How I Stopped Feeding My Sadness to Overcome Depression

My first experience of depression was in seventh grade. I always knew bullying was a thing. I just never thought I’d be the one going through it. From what I can recall, I was bullied from October of my seventh-grade year until the end of eighth grade.

At the beginning of middle school, I started dating this guy who, at first I thought was amazing. 

As time went on, he found ways to manipulate me, lead me on, and mentally abused me. 

Honestly, I don’t know if I would have been strong enough to end things at that age. The mental abuse was brutal. Thankfully he moved away so I was free of him and all his insanity. 

I wish I could say that Middle School was my lowest point, but that didn’t occur until my freshman year.

It was like no matter what I did, I couldn’t make myself happy. Every time I got happy, something would happen and my mental health would decline. 

To kinda overcome it, I separated myself from anything that made me sad. I stopped feeding into my sadness and would keep myself busy. 

I would stop intentionally listening to sad music. I would unfollow people that made me feel worthless. I unfollowed and unadded people that I once considered friends. 

But those people would tear me down and switch up on me in a heartbeat. I disconnected myself from them and started working on myself little by little. I would get out of bed if I felt sad because I knew that laying there would be worse. 

To anyone feeling this way, I would definitely say that by feeding into it, you’re gonna make it worse. This is what I tell all my friends struggling with depression. If you’re sad, go out and do something. Even if you just go for a walk.

By laying in bed and just staring at blank space or listening to sad music, you’re gonna consume yourself with that sadness. And I promise it makes everything so much worse. 

Keeping yourself active and knowing when to say enough is enough, is definitely the most important lesson that I had to learn for myself because even my best friend would just feed into the game that is depression.