Depression is not the same as being sad. Everyone is sad at some point in their life, and sadness is normal and adaptive.
For its part, depression is totally maladaptive and it is not common to all people. Pathological depression and normal sadness differ both quantitatively and qualitatively.
In depression the intensity is much greater than in sadness, there are also many more irrational thoughts that are usually generalized to all areas of life.
Another difference that there is when a person is sad and depressed is what produces it. Sadness is usually due to a specific event or to several but relatively identifiable ones. On the contrary, in the depression the person does not know why he is like this.
Actually what happens is that the call occurs Cognitive triad. The person has a vision and negative thoughts about yourself, the world around you and the future.
I want to emphasize this point since it is essential to understand both concepts to get ahead during a process such as that involving a divorce. Depression is considered the cancer of disorders that affect the Psyche of the human being.
Much is known about it but nothing completely effective has been found to combat it. Psychologists and psychiatrists' offices are crowded with people suffering from depression in many of its forms. And a large part of these people go to therapy depressed due to the separation from their partner..
A fundamental point is that it is convenient to clarify the difference between depression and the natural sadness that a divorce. To begin, you should know that sadness is a normal emotion caused by realistic appraisals as a result of events that involve loss or disappointment from an objective way and without makeup. It is natural that sadness seizes us if we lose someone we love, it is even necessary to live this process.
On the other hand, with depression it is not like that, it is not at all a beneficial process since it is a disorder that almost always (except neurological cases or severe psychic trauma), has its roots in wrong translations and misperceptions of yourself or your situation.
In the case of a divorce, for example, it would be logical to think: "He's gone, I'm going to miss love and everything we had together", which generates a normal feeling of sadness that will help you put a stop, start your necessary grieving process and rethinking a new meaning of what you have lived.
But, if instead of that you place yourself in a thought of the type: "With his departure my happiness it is over forever, I am nothing without his presence and I will not be able to get out of this ”, what you will do is generate feelings of defeat and hopelessness that will affect you in other areas of your life, which if perpetuated, could lead you to a state depressant.
The first difference then lies in the different perception of the current situation with respect to the reality that you are going through. Normal sadness focuses on the fact and depression on your fears about that fact.
The key is not to let yourself be dominated by those fears and to put yourself in the fact, here and now: I am divorced, period. No more no less. That's where you have to stop thinking.
Another huge difference between sadness and depression is that the first is transitory, which means you have a time limit. It does not stay beyond what is necessary to accelerate a healing process.
Instead, depression tends to last and persists in repetition causing a vicious circle: The more depression, the more harmful feelings and thoughts and vice versa. This is where the stagnation of the person lies, since when falling into this pattern it becomes very difficult to see a way out, which is a very heavy burden..
So you don't have to fight sadness when it comes, accept that it's part of the way. Of course, be careful not to limit yourself extra in the time you stay in it, it could turn into depression. We will delve further into this when we get to the part of the love duel.
The third difference - and from my point of view the most important - is that sadness does not interfere with the self-esteem of the individual, while a fundamental characteristic of depression is to trigger a decrease in the concept of personal worth.
This happens because when you feel depressed, negative thoughts and feelings invade practically your entire world. You start to believe that things in the future are unfortunate and, even when you turn to see the past, you only remember the negative things that happened to you. The result is a feeling of helplessness in the face of it..
But remember that feelings are not facts. Although they seem real, they are just a bad imitation and you can change that. Also, contrary to what you may believe, self-esteem does not only refer to the fact of "feeling good." It is a much deeper need that is difficult to satisfy by superficial means.
There are some online tests that can give us guidance on what our emotional state is. This Depression Test is a good example.
"Probably the most important value judgment that directly affects their emotional development is the judgment that a person makes of themselves, so it is essential to have a balance in this matter.
A deterioration in self-esteem, however, does not happen overnight due to a traumatic event such as a divorce, but rather develops over a series of irrational thoughts and beliefs throughout life and that are not in tune with what the individual really is ".
“A long time ago a patient with severe failures in her self-esteem and who kept repeating the same mistakes, over and over again, with her partners, which inevitably caused them to move away from her side, she told me with all the naivety of her ignorance in the question":
“-Doctor, sometimes some people have told me that it is not they (their partners) who have something to solve, but that I am the one who has a problem in this regard, is it true? What am I the problem? - he told me with his head down ".
"-Of course you are the one with the problem - I answered frankly -They are only the variables of the equation, but the constant, the one that gives the answer to the formula is, in effect, you".
“If this debacle is, therefore, the result of the mistakes and deceptions that you make to yourself, how do you begin to remedy this? Think about the following. What happens to you when your moods They are so good that you can classify them as extraordinary?
Would that prove that this state of happiness is what makes you exceptionally valuable? If you do not have that state of happiness from time to time, does it mean that you are worth nothing? No, right? So why, when moods are sad or dark, would you insist on believing that you are worthless? ".
"Your feelings do not determine your worth, they simply show a variable state of well-being or discomfort. So pay attention, particularly during the early stages of this path that you have begun to walk, to give yourself permission to feel the healthy sadness that will overwhelm you and to be careful not to perpetuate it with distortions and run the risk of transforming it into depression ".
Until next time.
(This excerpt has been taken from the book Get over your divorce ¡Ya! - Keys to get ahead after a couple breakup, from Pax editorial, pp. 17-20, with the express permission of the author).
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