by dbpsych | Nov 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
What Depression Can Tell Us About Living through Times of Unrest So, you have a bad day. Then you have another one. And another one. Until it goes on so long that you wonder if you are experiencing depression. Depression has reached a soaring rate in today’s world. Let’s talk about what this elevated rate of depression means and how the pandemic and recent societal unrest have exacerbated depressive symptoms. Like many people, you minimize your depression, blaming it on the state of the world – for example, the pandemic, social unrest, prolonged feelings of being disconnected from loved ones, to name a few. Even if you justified your depression as circumstantial, you continued to feel personally and emotionally disconnected from yourself when the world started to open up again. Often, when people first face depression, they discount their feelings by listing the reasons why they shouldn’t feel that way. They assume they should feel depressed only if they have reached bottom-of-the-barrel empty and/or out of luck, money, or love. How do constant messages of destruction and instability affect one’s depression? The past two years have been particularly challenging. Like most of us, you’ve been exposed to a stressful pandemic knotted with civil unrest and political scandals. You have become more distraught by seeing photos of overfilled ICU hospital rooms or viral videos of police brutality. You’ve become exasperated by anticipating and hoping things will return to “normal.” Many of us unknowingly have internalized the signs of destruction and instability in our society, leaving one to have a negative outlook on life. You are angry at the politicians. You...
