Nowadays, in the pandemics, when we are facing numerous losses, group talks about depression have been more necessary than ever. As our ability to control our lives has significantly decreased, it is normal that sometimes we feel incapable of dealing with everything that is happening to us.
Up to date research shows that depression cannot be understood by observing one factor. However, many clinical studies have shown that the sense of self-respect, the feeling of self-worth mirrored in what we think about ourselves, whether we feel we are contributing to the world around us, how much we value ourselves and what we think we are capable of, are a key psychological dimension linked to depression.
Low self-respect increases the risk of developing this type of depression. Negative opinion about oneself, a tendency to attribute one’s mistakes to personal unchangeable flaws, to perceive life challenges as problems which make us helpless and incapable of dealing with them, to value oneself exclusively through achievements – all these can cause depression.
Moreover, depression often leads to the gradual loss of self-respect. Although low self-respect in itself is not enough to diagnose depression, nowadays psychologists are aware that depression significantly disturbs our perception of ourselves. It leads to losing faith in our own abilities.
We often feel as if we cannot do many things, we are not that “functional”. This has to do with the fact that depression leads to worsening attention and sapping will. When we feel depressed, we perceive only what we are not capable of now and in what we failed. Therefore, life problems may seem unsolvable and we can perceive ourselves as lazy and unfit.
It is of great importance to have in mind that some of our abilities are temporarily limited as a result of depression when compared to how we had functioned before that state.
That is why it is important to encourage people who suffer from depression to focus on several everyday activities in which they can persist. Sometimes these can be seemingly simple activities such as getting up from bed or taking a shower, while sometimes these can be going to psychotherapy or taking prescribed medications. In that way, we have a feeling that almost always we can at least do something daily, no matter how much that can be, and faith that we will be able to do more as time passes by.
Accepting and understanding one’s own state is of crucial importance for recovery
Comparing oneself to states before depression or with other people who suffer from it can be particularly devastating. Such thoughts often cause a feeling of guilt or shame, so one can feel ashamed for not being able to be in a better mood in front of other people, as “weak” to face problems at work, our state does not improve when we go for a walk or when we do other activities which they advised could help.
Finding the courage to deal with one’s own depression by accepting and understanding a problem represents a crucial step to recovery. It usually takes all the support that one can get.
But if we feel that we have a mental health problem, we usually judge or humiliate ourselves. When our feeling of self-respect is compromised, we can perceive asking for support as yet another “proof” of our inability to deal with the problem on our own. This kind of approach can exacerbate that we accept our state in due time.
Burdened by the state that many describe as “a grey cloud above their head” one can perceive themselves as “worthless”, or even develop intolerance of themselves. Sometimes, depressive thoughts sound like a broken record which over and over again repeats our mistakes until it completely exhausts us.
We are not our depression
It is extremely important to talk about the lower feeling of self-respect and to ask for help. A reminder that one is not their depression can help, even on those days when it does not look like that.
Even though depression can lead to questioning a sense of self-worth, it can be an important occasion to revise what it means to oneself to be a “valuable human being”. If we used to connect a sense of worthiness with achievement or status, depression can serve as a basis for one to try to build a new, more stable sense of worthiness, with the support of close people or a therapist, which does not depend on something that is out of one’s control.
Therefore, a sense of worthiness can be redirected to the idea of oneself who deserves to be better and to take care of oneself when one is depressed.
Depression can also represent a chance to reshape oneself and their life, a chance to start a new one’s life by searching for what gives us back a sense of worthiness and meaning, life energy and purpose.
Original (in Serbian language) published on the website of national campaign for raising awareness about depression “Unbreakable”