 Hello everybody, welcome back to another video on the Asperger's Gryffchannel Today, we are talking about depression Hooray! Such an uplifting and positive subject I know, I know, I know But it's an important subject And today I'm going to be giving you a little bit of advice A little bit of Thomas talkie time advice I have lived with severe depression for about 8 years of my life since I was 14 I had a lot of difficulties with self-harming, drinking, suicide attempts So today I'm going to share with you the main thing that has made such a positive impact on my life and my ability to cope with my depression And hopefully, me sharing with you my advice is going to help you with your own life and help you feel a bit more motivated and inspired to push through this tough time that you're having All in the video Stay tuned I don't even know how to do these videos because I want them to make them uplifting enough to entice people in but it's quite a depressing subject by its nature Throughout my life with depression I've had a really tough time and I've done a lot of things to try and cope with my mental illness including research into psychology, research into mental health I did my university degree on biomedical sciences so I did a lot of neurotransmitters and neurons I looked into it into a very extreme amount of detail but I've also been quite vigorous in looking and researching different supplements and medications and trying them out in an effort to try and find something that actually works because we have to be honest here, I'm going to be honest with you Not a lot of things help, do they? Especially when you're feeling absolutely terrible So today I'm going to be your little salvation your light at the end of the tunnel, your flame in the dark and I'm going to tell you about the number one thing that's going to help you with your depression One of the things that really does help with mental illness is being able to talk to other people about your feelings and your experiences Now I'm going to be blunt with this because I feel like a lot of mental health channels go on about you should always tell your friends how you feel all the time but they don't really stress the fact that not everybody wants to hear about it all the time and if you are severely depressed all of the time you want to talk about it all of the time because you're having such a hard time although your friends would want to do it if you're doing that every single day 365 days a year, 24-7 it's not going to be great for your relationship with them because you want to have fun with them you want to have exciting experiences you want to share positive emotion as well as negative emotion I'm not saying stop talking to your friends because they are an amazing and very important lifeline for you but I'm just going to give you a little bit of a a little bit of a hint, a little bit of a hint on how to properly deal with it when nobody is about there are two reasons, two very important reasons to why talking to people about your feelings is helpful for you the number one reason is that when you talk to someone most of it, most of the helpful aspects of the conversation is allowing you to talk to them them listening to you them listening to your experiences and your feelings the last thing that anybody wants is for someone to preach at them about how they're doing it wrong or how they should do this or who you should try thinking more positively thanks son never thought of that before the reason why this helps is because you are externalizing the problems that you're having when you externalize them you get rid of all those niggly thought loops in your brain those constant thoughts and reminders in your brain that you're terrible and you keep going around in thought loops and making yourself feel worse and worse without really solving anything when you externalize things you see things for what they are you need to get it out there get those thoughts out there get those feelings, those negative feelings out there and express them it's not just the words that you're saying it's the feelings that you express through your face and your body language and your crying your happiness and your laughter all of those things are extremely important because once you get them out of your body you can see them for what they really are and you can look at them you can analyze them and see what the problem is and then you can deal with it the second aspect of this communication the reason why talking to people is so good is because they validate your feelings it can be very easy to get stuck in little ruts where you just feel like you're overreacting you feel like the people around you whether it's your parents or your friends or your work people persons and being around people like that that don't really understand you for a long period of time can be very annoying very heartbreaking because there can be a lot of bad things that happen to people in their lives and the thing is with depression is that you feel bad for no reason you feel bad because you feel bad and it's heartbreaking and it's horrible and it is one of the worst things that a human being can experience so when you find someone that can really listen to you and affirm your feelings it's so crucial because instead of wallowing and feeling bad because you feel bad someone is telling you that it's normal to feel like this and that you're not overreacting it's okay to feel that you are going through that intense emotional turmoil and just because it's in your brain and it's deficiency and serotonin it doesn't take away the fact that you are in a lot of pain so those are the two aspects of social communication that are boiled down obviously there are other things of course you know like hugging and releasing all that nice oxytocin but those are the main things that I've found that help I know I've said this but I don't feel good about constantly talking about my depression that's why people like to put a smile on their face they like to mask it they like to hide their pain they like to hide their turmoil for a good reason because not a lot of people are good are good at listening to you and good at validating your feelings sure you may have one person that really gets you but for a lot of the time you want to have positive and fun experiences with them but you also want to be independent and you want to tackle it on your own the absolutely most crucial thing that I've learned through being on YouTube is that although I get a lot of joy and I get a lot of happiness from helping other people and making their lives just a little bit easier and a little bit more copable it also helps me a lot especially when I make some heartfelt videos about my own feelings and the difficulties that I'm having as soon as I've finished making a video I'm done with it I get on with my day I make actionable steps to try and cope with the pain and problems that I'm having I wholeheartedly encourage you to start doing video diaries I'm not talking about vlogs you know things that you have to upload and stuff writing is great I found that writing helps a little bit but writing doesn't have the other aspects of your communication in your expression of your feelings and thoughts by getting comfortable with a camera and talking about your feelings and expressing them you open that little door that's close to you when you're not around other people it gives you an opportunity to externalise your thoughts and your feelings and make actionable steps to cope with them it can also be extremely cathartic because when you're depressed you're almost always on this little line just slightly below the point at which you can cry and you're always sort of stuck below this line you can never release those negative feelings that you're having that's just what depression is like and the only way that I found that I can bring it out in myself is by talking about it you're getting it out there and you are facing your feelings because you need to so get yourself a little camera just do it on your phone or something if you don't want to go straight into the videos just make a few little audio diaries just make a few voice notes make sure that you listen to them because once you can listen to what you're saying and really concretely define what the problem is then you can start to accept that feeling once you've accepted it then you can start to move on move on and work on those things that is the problem and develop yourself and develop on the things that you're struggling with and cope with your mental illness doing these video vlogs really instills a new sense of independence in you it can give you a lot more motivation to fix the problems that you have in your own life all of those horrible negative looping thoughts in your mind that just stick around in your brain throughout the day it's always like going to the toilet it's a comfortable feeling building up and stuff in a work meeting or something and you get rid of it and it's gone then you move on with your life it's the same thing, it's like a toilet that must be the worst and most inappropriate example of what you need what you doing Tom so that's my little secret to dealing with depression it doesn't fully get rid of it it doesn't get rid of your depression but what it does do is it gives you a very actionable thing that you can do something that you can go to in times of need something that you can go to when you just feel absolutely hopeless you feel down, you feel actually possibly can having that ability to externalize what you're thinking and feeling is one of the most useful things that you can ever hope for and of course going out and being with your friends and talking about your problems now and again is great, you know it is important for you to get that affirmation from people that you love just not on a daily basis even if the other person is very willing and very up for helping you and they don't feel like it's taxing on their energy at all, depression has a way of convincing you that you are being taxing and that you are bothering them and it can really take away your sense of independence so doing these video diaries on your own, getting it all out there, moving on working on stuff to make you feel better absolutely one of the best things that you can do forget therapy that's not what I'm saying so thank you very much for watching this video today my lovely people I hope you're feeling alright you know sorry that's gross it is horrible and it's not gonna go away anytime soon if it's been with you for such a long time but it will get a lot more easy to cope with once you find things that help doing these video diaries it's a life saver I don't know where I'd be without it honestly thank you guys so much all of my subscribers anyone who watches this video now and again I cannot verbalize just how much you guys mean to me I wouldn't be able to do this without your support your emotional support I'm not just saying that you're using your subscribers and the counts the little numbers that I get on the screen it's not about that it's hearing stuff from you guys it's so important to me and I'm so just honored and glad that the little channel that I've got here is doing good for other people and doing good for me to be honest so thank you so much if you find it helpful make sure to comment down below tell me what you think try it out you know just give it a go and come back here and tell me what you think did it help I'd be really interested to know whether it has made a positive change in your life and if you want to see some more videos from me some more mental health videos I'm going to make a lot more nowadays because I'm in a bit of a slump and when I'm in a bit of a slump I want to talk about it more so win-win situation so make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell thank you so much for watching everybody social media accounts down here Patreon accounts up here if you want to support me would mean the world to me and I'll see you guys in the next video be kind to yourself don't give up I understand it's hard but you will push through it and we'll push through it together see you later guys