone you’re doing it. Keep it a secret by your bedside table. It will help you look at more positives than negatives. Some days you will only have 3 things, other a whole page! (I started a month ago when I had one of the best days of my life.  I haven’t filled in another entry since – but I know it’s there, calling me, and I will do it again, even if it’s just one line. But That Day, I can read back on and it makes me feel so good).

12. Clear your clutter.

That’s all for now. I’m going to add more things to this post as I find them

But  if you’re feeling down, or even need a pick up, read “The game of life” by Florence Scovel Shinn, written in 1925 and the original foremother of all these self-help books out today. The book was given to me as a gift by a girl called Lainie when I first started working at Conde Nast. I haven’t looked back eversince. Thank you Lainie.

  “Why worry, it will probably never happen.”