Depressed?

After a post on insomnia the next thing that occurred to me was depression. I felt the need to write about it because depression is a word I am very familiar with, I get depressed very easily. I expect a lot out of myself as well as the people around me. A bad day in the lab, a small misunderstanding anything and everything can trigger me to get into depression. For a person like me depression can wreak havoc and can lead to severe mood swings, it can also affect work. In these three years I have gone through various levels of depression and it used to occur frequently when I was going through a bad phase in the lab. One failed experiment would eventually lead to the other just because in my depressed mood I would miss simple details that I would have otherwise noticed. How does a person like me get rid of depression or deal with it? Counseling is the best option. All universities have a counseling center to help deal with the stress and pressure of everyday graduate life. I was very skeptical when I first went to the counseling center. I did not know what to expect there. After three months of counseling I started feeling much better and less depressed. It worked like a miracle. These days I seldom get into depression, for I have learnt to deal with it.

The best way of dealing with depression is to create a life outside your work place. My worst days of depression were those when I could not take a failed experiment out of my mind or not stop thinking about what I had to do the next day. I was always paranoid on a Sunday night that I might forget to do something important the following day. I have a lot of responsibilities as a graduate student like course work, teaching, research etc. Time management was very important, I have started to use check lists of things to accomplish during the day, and this approach really helps in keeping me organized. During my days of depression I would be so overwhelmed that I would forget to do something invariably and land up in a big mess.

How does one create a life outside the workplace? Stop thinking or ruminating about failures for long periods of time, you are bound to succeed sometime soon. Indulge yourself in your favorite pastime; it can be anything like music, sports, blogging, reading, exercise etc. It surely helps when you are constantly thinking about what is happening at your work place to digress and look at other things. Most often we forget that the world is a place filled with fascinating things and that what we get hung up on aren’t even worth thinking twice about. The key is to relax and enjoy your work. Learn to enjoy your work even if everything you do does not turn up as expected. Life is always full of unexpected twists and turns and like my boss says there is something to be learnt from even failed experiments.