How depression damages the brain

One of the scariest aspects of depression that is only recently coming to light is that depression causes brain damage.

After being depressed long enough, the brain becomes less resilient, so when good things happen to you, they don't have the expected impact on the brain.

That's because your brain loses the ability to produce dopamine, one of the neurotransmitters that allow us to experience the sensations of pleasure and happiness.

The receptor sites for endorphins (the happy hormones that are released when we eat chocolate, have sex or experience a runner's high), wither away....which makes us feel less able to feel joy.

The hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for processing your emotions, appears to shrink with each major depressive episode.

This explains the difficulty that depressed individuals have with concentrating and remembersing things, because the hippocampus is essential in moving memories from short-term into long-term storage.

Does that mean that you're doomed to stay depressed forever?

Not at all.

The brain is incredibly resilient and it can heal. Science refers to the brains ability to heal as neuroplasticity.

"Science know now that our brain does not simply store our experiences. Each experience changes the brain, structurally, electrically, chemically. The brain becomes the experience....the good news is that we can undo the damage with focused practice and attention." - Richard O Connor PhD

From my experience of working with many women suffering from depression, I've found that a lot of women fall into depression and stay there because they don't know how to do anything else.

And science has proven that these depressed behavior patterns become wired into the brain itself.

I'm convinced that one of the biggest reasons why women who are depressed stay depressed despite therapy, medication and support from loved ones is that they are simply unable to imagine an alternative.

Feeling down and blue becomes the norm and depression becomes a set of habits, behaviors, thought processes, assumptions and feelings.

The coping mechanisms that you develop in a vain effort to save yourself pain - things like swallowing your anger, isolating yourself, putting other people first, being over-responsible- these are the very habits that prevent your recovery, keep you down and make you vulnerable to relapse.

You can spend years in therapy so that you have a pretty good understanding of what led you to dark place, but if you don't get out of the bed in the morning, you're still going to feel depressed.

Medications, when they do work, do so partly by giving you enough energy to get out of bed.

But it's practicing new skills that leads to change in the brain. Overcoming depression requires that you learn a new set of skills.

Science is only now uncovering that happiness is a skill, health is a skill and emotional intelligence is a skill.

And like all skills, they can be learned.

And as you practice the skill of happiness, new networks develop between brain cells that were not previously connected to one another.

The networks in your brain that support depressed behavior are so well used, they're like a well-trodden path.

You have to veer off this path and explore some new ones, but with enough repition, going down these new roads becomes automatic as new connections develop in the brain.

And the old connections shrink from a lack of use.

And what that means is you go from depression as your default state to joy and happiness as your default....just like those "annoying" always upbeat, positive people that you see.

It's not your fault you're feeling so down. The truth is no one taught you how to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life.

But the good news is that depression is a skill and like all skills, it can be learned and developed. In my 12-week Reset Your Life Coaching Program I help you to heal from the things that caused you to be depressed and learn the skills and habits of happiness.

And when you do that, you start developing new neural pathways in your brain and being happy, positive and upbeat becomes your default way of being.

Click here to learn more about the program.