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I have read out there there are many suffering depression as I do. Not only those but the people about them who care for someone who suffers.
Being the generous helpful soul that I am, I feel compelled to help by offering what I have learned and developed for my own solutions, and encouraging others to read it and help themselves find their own solutions.

I am fortunate and have worked hard to retrain my brain and try to control the dark thoughts like non-depressed people do. I have not taken drugs feeling that to just be a cop out, a diluting of the problem not a cure and in such dilution the acuteness of the triggers are not discovered or dealt with. Instead I have sought counselling and from the multitudes of sessions have reasoned out my own re-education of my thoughts and these are the tools I learned developed and use. I have written them out and over the months posted them in my folio but to make hunting them easier I have collated them here for any sufferer’s to read and use if they feel they help. Please read the comments too for in these there are other helpful information from other artists.

Firstly to tell my story of where I became lost and why. There are deeper darker reasons that I have not chosen to share here in the bubble but these were the crucial ones:
Fragile
Paying Dues
Addicted

The best tools I have found are:
Rings of Living
10 Guidelines
Frank” was the poem that started me writing poetry as a focus.
These next two journal entries was to give the lyrics to the two best songs that I felt helped me through my tough times -
In Your Silence was my son’s band’s only song. [my son was the drummer] but the song should be the most heard for depression sufferers and for all the casualties of the depression victims.
Misty Mountains Calling Me helped me to walk away from my children time after time and to decipher what friendship really was.

My own Validation, that is my acceptance of what I do best and what sustains me in spite of all attempts of others to belittle it, is written in these poems:
Oralist
My Beast
Creating

My Dark Poems are here – you may realise that I cover my sadness with happiness brilliantly on most occasions but sometimes I just give way to writing out the transparency of that happiness.
Growth Gap
Looking Out
sit
Take a Breath
My Journey

In redbubble I write poetry or prose or stories prompted by other’s art work. Sometimes it takes a while for the words to gather and then boom! But other times I feel compelled to write on first sight and end up writing it in the comment box beneath the art I’m viewing. You can tell when it hits me from the thumbnail picture I favour the work AFTER I comment! :O)

I always feel worried that I am imposing or something on another’s work yet if they didn’t like what I wrote they can delete it! But then validation comes in the forms of people liking what I do to such an extent that they include my words on their work – such an honour – Sun Symphony that Jerry Alcantara added to his published book and Soft the Dawn that Mary Campbell added to a poster; are two that have been printed for publication and thus purchase [details can be found through the links in my work] and I am so thrilled to think that my words are so well liked :O)
And then this tribute:
I wrote this poem I can be Pretty Too! inspired by a bubbler’s art and received a verse in my comment box which I then added to my poem I can be Pretty Two that taught me the elation of the honour of inspiring another artist.

And to ease the pains I have included these two “Healing” sort of poems.
Drifting into Peace
Rejuvenate your Soul

But the strongest depression killer is ACTION! Mundane boring action which achieves a small reward – doing the dishes, weeding the lawn, vacuuming etc …

And I hate to say it folks who help us depression sufferers – “Sometimes, NO Help is MORE Help than Help!” perhaps you can just leave us alone [provided we are safe]. Don’t necessarily leave us but don’t talk to us let us talk to you. A big part of depression is embarrassment, frustration that we allow this overload of emotion to swamp us. When we do come out of it we need reassurance that we are not monsters for feeling overwhelmed by ourselves. The last thing we need is belittlement. Things like “Don’t be so silly” or “Snap out of it” etc, just feeds it! If we could “Stop it!” WE WOULD!

But Validation is the cure. We who suffer depression for what ever individual combination of environmental stimulation we all suffer depression because we have been conditioned in the past to feel invalid.
I am a believer of inherited personality traits and inherited memory. I see in my sons, who have nothing to do with their biological fathers whatsoever, the same philosophies the same personality and the same ideas. I feel the history I read is Familiar to me. I see in my mother and what I know of my grand and great grand mother’s the same responses I have to situations. Yes most of that is learned behaviour but why does my siblings not do the same? We have the same parents? I have two brothers who display similar tendencies to depression as me but they deal with it differently, one has the money to take the pills and see the best therapists, the other wears it as a badge! Our mother is in complete denial that she has it!

But I disagree with the experts who call it a mental disease! We are not sick! Yes we can take drugs that help us to conform with social levels of mental behaviour. I once read that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. And most of the depressive people I have met are highly creative in some way. Could we depressives not be the descendants of the artists and bards of old? And as such now that society does not value the arts in our education system [it is usually the first to receive cut backs in favour of sport or science] in our employment sector either – writers musicians and artists have no section in the employment categories at the dole office. Funnilly enough Crafts people [potters weavers etc] Dancers and actors do! Yet any money made will happilly create an unemployment benefits debt!
But it is the common people who hurt the most when you try to validate yourself, especially as a writer. A conversation could go like this -
‘So what do you do?’
‘I am a writer’
‘What books have you written then? Would I have read any?’
‘I’m not published yet, but I write …’
‘Well then you are not a writer you only think you are so you can cop out of doing real work!’

Yes I know all throughout history since after the medieval times artists have always struggled for money BUT we have always been respected for the creativity we produce. And to show how fickle the contemporary common people are, the conversation above would have ended in the complete opposite if I had’ve been in print! It’s as if nowadays you cannot be what you are until you have made money from it!

My validation is in my ability to write and to advocate for children [and the underprivileged] and to sing! I do many many other things equally as well but I prefer to give my efforts to these three vocations. Yet none of them will give me an established recognised income to be respected for! I have to go out and peddle myself and create an income before I am allowed to be acknowledged in the vocation!

The other think we depression sufferers MUST do is find our triggers! No it won’t necessarily be directly connected to our validation desires and every person has their own trigger or combination of triggers.
Mine are money, bureaucratic red tape over income gets me every time, and to a more intrinsic crucial extent my children – if seeing them is in any way threatened or jeopardized I cannot breathe! Physical abuse is nothing in comparison to those two triggers! Put them together and I am incapable of breathing moving thinking or anything!

But it is NOT an immediate fix! Like grief depression takes time to control. I equate it to “One month per year depressed, one year per decade to get back in control” So if you were depressed from a trauma twelve years ago then expect it to take a year and two months to recover and be in control again.

Having said that it will NEVER be gone! We are people who delve deeply into our emotions and as such sometimes are overwhelmed by them. What we learn to do is curb and control and avoid situations that trigger our intense emotions so that we can live productively along side others that we need.

The only reason I advocate for doing this is because in our intensity we can hurt others, the loved ones around us who do not understand what has gone wrong, and that is not good … it also harms ourselves like drinking smoking etc, but so long as it does no harm to others … then what should stop our own choices for ourselves?

Just remember abusers of alcohol/drugs/gamboling apart from physically destroys the abuser’s health only harms others who are in contact with the abuser [physical & emotional casualties] or dependent upon the abuser’s money [which of course they use on drink not rent bills food etc]

Where as cigarettes by their very presence of being smoked, inconsiderately always invade other’s with polluting the air needed for all to breathe, [ and remember the pollutants are more toxic than the smoke] and leaving the rubbish of their ash and butts all over the place! Ever seen a driver flick his still lit butt out the window of his car or empty out his ash tray on the road? what about those who stand about doorways smoking to drop the butt on the ground and if they’re bored will grind it into the pavement with their foot or if they couldn’t be bothered with that they leave it to roll off still smoking into the gutter or onto someone else’s shoe. [If they see it my children pick the butts up run after the smoker and give them back with “Sorry you dropped this.”] If anyone flicks a butt in my presence I flick them! Smokers are inconsiderate and are lazy litter-bugs they have no care for anyone around them but themselves. The only reason Smoking is not illegal like drug taking is because the governments make an awful lot of income from the taxes on them! Even if they do dispose of their butts thoughtfully what of the air? NOT exhaling defeats the purpose of inhaling!
A very clever practitioner and motivationer, Doctor John Tickell, once stated “Now days it is impossible to be intelligent and a smoker at the same time!”
I stated this in a University Tute once and was argued down by the 5 classmates and the tutor who smoked …. But the next tute session 4 out of the 5 students quietly said to me that they had now stopped smoking because they had thought about what I had told them and realised I and John Tickell were right.
The best was the tutor who announced in the tute she had seen the errors of her ways and degrees and post grads and all sorts of other qualifications meant nothing if she continued to smoke and make a mockery of her intelligence! What a sweet victory that was! Especially as she rewarded us all with packets of lollies that she bought with her smoke money instead! :O)

But I digress [I always do! another depressive trait I fear lol :O)]

So if any of the work I have collated above can help with what you or your friends / loved ones are experiencing then please feel free to use them as you see fit!
But I re-iterate these are just my tools that I have developed that have worked for me and I am no authority or credited counsellor in any way! I’m just a sufferer with many years experience of helping myself and others :O)

My motto too is “Nil Despiradum Illigitimus Carborundum!” [Don’t let the bastard grind you down!]

Keep Happy! :O)