Life falling apart depression (5 coping tips)
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OptimistMinds
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Author bio
The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
In this article, we are going to look at how to deal with life falling apart depression, what is it like to face life falling apart causing depression, and can depression make your life fall apart.
How to deal with life falling apart depression?
Here are the ways you can overcome life’s falling apart depression.
- Read a book
- Talk to a professional
- Let go of things you cannot control
- Give importance to physical and mental health
- Show gratitude
- Note your strengths
- Wallow, if needed
- Believe in yourself
There’s no feeling worse than that pit at the bottom of your stomach when you’ve finally hit rock bottom. It’s a dark place down there. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s nothing but a dark, dark place. Days seem to grow longer. Sadness looms. No matter how hard you try to hold things together, they can’t help but unravel and spiral further away from your control.
Following are a few things you can do to get out of this feeling or make the situation better for you.
Read a book
At times when you feel that your life is falling apart, it could be because of the fact that you have involved your mind in a situation for longer than needed. In this scenario, it is necessary that you get yourself a distraction. So, it might be a good idea to transition yourself from your mind into someone else’s mind at least for a little while. A great way to do that is through a good book.
Reading a book with certain life lessons or a book of any genre that interests you will only keep your mind occupied in things that are not your life. It is not a bad thing to worry about your life. But you need to know when to stop. If you cannot do that, look for an external source as a book to distract you. Some good choices are:
- When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
- Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)by Carol Tavis and Elliot Aronson
- Anything by Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, and Deepak Chopra
- Callings by Gregg Levoy
Talk to a professional
When you feel that your life is falling apart or have no control over anything, it can take a toll on your emotional well being. At times people can deal with it on their own. They can pull themselves back to who they were. But sometimes, you lose the ability to do so.
When this happens the best thing you can do is go to a professional. Asking for help from a professional is the right way of coming out of the darkness. Sometimes you are in a deep quicksand that you have to raise your hand ahead to ask for help.
You have to let someone help you. It is not a bad thing to do so. In fact, asking for someone’s help is the bravest action one can take. So take a step back, calm your brain, and let someone help you to get your life back. Sometimes all you need is a third-person perspective a little nudge here and there. A professional is there to offer you the same.
Let go of things you cannot control
Life is full of choices and things that are mostly not in our control. It was not in your control that your loved one met an accident, or that your child had was born with a genetic disorder. These are the things that are completely out of control no matter what you would have done. So when your life is falling apart and you feel depressed, you need to stop worrying about things that do not work according to your whims and fancies. Tragedies happen in life. But time waits for no one. You cannot go back in time and save from the tragedy to occur, or not just cannot undo the tragedy. You have to live with it. So instead of making the ‘what-if’ situations in your brain, you need to focus on overcoming them and letting them go. You need to release that life is too short, so you can either be stuck with trying to control things you cannot or just let them go and live in peace.
Give importance to physical and mental health
When your life is falling apart the two key ingredients towards success is your physical and mental health. You need to focus on both but one. If you have good physical health, but bad mental health, you will be unable to cope with anything, and if you have good mental health and bad physical health, well you are physically impaired to even take certain actions. Therefore, keep both your mental and physical health in check.
Your biggest enemy is your thoughts. The thoughts in your brain that make you think otherwise. Having control over these thoughts can help you be stable. They distract you to the point where you don’t end up taking care of yourself, you simply get worse. Hence at this point, meditation, talking to a friend, recognizing your catastrophizing moments can help you.
In order to keep your mental health under check, having strong physical health is also important. Therefore, go out for a walk, engage in activities that make you work out physically. By taking care of your physical health, you prevent other potential problems that will kick you while you’re down. You also help keep your body strong in case the cause of your frustration is health-related. In addition, when your life is falling apart, you are much in the need of endorphins. These hormones are secreted after having a physical work out,
Show gratitude
Gratitude is considered to be the greatest virtue of humankind. So practicing gratitude can certainly helo you fight depression and anxiety, research found that focusing on the positives and showing gratitude helped veterans overcome PTSD. hence, it is believed that this can help you too. By doing so, you are mainly challenging that negative inner voice that is constantly telling you that there is nothing good in your life or you are good for nothing.
Note your strengths
In order to fight the negatives and being pessimistic, you need to constantly remind yourself of the strengths that you hold. By doing so, you will know what you are capable of. You become aware of your skills and the abilities you are born with. This makes you feel that there is more to life than that one thing that makes your life fall apart. Listing your strengths makes you feel competent and fight irrational thoughts.
Wallow, if needed
Sometimes, you need to give yourself space and time to cry and feel the pain. You need to let your life fall apart for a day or two in order for your grief to be released. This may feel counterproductive but it is not. Once you have had the time and space to grieve, you can come back stronger.
Believe in yourself
Lastly, and most importantly, you need to believe in yourself. Faith is needed to fight the falls in life and get back up. If you have the confidence and the self-esteem that you can fight the worst situation and yet rise back again, no one in this world can stop you, not even the negative voice inside you. So believe in yourself.
What is it like to face life falling apart causing depression?
Your life is perfectly normal. You are leading a life without any significant disturbance and all of a sudden life hits you with a trauma. You may lose the love of your life, you may lose your job, your relationship is broken, moving from one city to the other. Any of these situations can disrupt your life completely. They can make you from a functioning human to a depressed human.
You may lose the clarity of your future. One second ago you had everything and now you do not. You knew what life had for you, you had your next 5 years planned, but now you do not. Because you do not understand what just happened to you. All you feel like doing is stay in your bed and grieve over the loss. This is what it feels like to face life falling apart and causing depression.
Human beings are not a big fan of changes. In fact, they crave stability and comfort. Anything apart from this can take a toll on their mental health. Therefore, the situations mentioned above and many more that are brought by the changes in your life can make you feel that your life is falling apart.
In such situations where we feel our lives are falling apart ad have no control over it whatsoever, it eats you up both physically and emotionally too. Losing the purpose and meaning in your life can certainly make you depressed. You have no idea what to do next.
Our loved ones, our jobs, our cities define us and give us the meaning that makes us who we are. When these are taken away from you without any prior notice, you are likely to be depressed as your life is falling apart.
Can depression make your life fall apart?
On the other hand, there is a situation or vice versa. Depression is one of the leading mental health disorders that exist today. Every 1 in 4 people might deal with depression or depressive symptoms. It is not false that depression can ruin a person’s life.
There is no single cause of depression. Depression is usually caused due to a combination of biological, social, and psychological factors. Irrespective of the cause, the period of depression can changes you and your perspective towards life completely. In fact, it can go to an extent where you are suicidal and your life might just fall apart.
Depression is a mental disorder that is described under the mood disorders by the DSM-5. Depression is characterized by extreme sadness and a complete loss of interest in things that were once considered pleasurable. A person dealing with depression is also known to feel worthless, helpless, hopeless, and with a pang of constant guilt. Depression makes the person lose or increase both appetite and sleep. In addition, the person dealing with depression is constantly annoyed and irritated. If left untreated, they also have suicidal thoughts.
Having to experience the above-mentioned symptoms, can actually disrupt your life. You can certainly lose the will to work, be around your family, push away your loved ones, and may also lose your social support. Depression can actually make your life fall apart. You are no longer the person you are before. With a lack of sleep and energy, you just want to lie down in your bed. After a point, the symptoms of depression become your entire life. You are no longer the same person you were before.
You do not understand if you will ever get out of it. You are fighting to stay alive, let alone to engage in pleasurable activities that define you. Your life suddenly revolves merely around a dark cloud of sadness. If left untreated, you start to show suicidal behavior. As a result of this, you might end up taking your life. If not, you would have a traumatic experience that you might not be able to overcome easily.
Hence, yes depression can certainly make your life fall apart.
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Conclusion
In this article, we have looked at how to deal with life falling apart depression, what is it like to face life falling apart causing depression, and Can depression make your life fall apart.
FAQs: Life falling apart depression
What does it mean to be prone to depression?
The stress caused by a death, major loss, or another life stressor can be enough to trigger an episode of depression in someone who already possesses the tendency towards this condition. This makes you prone to depression.
What does falling apart mean?
If you say that someone is falling apart, you mean that they are becoming emotionally disturbed and are unable to think calmly or to deal with the difficult or unpleasant situation that they are in.
Which gender is more likely to be depressed?
Women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression.
References
https://psychcentral.com/blog/what-to-do-when-life-falls-apart-the-essential-6-step-program#2
https://declutterthemind.com/blog/my-life-is-falling-apart/
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