Instead of focusing on all that’s wrong with your life, write down all the good things you have going for you. The more you think about it, the more good things you’ll find. Seek solace through these good things in your life, and you’ll soon stop feeling miserable and sad.
Tell yourself that “this too shall pass” – this is my favorite quote, and at the slightest hint of sadness or trouble, I tell myself that this too shall pass and all will be well with my world again. I just need to ride out the storm and wait for the calm to envelop me again.
Realize that there are others who are in worse positions than you are, and that you are better off than many people in the world. This makes your problems seem trivial and you’re shamed out of …show more content…

One of the things that happens after you’ve lived with depression for a long time is that you are able to look at it with a measure of distance and objectivity. You are able to see it as an illness that is different from you, an illness for which you are not responsible, just like you are not responsible for, say, diabetes. After a long time, one is able to say not so much “I am depressed” as “I have depression.” You are able to say not “I am worthless” but “I feel worthlessness.” But this objectivity is hard to achieve when you are a young person who is perhaps experiencing depression for the first time. What saved me during that first bout of depression was a small leather notebook that I found in one of the boxes of old religious books with which I shared a room at Father Martinez’s house. The notebook was the size of my small hand and when I opened it, I saw that someone had written down a list of names. At the end of each name a hospital was listed. I figured that one of the priests had used it as a reminder of those hospitalized parishioners he intended to visit. But the list of names only took two pages of a journal that had one hundred blank pages. It was those remaining ninety-eight pages that saved me. Those blank, un-lined, soft, yellowish pages were an invitation. I took out a pen and began to write. I remember that the first thing I wrote looked like a poem. It was pouring rain outside and from the loneliness of my