Fight the Work Depression [The Chemical Way]

Disclaimer

According to scientific research, the sequence of small failures can cause a stronger depression when compared with each high-stress factor taken separately. Since we spend about a half of life at work, where fails often happen, let’s see what we can do to lift the spirits at work, using nothing but the chemistry of our mood.

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True-Life Story

Recently, I’ve talked to my friend complaining about his bad mood at work. He told me about vain attempts to google for some tips and trying to follow given advice. Why were they vain? I asked him what the advice was, and some pieces were something like that:

“Don’t set yourself up for expecting perfection.”
“Start in the middle.”
“Get in a routine.”

Blah-blah-blah…

As you see, all the tips are

vague;
complicated.

Yeah, you may say these tips come along with explanations, and this makes sense. However, they still leave much room for our subjective perception; so, it appears that the authors of that advice do nothing but try guessing the reasons of your depression. Fact: Nobody knows what’s there in your head, and that is why writers refer to abstract concepts and techniques. (I swear I won’t! 🙂 ) Funny thing, but probability theory works in favor of such “gurus”, leaving you two options:

If you started feeling better, an article helped you.
If not, it means you did something wrong.

And it’s difficult to prove you followed all the tips right. Why do such vague tips prosper?

We are lazy. Reading some tips on the Internet is much easier than trying to analyze real-life problems. Even if those tips don’t help, a little distraction will postpone negative thoughts. People even ask Siri to help with depression!
We enjoy feeling special and hard nuts to crack.

You might say: “But Emily, from your words, OmniPapers appears a shamateur, either! There’s no warranty those sites will help me.” Good point but you’re wrong: to write reviews, we order sample papers ourselves!

What is depression?

This term was first used by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who characterized depression as the triad of symptoms:

affective inhibition
motoric inhibition
ideational inhibition

In plain English, we feel sad, we think hard, and we poke along when depressed. You see, our inhibited functions are not unique: animals also go depressive, which is characterized by the same criteria; and it gives scientists the ability to analyze the depression phenomenon much more efficiently. Numerous scientific experiments show us that:

depression is an ancient disorder;
it works similarly for humans, cats, dogs, rats, and even birds;
mechanisms used to beat depression are common, too.

Any examples needed? Let’s take a dog that has a depression-like state. It’s obvious that this dog can’t “set itself up for expecting perfection”. But, it’s scientifically proven that animals, as well as humans, have natural mechanisms for coping with depression. For example, a dog starts licking its hair to feel better. Simple as that! D’you want to find out how it works and if you can get in on the dog’s act of dealing with depression? Take a look at this infographic! 🙂

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Additional Tips

When setting up the room lighting, keep in mind several important things:

TIP 1: More isn’t always better. This investigation shows that our mood correlates with our subjective estimation of lightness. If you’re comfortable with a luminance which differs from contemporary recommendations, it’s totally fine.

TIP 2: Do not focus on the light of particular spectrum. Paul F. Boray’s research shows that no significant correlation lays between our mood and type of light.

Exercising is like writing: there are so many ways to do it wrong! That is why I want to point your attention to these six tips:

TIP 1: Avoid costly and cumbersome home gyms like this one. You can do more and better exercises, using barbell and dumbbells.

TIP 2: Do not buy devices which are more fun than action. For example, sitting on a fitball won’t help with depression. And examples of such equipment are numerous.

TIP 3: A free-standing pull-up bar is a nice choice for office rooms without firm walls. And a leverage pull-up bar is a good match for our homes: it is compact, and there’s no need to damage the walls.

TIP 4: Spice up your cardio workouts with a challenge. The virtual mission is a quite interesting variant to try.

TIP 5: Probably, office yoga is a good stretch, but it doesn’t work as antidepressants because it’s too light. I would recommend you external ashtanga yoga classes, a physically intense type of yoga.

TIP 6: Both aerobic and non-aerobic exercises are efficient.

Final Words

I do hope these ideas will help you. It’s obvious that following some of the advice will give you extra benefits. For example, pull-ups will help with your spine and make your back muscles stronger… That’s quality of life, isn’t it? I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts on these tips in comments!