Sister, friend…the reality is that depression is biochemical.  You did not make it, or cause it.  It can be situational, or something that needed a trigger to take you over the edge.  But there is help.  Refusing the drugs is good.  I will tell you why.  The drugs are designed to numb you.  Plain and simple.  To keep you out of the doctors office.  How many hours of therapy would it take to "heal" depression.  Too many for a mere doctor to chalk up.  Listen, life is hard.  That’s the first reality.  It’s hard for everyone.  Everyday I come home I feel like tatters.  I feel like the world takes a bite of me and leaves crumbs to blow home.  I feel like nobody cares, and sometimes in those very dark times, I wonder does God/Allah hear me cry?  Does he see me suffer?

Then it dawned on me one day.  I was depressed, and someone called who also was suffering.  The more I talked to her to calm her, to help her the  more my depression lifted.  It was like a momentary cure.  Perhaps depression is a folding inward and inward until we are blinded so we can’t see the good, or what there is to do.  After all, the only purpose we have is to care for one another.  My mother used to say, "find something to do" and frankly at those times I didn’t want to, I couldn’t.

But I see her wisdom, may she rest in peace.  When you are busy, distracted, and fully engaged in something other than yourself it heals depression.  It takes time, but more quickly than a pill and more cheap than a therapist and frankly a therapist will do the same, tell you to find groups or support, they have it backwards but they mean well, instead they should say, USE yourself UP!  Ego is depression.  Ego that has enveloped and gagged you, crippled you.  Stunted you.  Ego that has become bigger than your better self. 

I do not belittle how bad depression is.  I know it well myself.  I also know that I have licked it.  We will always have "downs" and some are more profound.  But knowing we will have them is half the battle.  "I recognize you depression, you want me to lay here in bed and complain and feel sorry for who? Myself, Ego."

But I won’t, I won’t let you take me down that dark tunnel.  Try it, I think it will work.  Colds an flu are a bummer but a tylenol and some hot soup and you are over the worst of it.  Do something good for someone, talk a long time to a good friend, but not about you, save the world and ask for nothing. 

Allah bless you, give you healing and peace.

That’s it.  I was just being selfish…How easy it’s been to stop all along…I could have prevented a life long issue of suffering by just not thinking of myself and helping others?!? 

Try again…

well, I didn’t mean to minimize your suffering.  I was sharing my own battle and how I feel I triumphed.  Not to say it goes away fully, but it helps me.  Inshallah you’ll find what works for you.

I apologize for being a butt…I understand your intentions now.  I just meet too many, "it’s so simple" people who believe because they’ve been in the dumps a couple of times and it wasn’t a big deal, then neither is depression…knee jerking isn’t always the best route, but it makes me feel better sometimes.

Thank you.

Yes, you are being a butt.  Because you assumed that you are the only person in the entire universe who wrangles with the black thing.  You are not.  So get over yourself.  Go back to what I said earlier which was nice.  Now that I know you "are" selfish, I am not going to be so nice.  I will no longer indulge you.  I said get a life, and I meant it! So there.