Is depression natural? If so many people are afflicted by this psychological disorder, does it also mean that this is the natural or perhaps inevitable state of man, which is to suffer? Why do we suffer anyhow? Is there any need for it?

See, there are different ways by which we suffer. We suffer because something hurt us physically, whether it’s a dental operation or intense labor in pregnancy. We suffer emotionally because someone hurt us, whether we were insulted or betrayed by someone we trusted. And we suffer mentally (perhaps the most excruciating of all), when those things that have brought us pain are remembered and their intense effect on us relived over and over again.

But why do we choose, at times, to go through such unpleasant experiences, even repeatedly, as if the first experience of it was already erased from memory. For example, some people who had a painful operation would be willing to go under the knife again, if ever a need arises. Or, a woman who has given birth is still willing to do it several times more as if no pain existed.

Does it not seem like we are the only ones who are causing the pain in allowing it to overpower us and condition how we live? Making us cower in fear and guarded to the extent that we have closed ourselves from any possibility of a genuine human relationship, one of openness and trust. As a Pearl Jam song goes, “It’s not the world that’s heavy, it’s just the things that you save.” And we do carry around a lot of “emotional baggages” that prefigures every step we take or not take in our lives. That’s how depression works, or rather, that is how we have allowed depression to work on us.

It is but good to know depression treatments are readily available for those suffering from depression hurts.

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