“There is a voice that says I’m doing something terribly wrong and that I’m a horrible person,” said Therese Borchard, author of the book Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes.

In the book, Borchard lists the many things she feels guilty for, everything from not cleaning the house to letting her kids eat more candy to worrying too much to being overly candid with her writing to overeating. And that’s just a snippet she jotted down while penning that page.

If you also have depression, you, too, probably have a list. And you, too, probably can relate to the gnawing, stubborn and heavy weight of guilt.

It’s guilt that can lead to self-doubt or even self-harm. For Borchard, guilt sparks insecurity, indecision and even poor decisions. “It colors my decisions and my conversations and I’m always second-guessing myself.”

I was just catching up with the latest Lakers news and was interested to see the new drama surrounding Kobe Bryant and Dahntay Jones of the Atlanta Hawks. It turns out that Kobe hurt his ankle after Jones walked into him on a fade-away jumper, and Kobe landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle.

What does this have to do with mental health?

Well, it’s interesting listening to sports analysts talking about this as a ‘dirty play’ and debating whether Jones is a ‘dirty player.’ Similarly, people often begin to depress themselves by rating their whole self negatively for making mistakes in their lives.

This self-rating doesn’t make any sense, and is totally illogical. What these TV reports do, though, is reinforce the idea that if we do something wrong, our whole being is now judged as wrong. And because this type of reporting is on so many TV channels, repeated over and over again, it is easy to understand why we, as people, have bought into this illogical nonsense of self-rating.

I wrote in a post titled Using Meditation to Diagnose Your Mood that one of the benefits of meditation to a person with a mental illness is the ability to detect episodes early. Well, I’m in one.

It’s been hard to sit at all, let alone for the 30 minutes I meditate each day. I find myself agitated and fidgety. My thoughts are all over the place.

This is not unusual during meditation, but in taking note of the subjects of my thoughts, I can see hypomania creeping in. I’m thinking of buying stuff. I’m thinking of trading stocks. I’m thinking of another career change, discarding good ideas for more exciting, if undoable, ones.

All of my thoughts are about getting and doing. Anything. Right now I feel smarter, more creative, and more energetic than I usually do. That might be dangerous, but that’s what I’m feeling, and that’s what I encounter during meditation.

And here’s where mindfulness meditation really helps.

“You have to decide… Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?”

That’s one of the questions Randy Pausch, famous deceased Carnegie Mellon professor, asked in his presentation “The Last Lecture.” It went viral, landing him on Oprah and a host of other afternoon and late-night shows.

I loved every other part of his lecture but that.

Because I think the world needs its share of Eeyores: solemn, stoic, realistic, pensive creatures. And I don’t think I’m saying that because I unapologetically claim to be an Eeyore.

I mean, imagine a world of hyperactive, happy Tiggers. How long can you stay with that image before you want to throw something at the striped orange guy?

In this age of advanced modern medicine, it is a depressing fact that not all people suffering with a depressive illness respond to antidepressants.

The mental health charity Mind UK recently highlighted their concern that there is a serious need for a range of therapies to be made available to depression sufferers.

According to the best psychological working practices, medication is now considered to be only one option for effectively treating the illness.

Talk therapies — otherwise known as psychotherapy — such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have proven effective at alleviating melancholic symptoms in hundreds of research studies conducted around the world. In Australia, the Australian Psychological Society has identified a serious need for psychotherapeutic interventions in the lives of people with depression.

Most people diagnosed with depression today aren’t depressed, according to Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry, in his latest book How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown. 

Specifically, about 1 in 5 Americans will receive a diagnosis of major depression in their lifetime. But Shorter believes that the term major depression doesn’t capture the symptoms most of these individuals have. “Nervous illness,” however, does.

“The nervous patients of yesteryear are the depressives of today,” he writes.

And these individuals aren’t particularly sad. Rather, their symptoms fall into these five domains, according to Shorter: nervous exhaustion; mild depression; mild anxiety; somatic symptoms, such as chronic pain or insomnia; and obsessive thinking.

This guest article from YourTango was written by Dr. Susan Heitler.

Someone recently asked me about the following:

“My husband has been depressed for months. Now I’m getting depressed, too! Did I catch it from him?”

My answer? Probably. Depression is most certainly contagious.

With that in mind, here are five prominent attributes of depression that make downer moods so easy to catch…

1. The “negative cognitive triad.”

Psychologist Aaron Beck coined the term “negative cognitive triad” to describe three arenas in which depressive thinking is negative. Depressed folks see themselves, others and their futures through dark-colored glasses. For example, Owen was depressed for several months after losing his job. Julie, his wife, felt dragged down by Owen’s constant, negative comments. Owen tried to be more upbeat, but his dialogue was always peppered with self-reproach.

Washington-based dermatologist Dr. Eric Finzi has released what The New York Times has praised as “the first authorized biography” of Botox, a book investigating how a traditionally cosmetic treatment could be actually be a depression cure.

In The Face of Emotion, Finzi suggests that up to half of all wrinkle-busting procedures can dramatically improve moods, as well as our relationships with others.

And I absolutely agree with his theory — I’ve been researching this link myself since 2008.

Botox is a cosmetic dermatology practice, where Botulinum Toxin A (Botox is just one brand of this) is injected into frown muscles. This paralyzes them for up to six months. Patients can expect to see smoother, less-lined foreheads, with wrinkles seemingly disappearing to reveal a more youthful look.

Frown muscles are responsible for lines, but are also important in expressing normally negative emotions such as sadness, fear, anger and distress. A Botoxed patient can’t physically form the expressions necessary to portray these emotions; the procedure renders it impossible.

A mood disorder such as depression or anxiety is not apparent in a person’s appearance, but it is no less intrusive — and no less painful. The person may look “just fine” on the outside, while inside they are dealing with a host of debilitating and difficult symptoms.

Millions of people know the challenge of living with an easily concealed mood disorder and the difficulty on some days of simply getting dressed, putting on a smile, and acting as if all is right with the world when the feelings on the inside do not match at all.

It would be nice if there were one special magic-bullet treatment or approach that would help everyone faced with a chronic mood or anxiety disorder.

However, I’ve discovered over time that there is not one skill, outlook, philosophy or approach to coping with a chronic illness or mood or anxiety disorder. Everyone has his or her own way of living and coping with ongoing symptoms and challenges. Some people meditate; others use medication.

On my morning commute last week, an interesting radio conversation about grief and consolation made me turn up the volume. The co-hosts of one of my preferred morning radio programs were discussing what we say to our friends who are dealing with emotionally trying, tragic circumstances.

One of the hosts said that he dealt with a difficult personal issue a few years ago. He described conversations he had with friends who wanted to offer their support and condolences, and he said, “Most of them told me, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say to you.’”

And then the host made a particularly interesting comment: “Then my friends opened their mouths anyway — and that’s when I wished they had never said anything in the first place.”

I’ve certainly been on both ends. When I attempt to give my grieving friends comfort or insight, too often I walk away feeling as if I’ve failed. My words are balloons that have come untied, or antiseptic on a burning wound. I long to help — and stumbling over my words, confused over what angle I should take, I feel a miserable failure.

How many of us have admitted that we have nothing comforting to say, and then turned right around and scraped together some kind of awkward, unhelpful comment? Why is it that we feel we must speak, and why do our words so often harm the mourner?

People often talk about running away to another, better place to escape their problems. But they are reminded that the problems remain even if they clean up and do things right this time around.

I often have thought of getting a fresh start somehow. I got that opportunity, but in an unfortunate way.

A failed suicide attempt left me completely disabled, unable to work and with a severe hypoxic brain injury that affected many aspects of my life. I had to start from rock bottom and completely rebuild my entire life.

Before the suicide attempt, I had a great job, made great money, bought a new car and had lots of friends that I hung out with often. In retrospect, I had everything and I was proud of myself for working so hard and doing so well.

Behind the scenes, I had a bad drinking problem and was constantly self-medicating my anxiety and depression.

Positive psychology often is passed off as pop psychology or New Age-y by those who haven’t actually looked into it.

The actual theory behind positive psychology was defined in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [1] and looks at all aspects of a person’s psychology. It does not discount traditional psychology, nor supersede it. Rather than viewing psychology purely as a treatment for the malign, however, it looks at the positive. Positive psychology is a recognized form of therapy and is offered by some counselors and psychologists.

Psychology has always been interested in where people’s lives have gone wrong, and what has resulted because of it [2]. Illnesses such as depression are well-documented and patterns of depressive behavior well-known. However, until recently, what makes people happy and how they achieve inner happiness and well-being has been a mystery.

Practitioners of positive psychology study people whose lives are positive and try to learn from them, in order to help others achieve this state of happiness [3]. It is a scientific study and not remotely hippie-ish, despite its connotations.