When you read about depression, it might be so that the term 'coping style' is used. Coping style is the way in which you deal with negative, major situations. You might pick a coping style which will help you in the long-term and which eventually helps you to recover from a depression. However, sometimes people pick a coping style which will cause them to become exhausted and fatigued after some time. It can sometimes be so that people who are, for example, too involved, pick a coping style which causes them to become even more involved. It can be so that this becomes too exhausting and that it causes the feeling of having the pressure of having to continue to give more and more. You can also have the feeling that you are under a constant pressure which causes you to want to do better. In short, you give more and more and in many cases cross your energy limits, meaning a depression can eventually develop.
Poor coping style? An example?
To clarify this, we will describe a situation below where the person has chosen a poor coping style.
I had noticed for some time that something was going on with me, but I could not really say what it was. A girl from my class bullied me. I did not really know how to deal with this. What I did then, was to continuously ask the girl what it was that I could do better, so that she would no longer bully me. I wanted to do anything in order to stop this bullying behavior. She kept telling me that it was my behavior. She bullied me because I behaved stupidly. After a while I started to believe this, that it really was my fault. This bullying behavior had a larger and larger influence on me, and after a while it became too exhausting to keep asking her why she was bullying me. I could no longer deal with constantly receiving negative critique. Despite me changing the behavior which she had labeled as stupid, there was always something new which she would bully me for. Yet, I kept talking to her and listening, because this seemed like the only way to me in which I could stop the bullying. After finding help and solving the depression, which had developed by then, I now know that it was not my fault that she bullied me. She picked the bullying behavior, which I did not do. Now I can also se that she had many problems at home and that she used this as a way to vent her anger. Thus, it was not my fault, but by constantly giving her the opportunity to use me as her punching bag, I had gotten a depression myself.
As you can see in the example, the girl who was being bullied was not the cause of the behavior. However, she did choose for a coping style which was too exhausting for her, causing a depression to develop after some time.
Coping style? How do I take my life back into my own hands after a depression?
The online self-help program by 15 Minutes 4 Me helps you to choose a coping style which is useful. You learn to look at what is useful for you and what is not, so that you can start doing more of that which works. You learn to use your own capacities in order to deal with negative situations, and you learn how to once again believe in yourself.
Coping style? Take the depression test!
By filling out this short depression test, you can look at yourself and which depression symptoms you might be experiencing, and how you can handle these by picking a new, altered coping style.
