Of course, there is a lot of science to prove whether you have depression or not. Some people are still debating if they have that problem of depression and whether they really need to see some kind of a medical specialist or just a phase in life that will pass away without much external assistance.

I don’t know about the above argument. And I won’t be interested in it forever. However, I want to share with you something that I would relate to when the word depression echoes in my ears!

There are various words to describe the same thing. That’s called the clever intellectual play of words. Wherever I am saying depression, it’s my enumeration of my experience which may or may not agree with the established and universally accepted theories of depression.

My first encounter with the experience: Feeling of helplessness

I think the very first thing to identify whether you are inching towards depression is to observe if you have been experiencing the feeling of helplessness for a long-long time. When you are depressed you tend to know that something is not all right with you.

This feeling of helplessness may originate from the life-situations you may be grappling with. Those situations that you may not be happy with but you feel that you have no choice. And you are simply carrying on with those life situations prevailing. In my case, I was feeling depressed due to the intense pressure that I felt with regards to my work. Because I was new to the world of my profession, I was feeling helpless due to the intense demand made on my competency for which I wasn’t tenured enough.

And this is a natural consequence of events when you are placed in such unpleasant situations. You must look for the outlet for all the steam to come out at the end of the day somehow. If not, that will pile up and create a stockpile for the explosive volcanic eruption someday suddenly or let you slip into depression.

The feeling of helplessness compounded by the lifestyle issues

Ok, my father was in the army. Army soldiers live amidst a lot of stressful situations. They have to obey the orders of their seniors. But I did not notice my father getting into depression so easily like I did.




Tough times call for tough people. Unfortunately, we don’t train ourselves to face high decibels of stress. But at that point of time while I was moving towards the depressive tendencies, my dad’s example could not help. Because it was my dad and not me.

My lifestyle wasn’t the one of a disciplined soldier that my dad was. He would get up early, go for his PT period first before he started his day. He would remain active for the rest of his day. Even on the weekends, he would find for himself some work and keep his mind and body occupied.

I was the exact opposite. I would get up and go to bed at my own whims and fancies. I never thought that I needed to be fit and live a robust lifestyle. My sleeping and eating habits were also erratic. I never thought that I needed to service my body on a daily basis. I took my mind and body for granted, not granting much care or devotion.

So, I was growing bulkier. And I did not know if I wanted to get it down. Even if I did, I did not know how. I could discover that I was now overweight only when I once visited a sports shop and casually asked for a weighing machine. The metre reading godamn pissed repulsed me so much that I didn’t want to look at my body weight again. I wanted to forget what I saw on the scale.

The ultimate nail in the coffin

All the pieces came together and resulted in a total breakdown of my mental, physical and psychological machinery when I got struck with a tragedy of a lifetime. I would call it the traumatic experience of losing my dear daddy.

While I was experiencing that issues with striking the work-life balance, this came as a BIG blow on my face for which I could have never prepared myself. He was just 57 when he was struck with a severe stroke. Till then I didn’t even know what a stroke was like. I lived with my wife and kids while my mommy and daddy lived back home in the village.

They had been calling me for some time now to come home. There was a social gathering that they were planning to call for. And I have been asking them for time to even out the pressure I was in at work. But you know there is always no mercy at work. It’s your profession that feeds you. So you have to give what it takes.

When the tragedy struck, it did the remainder of the things that would put me in total depression. After his passing away, I experienced a lot more loneliness on the social fronts. My social kavach was gone. I have always been an introverted guy for whom only a few people mattered. And he was the one who mattered a lot.

The first appearance of the effects: Loss of Interest in life

Any traumatic situation can put you under depression.

The depth of your depression may depend on your life factors holistically. What kind of impact your work is leaving upon you. What kind of relationships you are living in. Are they healthy and harmonious? What kind of back-ups you have built in your life to take care of you when you will face defeat and oversight in the world out there?

As I saw my life falling apart, I could not understand why I was living. My work was not enjoyable. I could not find the correlation. I had started to face the breakdown of my physical body. In the traumatic phase, I was also diagnosed with hypertension. And in a span of few weeks from the diagnosis, I experienced another physical disaster – the problem of piles beneath!

The mental agony of personal loss coupled with the breakdown of physical machinery had brought me to the brink of the state wherein I was asking the most important question of my life – Should I live?

When living gets painful, you either become bitter or better: Seclusion

Though I never knew how I am going to handle all this happening in life, I am glad I was born to a soldier. As a kid, I saw that warrior attitude. I had never lived there. But this idea was stuck there somewhere deep inside my head.

Living was increasingly becoming painful. I did not know the next course of action. When you are depressed, you want to get out of the situation. So when you can’t change the world outside, you start to look into yourself and start exploring the possibilities.

For 3 years I remained in the state of hibernation where I would call myself in a depressive state! I had withdrawn myself from the social events. I preferred to stay alone and away from the crowd. When I could not help seeking the seclusion, I felt it overbearing upon me.

If you ask me, what’s the most common symptom of a depressed person then I would say repulsion from the people. Even those who are not extroverts prefer to have the company of one or two people around themselves. They aren’t living lonely! But those under depression get lonely.

It is true the other way more! People who are living lonelier lives and who are away from the harmonious social networks tend to fall into depression easily. The intense competition and the fall in the standards of human values has created a world where the inhabitants are much lonelier today amidst the material prosperity than they ever were.

We are humans and need humans with human values to stay away from depression

This may sound cliche and quite unusual on a fitness blog but I must tell you that our health has a lot to do with what kind of social relationship we are in.

I notice that the social media networks are filled with fun-filled jokes but they seem like venom that we have learned to love. Despite having such fun intended society, why are there more people under great mental challenge today?

Because we need the simple touch and the warmth of humans who can feel and experience what we do and express some compassion towards us. Compassion is one such human value that is so crucial for our mental health.

The discovery of the antidote to mental depression and physical challenges.

I found that compassion within when I discovered the joy of running. Running is a phenomenal anti-dote as it allows you to feel so much more compassionate. What started out as a simple step towards losing my weight turned into a cure for my mental depression eventually.

After every run that I undertook since its discovery in my life, I have always experienced a transformative change in myself. The elevated levels of peace within. Running gradually streamlined my life by bridging in the strength of human character. By the time you have run a marathon, you have found more human values and a much richer character filled with passion, commitment, focus, hard work, sincerity, the never say die attitude, the willingness to embrace more and more pain etc etc.

You can’t ask for more if you are daily runner running consistently for 6 years plus!