» Depression
Depression
Back To Challenges & Solutions
Thousands of individuals have successfully overcome depression with the help of The Option Institute. Whether you are dealing with feelings of sadness, clinical depression, post-partum depression or any other variation, we can help. Review the information below to see how.
Who Struggles With Depression
Information, Facts and a Depression Checklist
How The Option Institute Can Help
Using our beliefs and perceptions to overcome depression
What Programs for Depression Are Available?
Recommended programs for overcoming depression
Personal Stories
Experiences of several program participants
Who Struggles with Depression?
Mental Help Net reports that more than one in five Americans struggle with some form of depression in their lifetime. More than one in twenty have a depressive disorder every year.
Depression Checklist :
On their website, the National Foundation for Depressive Illness displays the following checklist of signs and symptoms for depressive illness:
- Loss of energy and interest.
- Diminished ability to enjoy oneself.
- Decreased – or increased – sleeping or appetite.
- Difficulty in concentrating; indecisiveness; slowed or fuzzy thinking.
- Exaggerated feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or anxiety.
- Feelings of worthlessness.
- Recurring thoughts about death and suicide.
And it isn't just Americans who are dealing with depression in record numbers. Whether it is typical clinical depression, post partum depression, teen depression, or any other variety of the disorder, depression is now common worldwide. Depression-net reports that depression affects a staggering 340 million people in the world today. According to the World Health Organization, the incidence of depression is doubling every ten years and will be, by 2020, the most pervasive illness in the world and the second major cause of death.
Although so many people struggle with depression, the treatments they are offered tend to, ultimately, still leave us feeling like victims. In many cases, medication is recommended as the only treatment that can truly help. (And people have reported that medication has provided relief.) However, if you would prefer an attitudinal approach - without medication, read on.
Depression is most often seen as something that "happens" to you, or something you have to learn to "live with."
How The Option Institute Can Help You Overcome Depression
We have found that depression comes from particular sets of beliefs and ways of thinking. Rather than it "happening" to us, there are perspectives we adopt which fuel our depression. This is not an indictment of those facing depression – it is good news!
Many of us have been systematically and repeatedly schooled to adopt beliefs which make us depressed. Then, we are taught that how we feel is a product of events, people, and physiological circumstances beyond our control.
We can offer you a possible way out. Without medications. Without accusations. Rather, with practical, self-empowering tools that can offer you the opportunity to uncover the depression-fueling beliefs and preconceptions you hold, change them, and, potentially, to begin to overcome your depression.
Option Institute Programs to Help with Depression
Revitalize Your Spirit
Many times, depression accompanies fatique and burnout. Often, we seek respite by vacations and time away to find that these provide only fleeting relief.
In Revitalize Your SpiritYou’ll acquire tools and perspectives that allow you to see responsibilities, commitments and expectations from a brand new perspective. Find relief, renewal and revitalization.
Inner Strength
Often time depression results from a sense that nothing we do matters anymore. We feel powerless change anything. Why bother? Why try? We begin to doubt whether anything ever will change.
Inner Strength is a two-week fitness program for your mind and soul. Our Inner Strength program will help you build up your internal sense of power, passion and freedom. You'll rediscover that you can change who you are, what you do, where you're going, your entire life. You'll learn to access the tools that put you in complete charge of your emotions and behaviors—no matter what is happening around you. Over these two weeks, you will have the opportunity to put into practice the life-changing skills and perspectives that you learn.
The Happiness Option
How many times, through dealing with your sadness or depression have you wished happiness was a more regular part of life? That when someone asked how you’re feeling, you could answer “I’m doing great!” instead of feigning another reply? It is possible!
In The Happiness Option you’ll learn how to transform your sadness to happiness. You’ll acquire practical tools and strategies that will enable you choose happiness over another emotion. You will be able to harness the power of your inner confidence, ease, focus, and self-esteem so you can seize opportunities for happiness even when all doors and options seem to be closed.
Overcoming Depression at The Option Institute: Personal Stories
By the time I’d reached my mid-30’s I’d achieved what most people would agree was a successful life, a home in an affluent suburb, 2 cars, a swimming pool, a middle management position with a Fortune 100 electronics company and a career on the rise. Then one day my wife of fifteen years told me she wanted a divorce and, when we sought help in family counseling, I learned that my pride and joy, my two sons, felt distant and afraid of me.
I had always taken my frequent angry outbursts for granted. After all, my father, my uncles, my brothers all behaved that way. Naturally I would be an angry person too. But now I recognized that my anger was separating me from everything I loved. It was too late to save my marriage. But maybe I could still salvage the relation ships with my sons. I decided to control the expression of my anger, no matter what it cost me inside.
And it cost a lot. Over the next few years I became increasingly tired and ineffective. My productivity fell. I slept a lot and felt more and more unable to face people, my job, the demands of my life. Finally I was diagnosed with Major Depression. I spent 6 weeks in a prominent psychiatric hospital. The doctors concluded I suffered from a chemical imbalance and prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant, along with other drugs. I returned to work but gradually, once again, slipped into the heavy, tiring existence of depression. My career was on hold, I was incapable of sustaining a relationship, and my sons only said they loved me on Christmas or on my birthday.
Then a friend introduced me to the books of Barry Neil Kaufman and the idea that happiness is a choice. Intrigued, I traveled to The Option Institute for private sessions. During this time I had the opportunity to examine my own vision of life as well as the beliefs and attitudes underlying my anger and depression. I realized that I believed I had no other choice besides getting angry or depressed when things didn’t go well for me. But through the gentle and non-judgmental dialogue sessions, I realized that I did have other choices - that I could treat the events of my life as misfortunes or as opportunities. I chose to do the latter. That decision has transformed my entire life. I stopped feeling bad about myself. I began to have fun. My energy increased. My productivity improved. I started to enjoy my work.
Today I’m no longer on medication. I’m happy, confident, optimistic for the
future. My career has taken an exciting new turn. And my relationship with my sons has never been better.
Recently my oldest son failed to return some expensive stereo equipment he’d borrowed. When we finally spoke, he became tense and defensive, already anticipating my customary angry explosion. But! did not feel anger. Instead I discussed the incident in a firm, yet loving manner. At the end of the conversation, my son said 'I love you Dad.' It wasn’t Christmas. It wasn’t my birthday. Through the miracle of learning to choose happiness and love instead of anger, I had regained the most valuable relationship in my life.
Richard Magan, Computer Sales Manager, Massachusetts
I have suffered from depression for the last 17 years. For a long time, I thought Prozac was the only solution. I struggled with feelings and judgments of my own self-worth and what I believed I could and couldn’t have. I questioned my role as a mother, a woman, and an African-American, all because I believed that I was stuck with my life and my past and there was little I could do to change it. All the while I was having this internal struggle, I was dealing with the very real illness of my only son, Chris, who was diagnosed with AIDS.
I heard about The Option Institute from a dear friend of mine around the same time I got the news that Chris was dying. Chris had decided to stop taking his medication and allow himself to die. My friend and I had taken seminars together for the past 20 years, so I agreed to join him at The Option Institute for a one week program.
When we arrived at the Institute, it was only 4 months since Chris’s death. I was ready for anything.
The program completely changed how I look at my life. When the teachers talked about how we define reality, I finally understood that we are always choosing how we respond to the events in life and, in that way, we are always making up our own reality through those choices. What a breakthrough that was! I realized that I didn’t have to accept that I would be depressed for the rest of my life and that I could choose to live in the moment instead of the past.
I also realized that Chris’s choice to stop taking his medication was his choice and Chris’s life was his life. Understanding that finally gave me the freedom to accept his illness and his death in a way that 10 years of therapy had not. Not only could Chris rest in peace, but now so could I. I was finally free to live my life as I chose.
As African-Americans, we have blamed history and events for a lot of things. I have always thought we could instead use that same energy to change our destiny. Before I may have felt unworthy to pursue that goal, but, after attending the program, I realized that I could truly make a difference as a human being and I could impact my race without being Dr. Martin Luther King. The work I could do would be important, too.
I enrolled in the Grand Summer Sequence, 2 weeks after my first program. I’m excited about bringing the principles and
technology of The Option Process back to the African- American community in any way I can. Today my life is filled with more challenges that I look forward to and a new anticipation of living life on the edge – because a life isn’t a life unless you live it, moment to moment. The most amazing thing is that I no longer feel depressed about my past or my future.
Linda Craft-Smith, Party Planning Director, California
I am writing this to express my gratitude to everyone at The Option Institute. One year ago I attended a one-week program. I came with a failing marriage, fibrocystic breast disease and battling depression like I’d never experienced before. I felt like I was reaching for a life preserver in an ocean of high waves. I left feeling like I could walk on water.
Now, almost a year later, my life has definitely changed. My marriage is more honest and accepting than it has ever been. The lumps in my breast are smaller and, at times, totally gone. The scar from the surgery (I had to remove a lump six months before coming to The Institute) had healed outwardly, but was constantly sore and large under the skin. When I dressed the morning I left The Option Institute, it was the first time it didn’t hurt to raise my arm.
As for depression, I can’t think of any reason why I would choose to feel that way again. I experience life fully now; I don’t just live it.
I’ve even started my own business! But the greatest miracle for me is that I really like myself. This is a new experience and it feels too wonderful for words! Thank you for teaching me to be good to myself. Thank you for helping me see that there is nothing wrong with me. Thank you for showing me that happiness is a choice. The Option Institute helped me find a way of living that I’d dreamed of, but believed was impossible.
Debbie Watehall-Gates, Bookstore Proprietor, Texas
I am a 65-year old Canadian retiree who struggled with clinical depression for a major portion of those 65 years, believing I had no choice but to struggle.
In 1997, I was introduced to To Love Is To Be Happy With and Happiness Is A Choice. As Bears points out in To Love Is To Be Happy With, the contents of these books are meant to be savored, ingested, enjoyed and, if one chooses, made your own.
After three years of savoring, ingesting and enjoying I chose to make the contents my own and, in the process, I removed clinical depression from my life.
To "cement" my new beliefs and attitude I took part in the one-week program, PowerDialoguesSM, in March 2000, facilitated by Bears and other staff members, including his wife, Samahria, and once-autistic son, Raun.
I am extremely proud and grateful to say that "the cement has set." Thanks to all who shared in the re-birth of an extremely grateful Canadian.
Brian N., Retired School Caretaker, Canada
Back To Challenges & Solutions
