Steps for Change

Coaching and resources to raise your emotional intelligence

  • Home
  • About
  • Get Tested
    • The EQ-i 2.0
    • Myers Briggs Step II
  • Blog
    • Latest Posts
  • Members
    • The 12 Skills Videos
    • Relaxation Training
    • Worksheets
  • Contact
  • Login
You are here: Home / Thoughts and Tips / Clinical Depression: Your Mood is Like a Basketball in a Swimming Pool

August 3, 2011 By Dr. Greg Hamlin

Clinical Depression: Your Mood is Like a Basketball in a Swimming Pool

I am always looking for new ways to illustrate the difference between clinical depression and plain old sadness.  So picture a basketball floating in a swimming pool.  This represents your brain when you feel good or you in a mood that is average for you.  Now take the basketball and force it to the bottom of the pool.  Let that represent a “normal” brain feeling really sad.

Life can get messy and bad things happen.  Sadness is a normal response.  But, like the basketball at the bottom of the pool, your brain has a tremendous force to go up to the surface.  In other words, sadness is a normal part of life.  Most people have a baseline mood that wants to get back to normal:  like the surface of the swimming pool.

Clinical depression is different from sadness because the ball now wants to stay on the bottom.  Picture a fully deflated basketball, depressed and down at the bottom of the pool.  You can dive down and carry the ball up to the surface (trip to Disney World?), but it will sink down to the bottom once you let go.   If you suffer from clinical depression you may find that you can smile and laugh, but the overall force of your mood is downward.  As soon as the jokes cease your deflated mood sinks to the bottom again.

Filed Under: Thoughts and Tips Tagged With: clinical depression

Free Membership

Get access now to the 12 Skills Course, Relaxation Training and more when you register!

Register Now!

Follow Me on Social

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Hamlin Coaching

hamlin-coaching-logo

Are you looking for coaching with any of the contents of this site. Look no further! I'm here to help!

Start Now

Blog Categories

  • Emotional Intelligence

Recent Posts

  • Focus on Therapy Shifts to the Steps and Tools Website
  • Reducing Stress Using 12 Skills and Tools
  • Follow Me on Twitter
  • Robin Williams Teaches Us
  • How to Speak to a Narcissist

Choose Your Steps Wisely

Making life changes requires effort. It's as if we all have a stack of "effort chips" that we can spend on a problem.

People who say they have "tried everything" to change usually mean that they have spent all their effort chips on the problem.

The key is to spend your effort chips strategically. When you find leverage, the problem gets fixed before your effort chips run out.

The 12 skills are about spending your "effort chips" wisely.

Copyright © 2023 · Gregory E. Hamlin

Web Design & Development by Hire Jordan Smith