A single bout of depression can often be a person’s friend because it stops them in their tracks to consider some sorely needed changes. Chronic depression and recurring depression requires a different perspective. But if you want to know how to overcome depression in the best way possible, then take the lesson that it may be providing you. Clearly, life is not working well for you in it’s present form, so take the opportunity to make positive changes, one at a time.
The steps for how to overcome depression deserve an entire book, but here I want to highlight the importance of changing your thought patterns as soon as possible. In particular, if you tend to think in all-or-nothing terms, then you are a ticking time bomb for depression. How can this be? Life does contain black and white, but it has much more gray. In fact, situations and relationships are filled with various shades of gray. One of the first steps for how to overcome depression when it is just beginning is to catch yourself each and every time you make a negative, all-or-nothing conclusion about something. The next step is engage in a mental exercise to answer the question, “How can I see this as a continuum instead of rigid categories?” If you can’t do this then most of your life is like trying to force a square peg in a round hole: frustration, disappointment, and depression.