An Inside-Out Approach to Handle Depression by Sadhguru

Sadhguru believes being joyous is a natural state and hence declaring depression as natural is detrimental to a person’s mental health. Depression indicates that you are not able to maintain the natural ebullience of life. This mental state has ability to negatively impact your physical capabilities as well. Sadhguru says that life within you is still having that sparkle but you have lost the charm because you are not doing right things with it. You have not done anything significant to keep your spirits high and eventually are now trapped in abyss of depression.

What Are the Sources of Depression?

Sadhguru reveals that most of the things in your life are happening compulsively and not consciously. When most of the activities in your life are compulsive, you tend to feel depressed and agonized. Once everything is happening compulsively, you will keep feeling miserable and depressed as the things are never completely in your control. More exposed you are to life and its atrocities more miserable you will be.

When somebody feels he or she is not able to handle life, they withdraw themselves from living fully and enter a state of depression. There are so many problems related to this also. There is a part of you which is trying to increase your activity and push boundaries, while another part is keeping you from living your life to the fullest. Every time something happens that is not under your control, you lose all the determination and end up spiraling into a depression. Non-fulfillment of your expectations can considerably contribute to depression.

For example, if the stock market crashes, many people get affected. They might not have touched the money themselves, but they feel good when the graph rises and feel depressed if the graph drops. It is because they never wanted or expected this to happen, and it happened.

Fixing Depression from Inside

Depression can be caused by various reasons. If a person prone to depression, either he/she is not given things he wants or deprived of things that are precious to him or her, they will end up in depression. Most of the people in affluent societies have everything that money can buy them, but still they feel they have nothing. Depression results from a certain degree of hopelessness that sets in. If you see people for rural areas, they seem to be hopeful about a better tomorrow and have zeal to live life to the fullest. In affluent societies, they have lost this hope and zeal for life. Everything they need is easily available- clothe, food, shelter, and all other necessary things. They still feel something is missing and, unfortunately, they don’t know what that actually is.

A poor man may think that everything will be fine if he can manage a pair of shoes. Next day, if he manages to get the shoes, he will walk like a king. His insides are fixed while the outside is yet not fixed. In affluent societies, the outsides are fixed but the inside is not fixed which is all contributing to depression.

Sadhguru suggests that it is important to fix the inside besides fixing the outside. Therefore, it is important to fix the subjective aspect of your life along with just fixing the objective aspect. If the inside is not fixed, you will have everything and yet will have nothing.