Hey there,

What were the handful of words that represent your growing up? I imagine there are a few that strike a familiar, sensitive and hurting chord in your heart. I know not all of the topics I’m going to cover will be in your experience, yet statistically, you or someone you know has or does struggle with them. 

Depression is a very common struggle. If you deal with depression, do you feel shame for it? Do you feel defeated by it? It definitely can be an area that limits us in living the life we were created for. There are great treatments for depression in talk therapy as well as medication and some self-help resources too. 

As a counselor working in private practice 12 years now, I have worked with a lot people suffering from depression. I myself have struggled with depression off and on over the years. This past year I wrote a book titled What Now? Anxiety, Depression & Grief: A Concise Guide, Tools for Adults and Children. 

I had a speaking engagement and the book sprang from my preparations for that talk. It is a great resource for you and your loved ones, go to Amazon to purchase the e-book (search “How to manage all my tangled emotions” or “Joy Hitztaler”) or paperback copy. My website has a link to connect you to Amazon http://www.joyhitztaler.com

Depression will tell you that you are not good enough, that things will not get better, and that you just don’t have the strength…and these are limiting beliefs. Depression will pull you down, have you stay in bed longer, put off and procrastinate tasks until you feel like doing them. 

Depression will tell you lies about your self-worth and value. 

Depression is a chemical state of the brain and sometimes needs to be treated with medication. It does not need to define who you are. You are not a depressed person, rather a person struggling with depression. Do you notice the difference? It may be subtle, but the first defines the person while the second notes it as something to be struggling with, a symptom, a problem outside the person. 

How do you stop depression from limiting you? Acknowledge you have depression or suffer from some of the symptoms. Try some solutions and treatments to lessen the symptoms. 

Remember that it does not define you. A store owner may be struggling to keep ants away from his stock room, but the ant problem does not become the store. 

You are a valuable, lovable, worthy person. You, like everyone else, have struggles. Believe that your struggles don’t define you. Believe that you can do something about your struggles. Re-framing how you think about your struggles is a start to processing and solving problems in a healthy way. 

When you bring your struggle to something separate from who you are, it is empowering. There will always be things going on, struggles to deal with. AND you can still be living your life to the fullest! To know one enables us to know the other. 

In the next entry, I’ll share some of the struggles I have dealt with. I make these recommendations not just as an outsider, but as someone who has struggled. I also am blessed to have the role of counselor helping others wade through their struggles too. 

Truth Section

“No rain no flowers” -Anonymous

Just breathe.

“We suffer more from imagination than from reality.” – Seneca

One day, or day one, you decide!

“Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you, it can only come from you.” -Anonymous

“What if everything you’re going through is preparing you for what you asked for. -quotesndnotes.tumblr.com

“Something will grow from all of this…and it will be me.” -Jodi Hills

“A Grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.” -Anonymous 

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” -Anonymous

“Laughter is like a windshield wiper, it doesn’t stop the rain but allows us to keep going.” -Anonymous

“A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.” -Albert Einstein

“Great things never come from comfort zones.”

Affirmation – I am bringing my future into my present. (Meaning what you are waiting for, will be happy when, you can decide to feel that now.)

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” -Anonymous