Depression is typically defined as an emotional state characterized by feelings of gloom and inadequacy
The type and quality of questions that you ask yourself have a direct effect on your mood and stress levels. What you choose to focus on will dictate your emotional state; this is because your unconscious mind is programmed to provide answers to the questions that you ask. For example, you have lunch with a friend and afterwards you ask yourself the following "What was the best thing about lunch?" and you'll recall all of the good things. However if you ask "What was the worst thing about lunch?" you will recall all of the bad things, even though the event was exactly the same. In effect your memories of the event are directed by the quality of the questions you ask about it. Studies have shown that people with the symptoms of depression are more likely to be asking negative questions on a regular basis.
Depression also has a physical structure, because your thoughts are reflected by your body language. However most people do not realise that the thought/physiology link works both ways, so if you change your body posture it changes your thoughts. To experience this do the following test. Think of something that makes you feel depressed, notice your body posture (typically head and eyes down, shoulders slumped, back bent downward). Now stand upright, with you shoulders back, look up towards the ceiling or sky, put a big silly grin on your face and tense all of you muscles. Staying exactly in that posture try to recall the thing that caused you to feel depressed and notice how it feels different. For most people because it is harder to access the depressed state the emotional intensity is reduced.
Calibrate the changes.
Start by noticing how your feel right now and score it on a scale of one (blissfully happy) to ten (totally depressed). This will provide you a benchmark so that you know how much it has changed having used one or more of the techniques below.
After using the techniques notice that you feel differently to before and rescore how you feel on a scale of one to ten. If necessary repeat or interchange these techniques to further reduce your score to a point where you are in control of your emotions not the other way around.
Change the type and quality of your questions
Like many skills the more you work at this the more automatic it becomes. Start by being aware of the questions you ask yourself. If they are of a negative nature then change them ask your self "What can I learn from this" or if that is difficult ask yourself "What could be positive in this situation?" or if that proves difficult ask "What would someone else take out of this situation?” The important point is to keep asking one or all of these questions until you get a useful answer.
The other skill that is useful in eliminating depression is to control your internal voice. The key here is to only have thoughts about yourself that you wish to be true. This is because your unconscious mind will take any suggestion that you give it, so if you repeated over and over "Every day I'm feeling a little better" pretty soon your unconscious mind will act in accordance with your wish and you will notice an improvement in your emotional state.
If you have trouble controlling the content of your internal voice, consider changing its tonality. This technique alone will make a dramatic difference to the way you feel. To experience how this works think of the phrase you say to yourself when you are feeling down. For example you will have specific phrases that you use to beat yourself up. Next time you say those things change your internal voice to the voice of Donald Duck (or any cartoon character) and say it again. Now notice the difference!
Change your physiology
As stated earlier, depression has a specific body posture so another way to change how you feel is to change your posture. Here is a list of the typical features of depressive posture:
Head down-Eyes down-Hunched shoulders-Bent spine-Slow movements -Shuffling walk-Silent
Changing all or any of these postures to their opposite will make the depression harder to connect with thus reducing its effect. A good way to do this is to find a physical activity that combines one or more of the above. Any form of exercise works well, or sporting activities the important thing is to be aware of your posture and change it. You could put some loud, fast or energetic music on the hi-fi dance around the room and sing along, you'll soon find it’s hard to try to be depressed. Whatever works for you is fine.
A note on these techniques
Obviously these techniques are not designed to treat the root cause of depression but they may well improve your emotional state to a point where you can start to deal with the root cause.
