Dealing with fear and depression alone is tough.
Stress, fear, depression, and anger are all closely related, one in the same spirit! I pray and hope this article will truly help somebody.
I believe that many people worldwide are dealing with a new-age, 21st-century form of fear, and depression. Once upon a time, lions, tigers, and bears were our problem, today things are subtle, yet deadly.
This subject is real, and it’s not to be played with!
For the next couple of minutes, I want to take you down the rabbit hole of a deep and dark subject. I will share real-life tips to help you conquer depression, once and for all. Personally, I’ve had my own battle of depression, and I have been hesitant to write this article, but here it goes.
Let’s get into it.
My Personal Struggle with Fear and Depression
As God is my witness, many nights, I thought I was going to die!
In all seriousness, and I mean this quite literally, I thought I was going to have a heart attack due to a severe panic attack, or I felt as if I was going to explode from the inside out.
It felt like I was going crazy mentally! I asked myself, am I really fu#%ing going crazy? Or have I already went crazy? Some people reading this know what I’m talking about.
Before I wrote this article, I was very apprehensive because this is a very personal subject for me. To admit that I’ve dealt with fear and depression is to admit that I’ve been weak, and to admit that I’ve been weak as a man is to acknowledge that, sometimes, I don’t have it all together.
To understand my pain, you have to read my story!
In 2006 while I was incarcerated, my father committed suicide; this was a very dark moment for me. Shortly after that, I lost my mother to cancer, and I completely lost it mentally. I was the only child and both of my parents were dead before I turned 25. On the outside, I looked fine, but on the inside, I was psychologically and emotionally devastated.
Unbeknownst to me, but looking back in hindsight, I should have seen a psychiatrist because my pride spun me into a deep state of fear, darkness, and extreme depression that lasted for almost a decade. Before I turned thirty I attended over 30 funerals, and all the death I’ve seen in my immediate family, relatives, and close friends led to a severe untreated case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
During my teenage years, I was always surrounded by violence and death growing up in South Central LA. For over 20 years, I heard sirens daily, literally!
To understand your pain, you must understand your story!
I never went a week without seeing the police helicopters flying above my house, shining the bright lights in our windows. I’ve seen, witnessed, and watch countless murder scenes growing up in Los Angeles. The memories of yellow tape and the horrific screams of a mother who just lost her child will never leave my imagination.
Growing up, I’ve been shot at, robbed, held at gunpoint, and brutally jumped numerous times. I lost countless homies to the streets, all brutally gunned down! I always thought I would be next; I believed it was only just a matter of time.
I never signed up for the level of violence in the hood, that level of real core fear; I was just born on the wrong side of the tracks. As a teenager, fear kept me alive, but that same fear came back to hunt me in the future.
My story is my story. But to understand your pain, you must understand your story. I’m willing to bet that your fear can be linked to your childhood.
What happened to you as a kid? What did you have to endure as a teenager?
What are you running from?
Right there is where we began.
Rule #1: Move
Have you ever been in a life treating situation paralyzed by fear?
At that moment, your mind is telling you to move, but your body won’t budge. In war or in the hood, this paralysis will get you killed.
Fear wants to kill you, and depression wants to make you suffer. Fear is an EMOTION, depression is a STATE. The emotion of fear feeds into the state of depression, which then feeds into the emotion and back into the state (e.g., The Ruthless Cycle).
According to Newton’s 1st Law of Motion, an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force.
This is very important so let me break it down…
Listen!
Based on this universal law of motion, your depression will never change until you do something about it. The object (you) at rest (your depression) will remain at rest unless it’s acted on by an external force (movement).
Nobody is coming to save you. Superman is dead!
To break this dark spirit over your life, you have to MOVE. This law isn’t up for debate. Everything in the universe is moving, contracting and expanding. Nothing EVER stays the same.
NOTHING!
To break this dark spirit over your life, you have to MOVE.
I’m a firm believer that anything that doesn’t move is dying and/or already dead. The depressed spirit wants to get and keep you alone. It wants to separate you from everything. Your friends, your family, your drive, passion, and belief in God; it wants you detached. Because only after you’ve been disconnected can you be weak. In that weaken state haunted by fear, depression, and anger, can you be killed.
Fear and depression want to kill you, and there is no quarrel about it. This subject is serious business!
I watched my father emotionally and mentally detach himself from everything. Although I didn’t know it then, it’s clear that small micro-events over an extended period led to his eventual suicide. It was the little things that did him in. His mentality. His anger. His drinking.
These things repeated over and over again, detached him from himself. And after he was separated from himself long enough, death was the only option to escape the ruthless cycle.
The first step to conquer your depression…
Get up and MOVE! Come to yourself, shake it off, and start going up and forward.
Get out and do something. Start small, start exercising again. Start reading that book you wanted to read. Don’t judge yourself for what you haven’t done that will only lead to more stress.
Plan your life on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. Identify your purpose and move towards that goal. By any means necessary, get up and MOVE.
Identify your purpose and move towards that goal. By any means necessary, get up and MOVE.
Lastly, remember, slow and steady wins the race. If you’ve been stuck in depression for quite some time, start slow! Small wins, consistent effort, keep the pace, and as Darren Hardy stated in his book The Compound Effect, “everything will begin to change.”
Rule #2: Grow
The smallest tree in the Amazon forest dies the quickest.
I don’t know if that’s a fact, but I believe the smallest tree which gets the least amount of sun (i.e., growth) will die faster than the big tree soaking up all the sun.
It’s called evolution!
I love to watch documentaries. In all seriousness, I’m genuinely like a documentary junkie. One thing I’ve learned from watching countless documentaries is that the law of growth is universal. Albeit God, evolution, or some other entity that you believe in, all things must grow to survive!
The difference between movement and growth is this: movement is the process of change, growth is the process of evolution. Everything must change, but everything doesn’t evolve. But everything that does evolve must do it through change.
Movement is the process of change, growth is the process of evolution.
Both movement and growth must be harnessed continuously!
If you don’t grow, you don’t survive; it’s that simple.
Look back over your life during the times of your depression. I can bet your darkest days have been triggered by (1) your inability to control things or (2) your lack of growth. You had something planned, but it didn’t go as planned. In your mind, you envisioned how things would turn out, and it totally crumbled.
Life can feel like you’re setup to lose. If you’re not careful, your mind will believe this lie to make you suffer. Remember, fear is the emotion, and depression is a state of being. Once the emotion (i.e., fear) is out of control, unchecked, and unbalanced, it will try to kill you mentally, emotionally, psychologically, then physically.
To break the vicious cycle of fear and depression, you must grow and reach beyond your comfort zone.
But wait, let’s dig into the matrix!
As soon as you reach beyond your comfort zone and strive to grow, you will re-trigger the fear, starting the process all over again. This is why some people (me included) feel as if we’re in a perpetual state of discomfort. It feels like you’re always striving, shooting for the stars, and it’s uncomfortable.
Breaking your depression with growth…
Truth be told, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Grant Cardone says, “You need some New Problems!”
Grow! Extend beyond your comfort level, and you’ll find that you’ll run into a new type of fear called excitement. Accordingly to Psychology Today, “fear activates the hypothalamus (i.e., the brain) in the same way as excitement, and when it’s predictable, it activates the brain’s reward center as well.”
Life will give you two options: either (1) stay stagnant and die in fear or (2) go beyond your comfort zone and ride the waves of excitement.
You choose!
In conclusion, the Greeks had a wise saying inscribed on Apollo’s court that stated: “Know Thyself.”
The bible says, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get Wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.” Remember, you must always be moving and growing higher in knowledge, skill, and understanding.
This process will never stop!
Rule #3: Forgive
Forgiveness.
This one is tough!
Forgiveness is easy to say but hard to do. You must forgive other people for their transgressions, but above all, you MUST forgive yourself.
Today social media has changed the way we view ourselves. Our worth is measured in likes, our value is measured in comments, and our purpose is modified by Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Television is just that, it’s telling a vision.
But it’s not your vision.
And that’s where the problem lies. If you’re reading this article right now, troubled with depression, fear, and anger – forgive yourself.
It’s ok.
Flee from darkness and move towards the light. Stop beating yourself up and listening to people’s opinions. Stop comparing your life to other people who will be forgotten. It’s vanity.
How to truly forgive yourself…
Listen up!
There is a funny thing about life.
It’s a thin line between conviction and guilt.
Conviction is from God; it’s spiritual. Guilt is from man; it’s evil.
Conviction is a deep feeling. It’s the small still voice inside you that will lead you back to the light. On the other hand, guilt is a condescending voice, it’s boisterous and loud; guilt will lead you into more darkness.
Guilt will scream and yell at you, telling you everything you did wrong. But conviction will whisper to say to you don’t give up, everything is ok.
This is why forgiveness is so important.
When you allow your past to be the past, your ability to move (Rule #1) and grow (Rule #2) is possible.
Guilt is a heavy burden no man can carry!
Forgive yourself and let it go. Let the dead bury the dead. Move on!
We’re all becoming, yet to arrive. Learning is apart of life, forgiveness is apart of growth. You can’t grow without movement. But you can’t move until you forgive. Change, growth, and forgiveness tie into one, but forgiveness (i.e., love) is supreme.
My Final Thoughts about Fear & Depression
For 2-3 months, I dreaded writing this article. And as God is my witness, the day I started writing this piece, I was in an unprovoked violent altercation that had severe consequences for me.
Call it what you want, I call it evil trying to suppress the truth.
Before I wrote this I was apprehensive to open myself up to the darkness that accompanies this type of subject. I didn’t get into Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion but it plainly states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. My spiritual push to write this piece could have got me killed; the forces of good and evil are real; it’s one of the earliest lessons I learned in the hood.
But God is! If I can help one person with my truth, it’s worth the battle.
You can break this vicious cycle of fear and depression without medication. You don’t need Zoloft or Prozac, people have had PTSD & Bi-Polar Disorder since Adam and Eve.
Nothing is new under the sun!
The darkness you fight is vicious, but darkness can only occur in the absence of light. Therefore, move, grow, and forgive so you may find the light and leave a legacy as one who came, saw, and conquered.
Therefore, move, grow, and forgive so you may find the light and leave a legacy as one who came, saw, and conquered.
And when you’ve defeated fear and depression once and for all, reach back and help somebody else.
Until Next Time.
#StayFocused
Bowser
