7 Badass Rules For Every Women To Overcome Depression

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living, for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.”

- Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Sometimes, we hit rock bottom in our lives and decide this is it for us, that this is how we live our life. Depression holds you back, it sinks you down and the only possible way out of depression is to swim your way out. Even when it feels impossible. Because on your way out, it teaches you how to take charge of your own life.

Wondering How to Overcome Depression and Anxiety?

Here are the 7 things that my journey through the deep waters of depression taught me:

#1. Rise Like A Phoenix from Ashes

When that time of your life arrives which you'll remember years from now as the ‘bad time’, you'll meet people who will be going through their 'good days’ and you'll wonder - why and how do they have this good life? What have they done that you could never do? You'll curse and envy them.

You need to move past them because their good days won't ever be yours. Your bad times would be someone’s miracle and that's how life is.

You know what happiness is and it isn’t what the other person has. Your idea of happiness won't even match with your own husband or parent. Don’t see success as a result of gods mercy; time has held the record on the lives of prophets and the difficulties they faced. Don't ever take your failures and paint them with God's wrath. Remember, before being the almighty he is indeed the merciful one.

You were meant to be in these bad circumstances, to be what is destined for you. You were born to serve a purpose. Rise up and be the reason to light your own life. Be the reason you need to do anything you want to right now. The pulse in your hand, while millions are dying by the minute, is an indication that your job here isn't yet finished.

#2. You Are The Universe (Have Self Confidence)

With all that is there to lose, with all that there is to gain, with all that is left out of paradoxes and epiphanies is nothing but the moment. Don’t be hard on destiny to fast run through your story, you will have your moment. You’ll have many of those.

If only we could understand the effect of our being and of everything we touch, we would understand the mightiness of the plan of the universe for us.

It sketches beautifully the way you’ll walk into the ocean of your happiness while drowning in its abyss. If only we could understand the air in our lungs and the neurons running in our bodies are more in sync with their rhythm than any opera you’ve ever heard. If only you could see a million colors your eyes transmit to your brain to see what you are seeing right now. You would not just believe that the universe is in you with all the black holes and galaxies, it’s always been you.

Stop crying over lost paths and betrayals, you are indeed God’s creation.

#3. The Sinner Is Beyond The Sin

I read somewhere that you should not mock the pain you haven’t suffered. You shouldn’t presume the lows you can go as a person. There are moments in our lives where we fail, not in our exams or our relationships, but fail towards our duties to our own selves.

Self-harm is often doing things that transgress your soul. It’s belittling your image in front of your own self. Often when I look at people who tread away from the right path into the darkness of their soul, I realize that a road exists in my universe too and there might be a reason, I’ll tread that to be the worst version of myself, attract the worse towards me. With that knowledge, I presume to be the kindest version of what is humanly possible. Sometimes the sinner is beyond the sin.

#4. People Come As Lessons

Strongly believe that the people we meet and interact with, are our lessons. With every person that comes in touch with you, there’s a lesson to be learned, a new possibility to be achieved, a betrayal to go through. Often I’d curse people who would wrong me, I’d question their humanity just because their action wronged me at that moment.

What we forget to understand is that we play a larger role in the universe for each other.

Their wrongdoings or betrayal towards me could be a lesson or trail to them. I, in those moments, am the catalyst or a medium through which the Almighty communicates with others and vice versa.

#5. Forgive (Very Important to Move On!)

In the end, we need to just learn how to rationally forgive. The people we choose to keep close to us are going to eventually get angry at us, shout at us, get difficult to deal with, sometimes be really really hurtful in their means and ways. However, with the passage of time I’ve learned to accept people as just simply human - with their anger and hurt and unreasonableness. They are going through an entirely different life than you are.

Just because we choose to hold them close and dear to us, doesn’t mean that they stand high on pedestals where all that they shower upon us is love and care.

Being a part of some person’s world also means letting in the darkness. So free the bonds you make with people of high expectations, of Godlike love and care. Humanise the expectations, let them hurt you, heal you and nurture you.

#6. Pain Is Necessary (Always!)

Sometimes the pain you go through is necessary to be endured and lived through.

The way to the river of life is through the forest of things that are meant to make us ready, to be able to swim the abyss of the deepest levels of paradise.

I’m not glorifying our struggles as they glorify our very mortal being. It’s important to be in love with every bit of your life while it’s crumbling into pieces.

#7. Good Things Take Time (Rome wasn’t built in a Day!)

Remind yourself that like everything in life takes effort, so does building a beautiful life.

Sometimes, waking up early can be a therapy you never thought you needed.

Hot cups of tea with your grandmother can be lessons that you need to learn. Looking at the sunset create its magic on the lake, while listening to the chirping of thousands of birds that have traveled several kilometers to create this very moment that you are experiencing, can turn out to be the best moment of your life.

Sometimes staying calm in tense situations can build in all the strength that is inside of you. Sometimes praying through people can help you understand the complexities that make and break us. Sometimes the smile of a stranger walking next to you can ease your broken heart.

I refuse to acknowledge that this is all that life has to offer. I refuse to believe that ‘this is it’. We haven’t yet explored most of the mammals that exist on our sea floor. We still don’t know why we exactly yawn or why Alzheimer’s exists or why sometimes when we feel kindness, we experience happiness equal to running across warm fields on a sunny day with butterflies chasing us.

Talking to someone is all the therapy you need sometimes when it comes to feeling low or depressed. Join our Maala community to know more or to help others.