Depression treatment

I always thought I wouldn’t have sleeping problems. Usually, I’ve slept for 7 - 8 hours every day, waking up and not feeling any lack of sleep. But that has changed in the last few weeks. It was midnight or past midnight and I couldn’t get to sleep, so I was thinking a lot in my bed or rewinding old memories. Anyway, when I finally could visit the sandman, it was like 1 am or something. All cool, but in the morning I was waking at 6.30 AM!!

Five and a half hours, that’s really not enough. Through the day I was being in a trance-like state, not beeing fully aware of myself. My mood was shitty too. So I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve read that it’s good to sleep in a FULLY DARK room, so no light can come in and disturb your sleeping. This was a problem in my room, because the windows curtains are not fully covering the windows, so light can come in in the early morning and trigger my waking up center in the brain. That’s why I’ve bought a SLEEPING GLASSES (I’m not sure if that’s the correct word for it, but I guess you know what I mean). My sleeping improved and I could also fall a sleep in the afternoon for a couple of hours.

Next thing I did was not drinking too much water (or other liquids) before getting to bed. Sometimes I just wake up in the middle of the night because I have to take a leak. So, no more water drinking after 9 PM! After some research, I’ve also found out that you shouldn’t exercise a lot before sleeping (because a high heart rate won’t let you sleep) and you shouldn’t watch horror flicks.

Ok, let’s recap what helps if you’re not getting enough sleep:

• make sure no light comes into your room
• get sleeping glasses for total darkness
• do not exercise a lot before getting to bed
• don’t do anything that upsets you before getting to bed (like watching a horror movie or playing an exciting video game)

These simple steps should improve your sleep. They did mine. I would like to hear from you about your sleeping problems and sollutons too. Just drop me a comment here. Thanks.

Ever zapped through your hundreds of tv channels, just to find out 95% is just commercials, crappy tv epsiode repeats and movies not worthy to be called movies. I have these thoughts most of the time when wathching TV. There are some good episodes like MythBusters, a good comedy like Seinfeld or even cool soccer or f1 events once or twice per week, but that’s it!
Lately I was thinking of putting my tv away for good, selling it or something. Here are 4 reasons (benefits) of turning your tv off for good:

1. No more Cable/satellite TV bills
   You could say that the financial part of quitting tv isn’t the most important, but it can save you some bucks which could be spent anywhere else more wisely. I’m not sure what your monthly bill for cable is, but it should be around 50 - 60$. So that about 600$ per year. So if you start today, you can get yourself a cool vacation with your family or friends in just two years. Plus add the electricity bill to that and it you can add another 100$ in two years.
2. Better dining habbits
   We often eat in front of the television which is a poor way of dining. First, you don’t see what you’re eating and don’t realise when you eat too much. Combine fat foods with sitting on the sofa while watching tv and you will get fat soon.
3. Social skills improvement
   This is also an important benefit when you quit watching the tv. You have time to do other things, like talking to a friend on the phone or going out on a drink. You can also finish stuff you didn’t do, like cook a good meal, clean your room or read a book to the end. Anything you’ll do that involves human contact rather than just waching people on tv will improve your social skills thus give you a better felling when in a company of other people.
4. Get rid of feelings of guilt
   Television programs often create a glamorous image of a life that is far outside the financial capabilities of most people watching. When viewers watch such programs then reflect on their lives, it creates a set of negative feelings. For me, the most prevalent feeling is guilt - I can’t give my family this stuff, I would think. Thus, my sense of self-worth would go down.

As you can see, there are many benefits of quitting tv. But you might ask, what to do in your free time when not watching TV? Well you could start an exercise plan to improve your health and fitness. You could also take evening classes, read a good book, socialise with your friends or get a new hobby. The options are limitless!

Today I was “digging” for articles on depression, and I found out this one: Secret to a long life - get even more often The basic idea about the article is that if you repress your emotions, you won’t live a happy life. For example, you feel like shit but infront of your friends you put on a happy face and pretend everything is ok. Or if someone does a bad thing to you and you say it’s okay - but you feel like punching his face!

Anyway, I started to research a little bit more about this topic and found out interesting stuff. Here are a few examples of how we repress our emotions:

• Ignoring our feelings
• Pretending something hasn’t happened
• Overeating
• Eating foods loaded with sugar and fat
• Excessive drinking of alcohol
• Excessive use of recreational drugs
• Using prescription drugs such as tranquilizers or Prozac
• Exercising compulsively
• Any type of compulsive behavior
• Excessive sex with or without a partner
• Always keeping busy so you can’t feel
• Constant intellectualizing and analyzing
• Excessive reading or TV
• Working Excessively
• Keeping conversations superficial
• Burying angry emotions under the mask of peace and love

Let’s be honest here. I’m sure noone could say that he or she hasn’t experienced any of these points. It’s perfectly normal to have some of the symptoms. It’s bad when you do all of these things. And here are some symptoms of repressed emotions:

• Fatigue
• Depression without an apparent cause
• Speaking of issues/interests rather than personal matters and feelings
• Pretending something doesn’t matter when inside it does matter
• Rarely talking about your feelings
• Blowing up over minor incidents
• Walking around with a knot in your stomach or tightness in your throat
• Feeling your anger not at the time something happens but a few days later
• In relationships, focusing discussions on children/ money rather than talking about yourselves
• Difficulty talking about yourself
• Troubled personal relationships with family, friends, acquaintances
• A lack of ambition or motivation
• Lethargic – who cares - attitude
• Difficulty accepting yourself and others
• Laughing on the outside while crying on the inside

Emotions repressed for the long-term can cause serious illness including cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue, and many other major health problems.

So, here’s the tip of the iceberg. These point should give us a lot to talk about. I might talk about every of these point in the near future. More research on this field is definitely needed by my side and also I need to study them in practice with myself. Should be really helpful.

Three months ago, I was invited on a soccer game. I could run for 5 minutes or so, then I was totally out of breath. And we played for 2 hours! You can imagine the torture I’ve experienced that day. So, I’ve decided to start to do something for my stamina.

Two days after that, I’ve started to run. There’s a nice forest not far away from here and I ran there before but not regulary. This time it should be different. I tried to do jogging or running for 3 times per week. I remember the first two weeks I had some pain in my leg muscles, but that went away after 3 weeks or so. It’s perhaps because I didn’t warm up enough before every run.

Anyway, I tried to jogg three to four times per week on a regular basis. And that was 3 months ago and I’m still doing it! Not only am I in better physical shape (those lil’ fat bumps around the belly dissapeared), but I also feel better each time I run. And my soccer improved too. I can now run for 1.5 hours without beeing out of breath.

That’s why I highly recommend that you go out and start jogging, running or whatever. Could also be biking, swimming, walking. Just go out, don’t be in your room the whole day!

I have this moderate obssession with online poker, so I play it from time to time for real money. I usually load 100$ or so in my account and play. I’m not sure if I lack the skills or what, but the last few months I’ve been loosing money. Check the balance from last 60 months and guess what, I’ve spent over 1200$ on poker.

This is one thing that makes me feel bad. After I loose, I really start feeling depressed. Not very depressed, but it can develop when other things add up. That’s why I’m working on quitting playing poker for money completely. But what to do when you feel bored and don’t know what to do? Do something for your self improvement. Maybe read a book about confidence or who to cook a nice meal. And remember, do one task at a time.

I’m really looking for some good ways to improve my speech skills, to get a more dominant voice and to speak infront of an audiance with confidence. If I find a good site about that, I’ll post it here for sure. Next time I will talk about exercise as a natural depression healer. I really have good experience with jogging.

Imagine this situation. You think of one thing you should do. For example, wash the dishes. But in the middle of washing the dishes, you remember you should make a blog post or take out your trash or maybe even eat something. And now you don’t know what to do.

Should you finish washing the dishes or should you make that blog post and wash the dishes afterwards. You get confused and if you’re not a strong personality, you could get depressed. At the end it’s a great possibility, that you won’t finish any of these tasks you are about to. And this will further deepen your depression feelings.

So my suggestion. Finish what you’re working on. Finish washing those dishes. Till the bitter end. You’ll feel good because you’ve acomplished that task and now can move forward to other. One thing at a time.

Just a quick note about my swimming. I was at the pool today (a female friend asked me if I would like to go with her and her friend yesterday) and it was great. I was swmimming a little (still need improvement) and I was enjoying the sun and people. It felt great and I’m still in a really good mood now. I had second thoughts about going to the pool because I was afraid some people will laugh at my lack of swimming skills, but that wasn’t the case. It was just pure fun! Sometimes you just have to go with your head trough the wall. It can help.