Why Can't We Cure Depression?
Spoiler alert: We can. We have.
The title is a little misleading. We can cure depression. We have cured depression. There are many people walking who have cured their depression, and you just haven’t met them yet.
Let’s Talk Health.
What we refer to as Mental health today is a more descriptive way of saying health. This appears helpful at first, but it’s just as harmful as it is helpful. It places your mental health and your physical health in two separate buckets when they ought not to be.
Depression changes your brain and body physically. Why would we refer to it as a mental health problem?
Let’s Talk Diseases.
Disease is one of my least favorite words. The word disease is actually the disease. It makes us believe and think we can never come out from under our fears.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Depression is not a disease. Depression is a symptom. Bipolar, which I was labeled with at 18, is not a disease. Bipolar is a symptom. Symptoms all point to the same thing.
Let’s Talk Fear.
Fear is incredibly powerful. It is incredibly useful. It is incredibly important. The problem with fear, is not a problem with fear itself, but with the humans that bend fear to their will.
Fear is in the body. Fear is automatic. Fear does not require thought. Fear does not require reason. Fear will take the wheel from you before you even realize what it is you need to be afraid of.
This is by evolutionary design. It’s meant to protect you. It’s meant to keep you safe, and pointed towards love.
So what’s the issue?
Fear, very much like love, can be chosen by our brains. We can decide to be afraid. We can decide to be anxious. We can choose to allow ourselves to fall into fear.
You’ll find that the Law or Theory of Love goes something like this:
A conscious system tends over time toward coherence, health, and stability in the presence of love, and toward fragmentation, distress, and dysfunction in its absence. - Alex James Bilodeau
Inside this theory, you can find the source of your distress, your dysfunction, and your fragmentation.
There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your brain. There is nothing wrong.
Doctors are not out to get you.
The world is not designed against you.
The world is doing their best. Just as you are.
If you take anything away from this Substack, please let it be this.
This article does not try to convince you of anything.
It does not argue for love as an ideal, a virtue, or a solution to every problem.
It does not ask you to be more positive, more forgiving, or more open than your life has allowed you to be.
It does not advise you to shun or shame medicine.
It simply presents the idea that love is a requirement for your health.
I would embed L.O.V.E. by Nat King Cole, but I don’t own the rights to do so.
Instead, might I offer this Frank Ocean cover as an alternative.