Access Your Internal Therapist

“You have clinical depression.” The words thudded in my ears long after they were uttered. Wasn’t that an emotional thing? Oh no, they told meâÂ?¦it was physical. Apparently, it was like diabetes-it can only be controlled by medication. How and why did this happen to me?? Of course, it never occurred to me to look back at different events in my life for evidence of the effects of languageâÂ?¦

“Let’s go in the house. I’m cold,” my sister said to me. “No,
that’s okay. You go in,” I told her. “C’mon. It’s way too cold. You’ll freeze to death!” she exclaimed. “Yeah, that’s what I am hoping,” I said through chattering teeth. “What?!?!” “I’m going to die out here, just like I planned.” Resolute, I stayed sitting in the deep, cold snow, shivering in the near zero environment. “You don’t mean that!” “Yes, I do.”

“Well, I’m not going to let you.” With that, my sister pulled me up and
dragged me, kicking and screaming, into the house. As soon as I got my snow gear off, I stomped off to my room and flopped on my bed, angry at my sister for stopping my plan.

The language of a small child is illogical, as evidenced by my 8-year old suicide plan. My language at that age was, “I’m not good enough”, “No one likes me”, “I’m left out of everything”, and so on. All my future friendship attempts came from the idea that no one liked me, because I was not good enough to be liked. If I did make friends, I never seemed to hold on to them for longâÂ?¦

I received a note right before my freshman year from my best friend, telling me that I wasn’t “cool enough” to hang out with her, so she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I was completely devastated! Of course, this was only more evidence that I was unworthy of friendships. Language-always language-got in my way of my emotional well being. Depression was always “around the corner”,
because of the language I used. I thought, “I can never be truly happy, because I am unworthy of being happy.”

My entire life was built on the language of “I’m not worthy”. Going to therapists never helped, but only solidified those “victim” thoughts. Fortunately, just recently, I found a completely new way of thinking that showed me that “my quality of life depends on the conversations I am in”. This interesting, yet helpful, way of thinking came from a life coaching company called “Landmark Education”. I realized that I built my entire life around the things I was telling myself-the evidence I gathered and the lies I lived contributed to my depression. I lived in my own interpretations of events, and opinions of how things should be. Because things weren’t always the way I wanted them, I wasdepressed.

Look, things in life are never going to go your way all the time. That would be selfish to even think so! The language you are using and your interpretations of significant life events are what is making you depressed and unhappy with your life. Therefore, you go to a therapist only to get the “poor baby” treatment. (It’s the “Everyone else is wrong, you are right, and therefore you are victimâÂ?¦” treatment, which never helps you in the long term anyway.)

Stop paying money to your therapist and think for yourself! Take the power that is yours, which has nothing to do with being mean, rude or insensitive to others. You have the power to not leave your life to chance, to take responsibility for your own feelings, actions and words. Blaming others for your faults only makes you the victim, which leads to depression. On the same token, when you take credit where credit is due, you have the power to be happy, successful, and
content. Use your language to “snap” out of your depression, and when those “inner voices” tell you that you aren’t worthy, or that you don’t deserve to be happy, say, “Thanks for sharing” and take control of what you think.

Now, I realize that there may be legitimate cases of physical depression, but this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the majority of depression cases-these are the cases where language places them in depression. Use language to your benefit and stop paying money for others to help you, when you
can help yourself.