Title: Break Free From Depression Helplessness Word Count: 673 Summary: How to overcome the feelings of helplessness

Keywords: stress, depression, anxiety, mental health, health, health and fitness, wellness , alternative health, natural health, self improvement, personal development, pe rsonal growth Article Body: Copyright 2006 Christopher Green I recently posted an article to my website about how certain beliefs underpin st ress, depression and anxiety. One of the main beliefs I briefly introduced conce rns helplessness. Helplessness is a major part of these illnesses so let s look at how you can reduce the impact this flawed belief has. Believing you are helpless in life is a truly terrible feeling and I write from personal experience here. For five years, a number of traumatic events led me to the point where I believed life held nothing but pain and anguish. I truly beli eved life would unfold in a way that would destroy me and there wasn t a single th ing I could do about it. Perhaps you ve felt this way too? The underlying belief is the important factor here. It is a firm belief that lif e is something that happens to you and you have NO CONTROL over anything. In sho rt, you are a powerless, passive recipient for whatever life decides to throw at you. It is an awful state to be in. Furthermore, this belief simply isn t true. Let me give an example. Say you and your partner split up. Now, this can be one very traumatic experience, I ve been through it, so have many others. You react in a highly negative and emotionally arousing way: I m devastated. He/she was my whole world and now my world has fallen apart. Everyt hing I do in life always goes wrong and this is another disaster. I ll never be ha ppy again. Wow. It s a powerful reaction isn t it? I m sure you, like me, have either reacted thi s way to an event or you ve heard someone react this way. It is a very damaging wa y to assign a meaning to an event you are confronted with. The last two sentences reveal the belief in helplessness. The key words are: Eve rything always goes wrong and never be happy again. When you react in such a way , you are telling yourself that you are helpless because nothing has ever gone r ight for you and you ll never be happy no matter what. You re saying you cannot cont rol anything and therefore, you truly believe you re helpless. How do you think you ll feel when you react like this? Exactly. You ll feel deeply u nhappy, confused, frustrated and of course, helpless to change your life. Why wo uld you feel anything else? Everything ALWAYS goes wrong and you ll NEVER be happy

again so what s the point of doing anything to create change? Do you see how helplessness works? But it simply isn t true. Of course, there are many things in life that are entirely beyond your control. Other people and Moth er Nature to name but two. There are things in life you have some control over w here you live and work for example. It is important to keep these facts about co ntrol firmly in mind. Here s the most important fact about helplessness: There is one thing you have ful l control over in your life and that is how you react and assign meanings to eve rything you are confronted with. In the example above, a better reaction would b e: OK, my relationship hasn t worked but other things in my life are going well and I ll concentrate on them for a while as I come to terms with what s happened. Just bec ause this relationship hasn t worked out, it doesn t mean future relationships will fail and once I ve got over this, I ll get out there and find someone better. See the difference? You re keeping control by assigning a less emotional meaning, a meaning more in keeping with reality. You re acknowledging that you re hurting, bu t that this is temporary and when you re ready, you ll try again. You know you have other things in your life that you can concentrate on and this reaction will pre vent a feeling of helplessness arising. See you soon.