Healing Depression: Life Lessons for Healing

When I was growing up, I had no one to teach me any social skills because no one in my family knew how to make friends or get along with anybody. I grew up completely lacking in confidence, very depressed, painfully shy, and very lonely.

Every time I went to a new school or joined a new club, I would think to myself, “This time the new people won’t know that they’re supposed to ignore me. This time the new people won’t realize I’m shy. This time I will somehow make lots of friends.”

But, somehow, this never worked. In every new school I went to, the other children would ignore me and leave me out of their social activities just as much as the previous kids had ignored me at the previous school.

As a child, I always used to wonder why. How did these new kids learn so quickly that I wasn’t someone they wanted to be friends with? Was I tattooed on my forehead with some kind of sign that said, “Don’t bother trying to be friends with this girl. Leave her out of all your activities.”

This loneliness and shyness followed me for many years. I had to spend years trying to learn the secrets of how to approach people, how to make friends. I had to teach myself by trial and error what it took to try to have a social life.

I discovered many things that helped me to look more confident to others and be more confident within myself. Learning self confidence is an inner job and an outer job. Even though looking more confident is one of the factors in being able to attract new friends into your life, it’s not the only thing you need to change if you want other people to like you.

You have to learn to genuinely like other people, and to genuinely like yourself.

You have to learn to listen and learn to talk. You have to learn to offer help and learn to receive help. You have to develop the courage to approach other people and you need to learn some strategies to heal if somebody rejects you.

All this takes time to learn. It takes work, and it also takes knowledge. You may need someone to help show you the way when you come to rough patches.

Looking back on my life now, I can say that many things have gotten better. Many painful problems have been healed. Now I look forward to passing on to others some of what I have learned.

Understanding and Healing Depression: Part 2/10 – Prue Blackmore is a Transpersonal Counsellor who has worked in mental health and psychiatry for more than 30 years. Her understanding of depression as a chro…

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