You might look at the title of this blog post and think to yourself, “only one thing?”. Yes, only one thing causes depression and it’s a pretty obvious one when you think about it.
All of us have experienced some form of stress and depression throughout our lives. Stress can be created when you have a bad day at work, preparing for a presentation, or even tackling student loan debt.
Does depression come from all of those things as well? It could be, but none of these things cause depression. I want you to stop whatever you are doing and look in a mirror. Take time and just look at yourself for a minute and ask yourself “what is the only thing that causes depression?”
I hope you found the answer. The answer is right in front of you. In fact, the answer is looking right at you. The only thing that causes depression is you.
The Cause of Depression is You
Nothing else in the world makes us depressed but us. Horrible events can happen to us, but it is how we interpret those events that make us feel that way. The same thing can be said about any emotion. We create happiness, sadness, joy, elation, etc.
Just think about it for a second. If playing music makes you happy, then why doesn’t playing music make everyone else happy? Emotions are subjective to us as any environmental situation can trigger them.
Someone cuts you off in traffic, now you are angry. Give someone else that same scenario and they could be calm and relaxed. That’s the beauty of our mind. We create and control how we feel, not anything else.
The reason I brought this topic up was that I felt a little depressed yesterday night. I was laying in bed watching a video and I was thinking about life and my future. I just sat there staring blankly at the screen and felt sadness. Nothing caused the sadness to come into my mind but my thoughts.
Most Common “Causes” of Depression
Let’s take a look at some of the most common “causes” of depression and I will explain why all of these things are wrong. I will reference an article I read on verywellmind that talked about 9 main causes of depression.
Genetics
The first one that was reference was genetics, which is a fair argument. The thing with genetics is that they’re not enough studies to prove that depression is caused by it.
It is true that if your parents had a history of depression then you are more likely to suffer from depression in your life. That’s not a cause though, just a higher chance of getting depression.
Chemical Imbalance In The Brain
The second reference was a chemical imbalance in the brain, which has the strongest argument out of all of them. When you feel depressed, the neurotransmitters in your brain that regulate mood is short in supply. This means that whenever you feel sad or upset about something, that mood is going to stay for a long time.
All of these things are true, but does that mean that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression? No. In fact, the chemical imbalance is how the depression is formed not how it starts.
For example, let’s say you just lost your dream job because you arrived 10 minutes late. You interpret that event as a terrible thing that happened to you. After that, you think about how bad you screwed up which makes you feel down and depressed.
In the example, the depression started when you interpreted the event as terrible and thought about yourself negatively. The chemical imbalance happens right after you have those negative thoughts in your head.
I’m going to put the remaining “causes” of depression into one category because they all are essentially the same thing.
Symptoms/Results of Depression
The last causes of depression listed were poor nutrition, stress, drugs, hormones, and physical health problems. Let me just start and say all of these things are either symptoms/results of depression or the result of you thinking negatively.
Drugs
You generally don’t take drugs and then become depressed. Most people take drugs as a sign of a stress reliever or to take away the effects of depression. Drugs can lead to depression, but it doesn’t cause depression.
Stress
As for stress, we create our own stress. The world around us, the obstacles that we face everyday triggers stress.
We create stress because we interpret the things that happen to us as negative and aggravating to deal with. If we didn’t see those obstacles as negative, but more as a challenge and a way of life, we wouldn’t experience stress. Stress definitely leads to depression, but again it does not cause depression.
Poor Nutrition/Physical Health Problems
Poor nutrition and physical health problems are pretty similar, so I will group these together. These are both symptoms of depression. When you are depressed, you tend to eat unhealthy foods because they bring us dopamine. Dopamine is what makes us feel good inside, so we crave more of it. That explains why people eat a pint of ice cream when they are stressed or feeling down. If these things are happening while you are depressed, then it doesn’t cause depression.
Hormones
The most interesting one is hormones, which mainly is for females. Females generally have higher rates of depression than males and the reason is because of hormones.
Women are more prone to depression when they are in their menstrual period, childbirth, and perimenopause. In this case, hormones would count as a situational factor that leads to depression instead of something that causes depression.
How to Prepare for Depression
To be honest, there isn’t really much you can do to prepare for depression. We spend so much time trying to help someone that has depression, but not enough time trying to prevent depression from happening in the first place. It’s more of intervention instead of prevention, which isn’t the main issue here. The only way to prevent depression from happening is to not allow negative thoughts to come into your head.
It’s easier said than done, I know from personal experience. It’s the mental toughness that no one can train us for, but life. The obstacles and challenges that life presents to us is the way to train us in mental toughness. Most of the problems in the world are never going to be solved because there is no way to get 100% of people to believe in one thing. We can see an issue in the world as a problem, but if we learn how to accept them and fight through it then nothing would ever stand in our way.
I will leave you guys with this note. Don’t focus on problems in the world so much. You create them for yourselves. You are the ones that interpret something as horrible and create those negative thoughts. Thoughts that you don’t want to have in the first place. See life for what it is, a bumpy road full of obstacles and challenges. We are going to let those negative thoughts win occasionally, but you have to be strong and find ways to get back up. Negative thoughts may win the battle, but if you’re mentally tough you will win the war.
