Jul 27 2008
Turning depression into opportunity
Thought Leaders Showcase
Last Thursday, I was one of 8 participants in a Thought Leaders Winter Showcase. This is an event put on for Speakers Bureaus and Convention Organisers. My presentation was on Brinkmanship: the art of turning adversity into opportunity. It was quite ironic that it was on July 24 - exactly 4 years after my last suicide attempt. If you had told me back then that I would be speaking so publicly about my depression I wouldn’t have believed you.
Brinkmanship
I have come to realise that we often see problems and adversity with our mind and opportunities with our hearts. How then do we begin to engage our hearts. When we are in the depths of depression this is very hard but I will try to describe my path out. I believe there are 5 principles of brinkmanship.
Step Back
After leaving hospital following a 9 week stay in November 2005 I attended an outpatient depression management course. In this course they encouraged us not to try to solve our whole life’s problems today, but to live in weekly compartments. We set goals, initially around exercise and contact with family and friends. When you are depressed, this is not something you feel like doing, but I decided to give it a go. Over a 4 month period my mood started to improve.
Experience the NOW
This is easy to understand intellectually, but so hard to live. A friend of mine had done a meditation course with the Brahma Kumaris and encouraged me to do the same. I did the course and immediately started seeing benefits. It was interesting, because when I was really depressed, I had tried meditating but without much success. I believe the exercise I had done before hand really helped to prepare me. I now start each day with 20 minutes of meditation and a 45 minute bush walk and this gets me off to a great start.
Reach Out
As my mood improved, I became involved with a 12 step support group called GROW. As I reached out to others, I found it also helped me. I began to reacquaint myself with old friends.
Value Yourself and Others
This is about caring for others and yourself. I started doing voluntary work which got me out of the house and really helped. When I began working on BFTB, this project became bigger than myself and served as motivation when I wasn’t feeling great.
Energise
Once your new mission evolves, the energy comes naturally - you seem to be in the flow.
I don’t want to trivialise depression, but the more I see it in perspective, the more I am convinced that there are many self help things that can be done to aid your own recovery.
SERVE
You’ll notice that the five principles form the acronym SERVE. I know that when I am depressed I become very self absorbed and that thinking about how my experience of adversity can help others is an important change in mindset that can often allow us to move forward.
This is a brief summary of my talk which I hope to be presenting on a much wider scale - particularly in the corporate sector.
Kind Regards
Graeme
