You CAN Get out of Depression as an Act of Will!

Psycologists tell us that we can’t help ourselves, that we are helpless when depression hits because depression deprives us of our will. This is not true. Depression does not deprive us of will or option. It merely deprives us of motivation due to the heavy toll the stress chemicals wreak upon our metabolic system. If depression deprived us of will, we would not be able to do so much as to lift up our own arm. Will is not quantitative. It is qualitative. Motivation is quantitative. It is the feeling of wanting to do something, in degrees of more or less.

Depression per se does not really limit our behavior. There’s nothing you can do usually that can’t do while being depressed. You still have the will to do whatever you want, even if you don’t feel like it. You do other things as a matter of will that you don’t feel like--writing a report, getting dinner, doing the laundry. You just haven’t applied this same principle to depression. Mainly because some people in the psychological community have you convinced that you can’t.


You can opt out of depression but belief is a very powerful force. Once we believe something, it is human nature to discount contradictory information as incorrect or irrelevant. Therefore it’s hard to get ourselves out of depression when people we respect, like best-selling authors of books such as Noonday Demon,like doctors and psychiatrists, tell us that we can’t do it as an act of will. We certainly can get out of depression as an act of will.

Getting out of depression is harder than getting dinner or doing laundry, admittedly, but the fact remains that it is just as doable. Especially if you are alerted to the difference between will and motivation. Even in the depths of depression, a person still has the capability to change their behavior at any moment. It is a simple enough thing to stop crying and do some little exercise or mind trick. It is a simple thing to take your attention off bad feelings and concentrate your attention, instead, on the weave of the material on your sofa. It isn’t easy, because you lack motivation. But you can do it when you remember that you still have will, free will.

It’s tough to take action when depression first hits because you have almost zero motivation. But if you remember you still have will, still have capability, you will not be fooled by the strategy of your depression to render you helpless by depriving you of motivation.

Remind yourself that you have will often enough when you aren’t depressed and can concentrate on it fully. Then you can start to build a neuronal thought pattern that will show up on its own, triggered by learned association, because you have linked it with your depression. When depression hits you will feel the same pain but a new thought will occur to you, “I still have will, and I can do an exercise and get out of this.” This is just one example of how you can physically change your brain by changing your thinking and behavior.