DO THIS THE NEXT TIME YOU FEEL DEPRESSED

IT ALL STARTS WITH HOW YOU INTERNALLY REPRESENT INCIDENTS.

People nowadays are feeling more depressed than ever. We don’t even have to talk to them to know if they are depressed or not, just take a look at their faces.

Read the scenario given below to know more.

Bill and Mike are two employees working in an IT company. They’ve been friends since college. Both of them hold reputable positions in the company and are well respected. One fine day they are asked by their manager to be present in his office. As soon as they enter his office, the manager starts yelling and berating at them for a trivial matter that had happened some days ago. As they felt the matter was insignificant, they had paid little attention to it.

Some days later after the incident, Bill underwent a complete transformation, but for the worst. He stopped talking to his colleagues even to Mike and Mike on the other hand seemed to be the same old guy, but started to pay more attention. Mike had never seen this side of Bill, even though they were good friends since college.

Over time Bill started being a loner both in his office and personal life, and Mike’s career was blooming. Mike had coaxed Bill into talking through several times, but Bill never gave in.

Now let’s analyze Mike and Bill, both Mike and Bill were equally talented and were doing great in their jobs. They were happy up until that incident had occurred and then Bill seemed to never get over that.

People, in general use two particular patterns: Association and Disassociation to internally represent incidents or happenings to themselves. We either represent it as fully associated or fully disassociated. Both has its own advantages and disadvantages.

In this case Mike followed the pattern of disassociation, such kind of people seldom seem to be emotionally moved by anything. The advantage of disassociation is that , people who follow this pattern keep out of deep emotions about some things and hence have more resources in handling them.

The disadvantage of disassociation is that , when people use it as a consistent pattern to represent their experiences, they miss out on the Juice of life. They don’t know that life can be a whole new experience if they start to follow the associated pattern of internal representations.

Bill in this case follows the associated pattern consistently. He doesn’t know how and when to pull the switch between association and disassociation. People who don’t know how and when to pull the switch becomes an emotional misfit, like Bill, he couldn’t control the surge of emotions that kept attacking him day after day.

An associated person may have great difficulty with life because they feel every little thing, and for them life isn’t always fun or exciting.

The key to this problem is finding the balance, knowing when to associate with and disassociate from anything.

The key is to associate consciously, so that it helps us. We do not want to associate the incidents that harmed us or made us feel bad. No one wants to remember those type of incidents, they never help us in reinforcing our confidence. That incident may make us feel bad, but to keep thinking of that incident, replaying it again and again is just not worth our time.

Disassociate from bad or harmful incidents and associate with good and eventful incidents.

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