The earliest understanding of depression was from reports that a certain celebrity had to quit the industry due to depression, drank alcohol, stole, gained weight, or even committed suicide. Only then did we learn that there is a mental illness called depression.
I always feel that depression is far away from us ordinary people. It seems that there are not many people suffering from depression around me, and I don’t quite understand why people suffer from depression.
Indeed, it is difficult for people without depression to sympathize with the pain of depressed patients !
Many people may be like me. The inner understanding of patients with depression is that they are under great pressure in life or work, and they feel bad when encountering something. They are always unhappy and gradually become depressed, or they simply have a "bad mentality" ”, “fragile”, “pretentious”, “too sensitive”, etc.
Many people also think that the prevention and treatment of depression is not that complicated. There is no need to take medicine at all, just find something to do, do more exercise and travel.
In fact, depression is not only a manifestation of mental problems, but also causes various physical diseases. It will gradually invade the brain and change some of the brain's mechanisms. Many people do not know that they have depression and think it is just a normal disease. Physical illness. This also makes the prevention, treatment and recognition rate of depression extremely low, only 20%.
Among them, less than 10% of patients with depression can cooperate with drugs and actively receive psychological treatment. In addition, the treatment of depression is a long-term process and is prone to recurring attacks, so the condition can be controlled and completely cured. There are even fewer.
So understanding some knowledge about depression is very helpful to each of us!
"Be Happy Today" is also a book about depression, but unlike most psychological books, this is a comic book . The author is Merritt Sher Duran, a talented Spanish cartoonist who was also a patient with depression. She used comics to record her journey of self-healing as a person recovering from depression, which can also be said to have recorded her transformation.
Well-known psychological experts Zhang Peichao, Li Lun, and Hou Yuzhen have all written prefaces to this book. Through comics, the author of
tells us how he fell into depression little by little as a child, and then how he was injured in various negative emotions such as anxiety and anger and even suffered from various physical diseases. Finally, he became positive Faced with it face to face, tried various methods, and finally got out of depression and became a fulfilled, positive and optimistic girl.
Each cartoon in this book is accompanied by simple text, and explanations and explanations of some professional terms in psychology are also given. The form of comics also makes the topic of depression seem less heavy, giving people more room for imagination and thinking, allowing us to better understand the pain of patients with depression, and empathize with their unspeakable loneliness and powerlessness. Instead of judging others simply and rudely.
. In fact, everyone has the potential to heal themselves. This ability can not only help ourselves, but also help those around us.
So when reading this book, we can read the comics or read only the text, or we can combine the two. Different reading experiences will bring different inspirations, as if the small universe full of potential in our hearts is slowly being to activate.
As we witness the author's journey of self-reconstruction, we ourselves have also completed a psychological transformation and upgrade, improving our ability to repair inner wounds.
. There is a cruel "little hell" in everyone's heart!
The treatment of depression requires finding the source. Of course, the source is different for everyone.
For the author, the worry of depression started in childhood.
When she was young, her parents often quarreled. The author believed that the reason her parents quarreled was because of her, but she could not understand how her parents quarreled, so she gradually fell into fear, and fear also led to anger.
In adolescence, under the influence of hormones that affect emotions, the author began to use silence to protect himself, but in the end he was isolated. As much as he longs for loneliness, he longs for companionship. This contradictory psychology makes the author feel that everything in the world is an invasion.
The author will become less and less confident, and his emotions will easily get out of control. The road to love is destined to not be smooth. The more knots he has in his heart, the more he will feel inferior, anxious, and deny himself.
This kind of inner chaos continues into adulthood. Negative emotions are like internal "toxins" accumulating more and more. They have low self-esteem and low self-esteem, and even begin to engage in destructive and aggressive behaviors, such as biting their nails to vent their emotions, and they will also treat others. The people closest to you lose their temper.
The author had to create "another self" to protect himself. The "real me" and the "real me" clashed fiercely, defending each other and distorting themselves.
Then the author began to realize that he had a psychological problem, and tried to resolve the negative emotions by putting himself into work, but he fell into self-obsession, challenging himself and constantly denying himself, and he was fixed in place.
People who hesitate are more likely to activate the "little hell" in their hearts!
. I am the "executioner" and also the "victim"!
From the author's experience, we can find that the author is naturally more sensitive and fragile, so he is more likely to doubt himself and deny himself.
But in fact, a lot of negative emotions come from one's own irrational imagination. They feel that they are not worthy of being loved. When they were children, they were not worthy of the love of their parents, so their parents would quarrel because of them. In adolescence, they felt that they were not worthy of the love of their peers. , is liked by the opposite sex, so is isolated by peers and cannot get love.
So the author created "another me" to protect himself, but this "other me" also isolated the "real me"! As a result, the author's self-identity became more and more confusing, and he began to hate and judge himself, but this also made himself more helpless, falling into a vicious cycle, producing more "toxins", and causing physical problems.
. Only in the darkest place can we realize how valuable the light is!
In the second part of the book, the author talks about what happened after he became ill, which also allows us to better understand the pathogenesis and operation of depression.
The author began to be unable to feel his true self. He lost control of his emotions, lost consciousness, was unable to resist, was addicted to alcohol, and had problems with his immune system. The "real me" began to disappear and fell into the darkest place. The author of
became a patient with depression, and "the toxins were fermented"! Fear spreads, cutting off one's sensitive nerves, causing endless anxiety and anger, venting attacks on those close to oneself. Although
also tried to change, he was seriously unwell both mentally and physically, and his life fell into the darkest moment!
So the author started asking for help!
. Become yourself better!
Sister Hanhan Zhao Han wrote in the book "Hanjie" You don't have to be a better version of yourself, but you can be a better version of yourself! So we don’t have to compare with others, we just need to constantly upgrade ourselves.
If you are sick, then bravely admit that you are sick, get rid of pride, and face it bravely even if the spiritual world is in ruins.
The author found the source of depression by tracing back to childhood - the struggle between the ideal self and the real self!
The way depression works is for people to become trapped in a cocoon, standing still, consuming themselves until they are unable to fight, allowing depression to swallow them up, sinking into the darkest place, and pressing the pause button on life.
So the first step is to activate yourself and rebuild yourself!
The essence of depression is that your brain, emotions, and body are out of order and cannot be harmoniously unified to function as a whole.
Therefore, the treatment of depression should pay attention to these three levels. It requires symptomatic drug treatment, psychological counseling methods that are suitable for you, good interpersonal communication, and an active and healthy lifestyle, all of which must work together. In the third part of the book, the author
describes his own process of actively treating depression, and also introduces many effective methods!
6. Be happy today too!
When I first read the title of the book, I didn’t have much impression. I thought, isn’t this nonsense? But after reading the whole book, I have a deeper feeling about this sentence.
Psychologist Zhang Peichao once said "Anger and sadness originate from the past, anxiety and fear point to the future, and joy is the only emotion we have connected with the present"!
So I realized that the most important focus of this sentence is not happiness, but today. Only by grasping today and the moment can you not dwell on what has happened or what you cannot change.
Psychologist Hou Yuzhen also said "When sadness begins to flow, depression will slowly leave you."
Everyone will experience sadness. We are not afraid of sadness, but we cannot let sadness stay. This will only Dwelling on the past and grieving can wreak havoc on our brains.
7. It’s not about confronting the darkness!
As a person who has successfully overcome depression, the author regards this experience as a gift in life.
The author uses comics, a more relaxed and imaginative way, to vividly express the pain he has experienced, his reflection on depression, and the healing process, without losing the fun and knowledge!
Darkness is not scary. Fear of darkness will only make you dominated and dominated by darkness! See the darkness as an opportunity for us to accumulate strength, repair ourselves, discern the traps, and then disintegrate them one by one!
This book is suitable for each of us to read. It allows us to better understand the pain of patients with depression, and also allows us to better understand our own fragility and sadness, accept our own imperfections, activate our own potential, and let ourselves An upgrade!
should be happy today too! The most important thing in life is every "today"!
