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Hello Friday: The Upside of Depression

depressionSo this article out of the UK, actually has scientists saying what I’ve always believed to be true in the back of my mind — basically that depression is sometimes a good thing, as it often forces you to change your life for the better.

Now, I believe in two types of depression: medical and environmental depression. I believe medical depression is chemical and should be treated with drugs and therapy and the like. However environmental depression — which I get from time to time — is the result of your life not quite looking like you want it to at the moment, and I think that a lot of good stuff can come out of environmental depression. Most everything I’ve ever finished writing has been a bid to get rid of this kind of depression. I also find that a some of my best ideas come about after a particularly long spell of sadness.

That’s why I’ve been learning to embrace both my happiness and my bouts of depression as I get older. When I’m blue, I usually roll around in it for a day or two, then I finally get sick of myself, look at my life and I try to figure out what I could change to make this horrible depression go away. When I got sad about being single, I would keep on going out on dates, even though I was sick of dating. When I got depressed about not having sold anything I had written, I would write some more. When I got depressed about my finances, I would make a budget. So now I’m married to a wonderful man, I’ve completed one novel and am working on a second, and I’ve actually become pretty good with handling money — I guess I owe that all to depression.

The worse bit is when your depressed about something that can only be solved with time and patience. I’m still working on patience. But I’m seriously starting to think that this depression stuff is something to be grateful for as far as self-improvement goes.

And now I’m curious if anyone else has had the same experience. Do you owe anything good that’s happened in your life to depression? Let us know in the comments. And here’s that article on the upside of depression.

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flickr.com photo credit: Bekah Stargazing