Want a copy of the “Depression Letter” we’ve drafted to help you explain to your loved ones what depression feels like and how they can support you?

Join 75,000+ people who’ve accessed this letter!

Done! We’ve just emailed you the “depression letter”

6 Reasons You Can Overcome Depression

6 Reasons You Can Overcome Depression

According to members of The Depression Project's community, one of the most common negative thoughts people with depression experience is "I'm never going to overcome depression". And, if you can relate, then in this blog post, we'd like to share with you a free excerpt from one of our cognitive behavioural therapy-based journals that details several reasons why you can overcome depression (that up until now, you may not have considered).

Are you ready?

You Can Overcome Depression

Free excerpt

It’s important to note that just because you have a thought, it doesn’t mean that it’s true – and in fact, when you’re viewing everything through depression’s critical, distorted lens that’s causing you to think much more negatively than you otherwise would, many of your negative thoughts are likely going to be false.

For this reason, then rather than automatically accepting a negative thought like “I’m never going to overcome depression” to be true, it can be really helpful to implement a common cognitive behavioural therapy strategy that involves bringing awareness to the evidence which disputes it1.

In particular, evidence to contradict the negative thought “I’m never going to overcome depression” could include, for example:

  1. There is increasingly more and more help available to assist you in overcoming depression – including, for example, increased accessibility to therapy as a result of the internet; progressions in the field of psychology that are creating new opportunities for treatment and improving existing opportunities; more and more depression self-help books being written by experts and published every year; and more and more online courses being made by experts as well. Accordingly, just because you haven’t overcome depression yet, it doesn’t mean that, with continuously increasing access to help, you won’t be able to overcome depression in the future.
  2. There are often many, many differences between one therapist and another – including their treatment approaches, their communication styles, and their overall knowledge and “talent” as a therapist – to name a few of many such differences. Consequently, even if you’ve tried therapy in the past and haven’t found it helpful, it’s highly likely that there are other therapists out there who would indeed be able to help you.
  3. There are hundreds – more like thousands! – of self-help books written by highly knowledgeable and experienced professionals that, in all likelihood, you haven’t yet read. And, if you do read them, then you will almost certainly learn countless strategies and techniques that you don’t now know which could really help you to overcome depression.
  4. There is often a “learning curve” when it comes to effectively implementing techniques to help you overcome depression. For this reason, even if you haven’t found one or more techniques in particular to be helpful in the past, it doesn’t mean that, with more and more practice, you won’t be able to find them helpful in the future.
  5. Yet another reason why you may not have found certain techniques helpful in the past but you may do in the future is because the headspace you happen to be in can determine how effective various techniques are. For example, if you’re so consumed with negative thoughts, so consumed with misery and feeling so exhausted and broken that it’s a struggle to get out of bed for example, then learning and effectively implementing a brand new cognitive behavioural therapy strategy will likely be beyond your present capacity. However, if you try to learn and implement that strategy when you’re in a better headspace, then you may indeed find it beneficial.
  6. Furthermore, just because you haven’t done something yet, or just because you aren’t exactly sure how to do something right now (including overcome depression, for example), it does not mean that that something isn’t possible – particularly if you try really hard to do it!

End of free excerpt

We really hope you've found this free journal excerpt helpful.

All our love,

The Depression Project Team.

References

P.S. If you'd like more help coping with and overcoming the negative thought ï»ż"I'm never going to overcome depression",Â ï»żthen please click the button below to learn more about our You Can Overcome Depression journal.