Successive phases of low mood— I certainly knew it was not depression, but it doesn’t mean we shall not intervene in this state.
Of course, we can do something to make ourselves feel better.
Last year due to multiple reasons — lockdown, the stress to find a job, and learning a new language, made me feel a bit depressed for a quite long time. For a period of at least 4 to 5 months, every day I woke up, I just could not find anything which may cheer me up. Every morning my day began with “life is meaningless”, or even worse, “Really do not want to live anymore”.
I lost part of my appetite for eating, lost several pounds of weight. The only reason I did not go to the therapist is that, although my diet seemed to be affected, my sleep quality was quite well.
Luckily I got rid of this mood and now live back to a normal life again, and here are some small things I would like to share. I really hope it could be even a bit helpful for you, if you are upset right now.
Body and brain are interacting with each other
This is the most important finding I got during the slight depression period. A very simple example: when I woke up, I found life is meaningless. But people always have to get up — either get hungry or need to use the washroom. One day I woke up with a depressing thought, then went to the washroom to brush my teeth. Then an interesting thing happened: without paying attention, bad feelings gradually faded away, and I started to think about my schedule to work on my CV and portfolio.
With some readings, I got the idea, that not only our brain is controlling our body, our body also conveys messages to our brain. So when I brushed my teeth, my body was telling my brain: I am ready for a new day. With this feeling, I could start working. That is why and how we shall use the effect to make the positive interaction keep going on.
Exercise makes other things looks easier
You may have heard that exercise will make new connections between our neurons, which makes the brain more active. Surely it is a fundamental reason to start exercising, but it is not why I mention it.
A human being’s perception is actually based on the comparison. That is why we won’t find the honey melon to be sweet right after eating some candies, or suddenly we could feel pathetic when we saw some rich people’s posts. And this is how we gonna use it — exercise could be harsh, but the result could be: we feel tired, yet we feel the sense of fulfillment. If we can do such difficult exercises, what else can’t we do?
Compare to the harsh exercise, the difficulty we are having won’t be that terrifying anymore. This also means we will have more encouragement to face the challenge.
Do not let the result dominate everything
Of course, reaching the goal can release the pressure — for example, getting an offer. Something we always overlook is, unlike passing an exam, getting a job relies heavily on luck and chance (some exams are also the case). This also means, our mood is relying on something we cannot control. That is not a stable situation, because the outside world is always changing.
To keep a rather stable mood, I learned to let it go. I learned to try more in order to not only uncovering more opportunities, but also experiencing the event itself. One example I often mention is that my attitude became more positive when I accidentally won a Hackathon, and it was before I got an internship or full-time position. If I never enrolled in it, I would have never got the chance to win it. And this wining meant a lot to me back then. I guess everyone needs things to cheer up, and this thing can only be found out by ourselves.
As I said, I really hope this little piece of text could be of a bit of help, and life will sooner or later get better for people who are struggling in their life. :)
