Battling Depression with Meditation & Mindfulness

Sadly, depression is common nowadays. It can attack in various ways and lead to some severe problems. 

People with depression often experience low mood or lack of interest. Some also feel extremely depressing at times. These people can easily recognize how depression symptoms change or get worse with time.

Treating depression is quite challenging. It requires 100% commitment of the patient as his or her mindset plays a key role in this game. Most of the depression treatments include:

• Change in lifestyle
• Medication
• Therapies

Depression can arise even during active treatment. While there’s no guarantee of complete recovery from depression with the above methods, you can think of adding the meditation into the recovery process.

How Can Meditation Help The Depression Treatment?

At first, many would think that ‘meditation to treat depression’ is a ridiculous idea. You may even think that recommending meditation for depression is the same as asking the depressed to smile more to overcome depression.

Indeed, medication cannot treat depression, all alone! But, it can definitely help you manage it more effectively.

Not convinced?

Let us dig a bit deeper.

Meditation Changes Your Perceptions About Negative Thinking

Depression comes with a lot of negative thoughts. This may make you feel hopeless, good for nothing, and bad about life and yourself. 

Meditation is known for its ability to increase awareness around one’s thoughts, views, and experiences. This quality makes it somewhat counterintuitive to use against depression. 

Self-judging, criticizing, or blaming while paying attention to your thoughts is forbidden in mediation. Mediation does not teach you to avoid these thoughts and think you never have them. Instead, it tells you to accept them and then let go. This breaks negative thinking cycles. 

Considering you are at the exam. Then you think that the question paper is going to be very tough. 

Meditation helps you to reach a mental position where you can view this particular thought carefully. Then, it teaches you to accept it as one of the possibilities, and lastly, it makes you acknowledge that the question paper can be easy too.

In short, meditation helps your brain to prepare for stressful situations. For example, if you meditate for 2 minutes just before you visit a dentist or go on a social meet, it helps you shift your focus out of stress and keeps your mind calm.

Meditation Makes The Depression Manageable

When you are well-aware of your present, you can quickly notice the early signs of upcoming depressive episodes.

Mediation is your key to stay updated with your emotions and be at present each moment. Therefore, almost all the residential treatment centers recommend meditation when you experience negative thought patterns, fatigue, lack of interest, or irritability. It helps you focus on self-care and prevent the situation from worsening.

Anxiety and stress are the most common triggers of depression. With meditation, you can manipulate your brain into treating these feelings differently. Negative thoughts intrude when you are in stress. Meditation helps you deal with such emotional or physical sensations. 

One study concludes that meditation works on the region of the brain that is associated with depression. Scientists confirmed that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPHC) goes into overdrive when the person is depressed. This region is responsible for managing the information about yourself (thus, also known as “me-center”).

Amygdala is another region in the brain that is linked to depression. It is also known as a “fear center” as it handles our responses when we encounter any danger. Stress hormone ‘cortisol’ is released by this part when we feel fear or danger. 

These two parts of your brain lead to depression. While the ‘me-center’ enters the play to react to stress and anxiety, the ‘fear-center’ releases cortisol to fight the danger which exists only in your mind.

This study suggests that meditation breaks the link between these two brain regions. 

There is another way meditation helps you manage depression. It protects the hippocampus, the area in the brain which is related to memory. A report showed the increased amount of grey matter in the hippocampus of a person who meditated for 30 minutes every day for 8 weeks. People with recurrent depression have a relatively smaller hippocampus. 

Meditation Is A Proven Method To Combat Depression

According to research conducted in 2016, mindfulness meditation practices, when incorporated with psychotherapy and cognitive therapy, can be great to reduce the possibility of relapse. 

Another study suggests that meditation is fruitful for improving depression symptoms. And, continuing meditation practices can offer many benefits.

Steps To Achieve Mindfulness With Meditation

If you have not meditated even once before, it may seem like an unsettling activity. But, as you get to know it better, you realize that it’s quite a simple thing.

Begin your meditation practices with the help of the following steps:

Sit Down Comfortably

Secure a pleasant place and sit down to begin your journey with meditation. If you prefer, you can also stand or lay down. All you have to do is focus on feeling relaxed while your eyes are closed.

Breathe Slowly

Practice slow breathing through your nose. Continue the activity for a few seconds with your focus on breathing. Notice how you inhale and exhale.

It is normal to find your thoughts wandering and not being able to focus. You have to simply redirect your thoughts back to breathing whenever you are distracted.

Shift Focus From Breathing To Body

Once you attain significant focus, move it gradually to every part of your body. This is nothing but a complete body scan.

It is up to you where you start scanning your body. While some prefer starting with their feet, some like to scan their bodies beginning from head to toe. 

Keep a deep focus on how each body part reacts when you inhale and exhale. Be attentive to check if any of the body parts ache or feel tensed. Perform visualization exercises if you find any tensed part. 

Think that you are sending positive signals to the affected part, and the pain is gradually vanishing. This kind of practice can be beneficial in the long run.

Once your body scan is done, go back to focusing on your breathing. You can perform this activity as long as you want.

Some unwanted thoughts may create hurdles in your path. Do not avoid them. Instead, acknowledge them and shift your focus back to breathing. 

Understand that it is nearly impossible to focus consistently on your body scan or breathing. This is the same case with those who have been meditating for years. Do not make a fuss about it and simply get your focus back to self-compassion. 

Final Words

Depression is nearly impossible to treat. But, if you incorporate meditation into your everyday routine, your battle with depression gets easier. 

Remember, meditation is not enough on its own to combat depression. It is more beneficial if you practice it alongside specific therapies. Most therapists provide mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that is highly recommended to achieve more benefits of meditation.

Just like following the proper diet and exercise routine, getting results from meditation takes time. You have to invest your efforts to get the desired outcomes. In the case of depression causing addiction to drugs or alcohol, it is imperative to go to the right alcohol rehab in Santa Ana center.

If you or someone from your family is facing troubles due to depression, make sure to get help from the experts.