I often wonder how I went from someone who was so anxious and depressed and I
was even suicidal I was like this for so long and I wonder how am i someone now
who loves life and wakes up every day excited and happy to be here I look at
it I'm like is there something I did is there some kind of formula that I found
that I can maybe relay to everybody out there to potentially help them the
answers that I've been looking for might be found in the new book called lost
connections by an author by the name of Johann Hari and in this video I invite
you to join me as I try to find out if there's a secret formula for overcoming
depression what is up everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we
talk about the problem but focused on the solution and I just finished the
book lost connections by Johann Hari and in this book he talks about the sources
of depression as well as solutions so I wanted to do something kind of
interesting with this video and use myself as a test subject for an
experiment and put his solutions to the test part of johann story is that he was
on antidepressant medications for about 13 years and he found that they never
really solved the problem he would start taking um he'd be depressed again he'd
go back to the doctor they would up his dosage and he would be depressed again
and then they would up his dosage again and this is a story that is far too
familiar for a lot of us who have taken antidepressant medications so what's
going on so in his book he challenges this story that we've been told about
depression this story that if you have depression then there is something
chemically wrong with your brain here's a medication this will fix it it'll take
those low serotonin levels it'll raise it back up and you will be fixed but
like I mentioned a lot of us have a much different experience with that so he
spent all this time gathering as much data as possible and put them all into
this book to see if he could find the real sources that led to some real
solutions so Johann believes that there are nine primary sources of depression
all right and in this video I'm gonna be breaking down those nine sources of
depression I'm gonna share a little bit of my experience as well as what they
are see how they relate to me then I'm gonna talk about his solutions and see
if maybe this helps come up with that formula that I've been wondering about
to see if there is actually something out there that can help people like all
of you live much better lives overcoming your depression my hope my hope by doing
this experiment is that Johann Hari is right about the real ways and solutions
to overcoming depression so make sure that you share this video because even
if you're not somebody who struggles with depression share this video with
somebody because it might be able to help them out alright so let's get this
thing started so first like I said we're gonna go
through the nine different disconnections as Johann Hari calls it
we're gonna talk about those and what I want you to do as you watch this video I
want you to ask yourself questions as we go through these different
disconnections ask yourself these questions do you feel or have you felt
disconnected from these different things alright let's get started disconnection
number one lack of meaningful work so the biggest study on work was done by
Gallup and according to their studies 13% of people love their work
63% of people sleep work and what they mean by sleep work is pretty much you
just show up to work to collect your paycheck then twenty four percent of
people hate their job I did a video on this recently that you'll find linked
above in the info card but when you figure that 80% of people don't have
meaningful work and it's where we spend most of our adult life this is a huge
factor for becoming depressed so for me personally my first real job was in the
car dealership industry and it was one of the most stressful depressing jobs
that I had basically it was my job to be the guy who you yelled at when your car
breaks down and you got to bring it into the dealership all right so spending my
days getting yelled at by customers but also my my paycheck was 100% based on
Commission so it was extremely depressing and extremely
anxiety ridden okay and if I'm being honest this is actually when my
alcoholism started to progress every night I was going home
trying to get blackout drunk so I can leave work behind
and they didn't progress to a point where I started taking shots of booze
before going into work because I knew how bad my day was going to suck so yes
I was in a job for a very long time that was fueling my depression because I
didn't feel like I had meaningful work and it was also making me extremely
anxious disconnection number-6 disconnection from other people when you
feel alone it makes you feel both depressed and anxious we often forget
that based on our evolution we're tribal people we've survived by being here for
each other and helping each other for hundreds of thousands of years now in
the age of internet connection were more disconnected than ever before I want you
to ask yourself a few simple questions so I can try to prove my point to you do
you feel uncomfortable if a stranger sparks up a conversation with you do you
find it uncomfortable to start a conversation with a stranger now even
strangers decide how many close friends would you say that you have why is it
that when Humanity has risen to the top of the food chain over the course of two
hundred thousand years by sticking together that we feel so uncomfortable
just simply talking to other people on this planet
now growing up as a child of an alcoholic mother one of the symptoms of
children of alcoholic or addict parents's is this feeling of
disconnection to other people throughout my childhood I felt like nobody
understood what I was going through and I often wondered why can't I be like
them why can't my family be like them and I always just felt uncomfortable in
my own skin so as I got older this really progressed
even worse so even in high school even though I was a triathlete playing
multiple sports I had a ton of friends I had girlfriends in high school all these
things I always felt like I was not part of normal society
and for some of us this is even our family some of us feel like that black
sheep like we don't even belong in our own family disconnection number three
disconnection from meaningful values we live in a world where we're constantly
being told that we're not good enough and the only way to feel good enough is
by having things did you know that the average person experiences about 5,000
advertisements per day this comes in the form of TV commercials radio commercials
brand logos that your clothes as well as different stores he
packs by every single day in this book Yohan makes a very good point in the
chapter he says that literally the worst advertisement in the world would be to
tell you that you're perfect just the way that you are and you're loved by
everyone who matters let's think about it if commercials told you this would
you ever buy anything of course not so our value system has been screwed up
because we're constantly being told that we're not good enough and we need things
to make us good enough the problem with believing that things are going to make
us happy is that we're never gonna be happy because we're constantly moving
the goal line there's always going to be a better job there's always gonna be
more money there's always gonna be a nicer car a bigger house a better girl
to date or guy today you know what I mean all these things that were trying
to chase after their costly moving not only that but this constantly makes us
even more depressed because we're constantly basing our insides the way
that we feel based on what other people have that's one of the reasons why
social media can be so depressing they're constantly looking at what other
people have and what we don't and I can definitely relate to this one because
this is how most of my life was I always thought if I could just make a little
bit more money I'll be happy if I could just date that girl I could be more
happy if I could just buy these things I could be happy but I eventually got to
that point I was making a lot more money than I ever thought I would make but I
was actually more depressed than I had ever been because I was completely
disconnected from my values disconnection number four disconnection
from childhood trauma this seems like a no-brainer but it's one of the biggest
factor when it comes to depression as I just mentioned having a traumatic
childhood myself I felt disconnected from other people in the last video that
I did it was found that some 55% of people in an obesity study were victims
of sexual abuse and even more people in that study were victims of other forms
of childhood trauma research has shown us time and time again that various
forms of the most common mental illnesses are purely based or largely
based on the way that you were raised or what we experienced
as a child and yes we're talking about things like depression anxiety PTSD and
even ADHD there's been some recent studies that show children that spend
more times with their parents are less likely to develop symptoms of ADHD we
need to start realizing that as a society mistreated children turn into
mentally unhealthy adults disconnection number-5 disconnection from status and
respect we live in a world of social hierarchies and numerous studies have
been done that show were the most anxious and depressed when our status is
low or it's threatened we feel low because we're told that the most
important people in this world are rich and celebrities so much so that we
currently have a reality TV star as our president of the United States and we
get a good political advice from celebrities studies have shown that in
countries like Norway where the status gap is much smaller people are less
anxious and depressed countries like the United States with much larger gaps we
have more people struggling with anxiety and depression we're far more depressed
and anxious when we fear our status is threatened so if you're like me I've
constantly worked at jobs where there wasn't much job security if you meet
certain numbers or goals you're fine but if you don't your head might be on the
chopping block so this means we need to combine this with disconnection number
one lack of meaningful work this means that 87% of us are either depressed or
anxious because of a job that we don't even like 87 percent of people are
depressed or anxious due to low status or a lack of respect at a job that
doesn't even give them meaning in life I can personally really relate to this all
right when I had about a year and a half sober
the closest I've ever come to relapse was after I got fired from a job that I
hated like let that sink in for a minute right like I talked to clients all the
time like the depression that hits them from jobs that they lose that they never
even like from in the first place like it's such a sick and twisted combination
this connection number six disconnection from
the natural world as humans were extremely egotistical beings so much so
that we forget the simple fact that were animals the more disconnected we are
from nature the more entitled selfish and self-centered we become depression
feeds off of us being stuck in our heads and believing that we're the most
important things in the universe we're constantly thinking about our wants our
needs and our desires as a woman named Isabelle in the book explains it's hard
to think you're the most important thing on earth when you hear the roar of a
lion and realize that you're just lunch this this book is not recommending that
you move out to the African savannah and live with like a wild animals but the
point they're trying to make is we're extremely disconnected from nature and
part of our depression is forgetting how not only are we a very small part of
everything in the universe but we're also connected to everything else on our
planet as well as the universe aside from that countless studies have shown
that people more connected with nature are happier and less anxious this is why
it really bums me out and when I'm in mental health support groups on Facebook
and I see people post this mean it really shows you how the pharmaceutical
companies tell us exactly where they want us the more that we're thinking
that natural remedies cannot help our depression or anxiety the more money
that they get to make like think about that for a second alright I know I know
this sounds like some crazy kind of tinfoil
conspiracy theory but make sure that you're subscribed to my channel because
I will do a much more deeper dive into the pharmaceutical industry as well as
antidepressant medications okay I promise I'm not crazy I guess that's
exactly what a crazy person would say though right anyways subscribe stay
tuned disconnection number seven disconnection
from a hopeful or secure future when we're depressed is hard to for us to
imagine any type of future under than what we're currently experiencing one of
the most common symptoms of depression is a feeling of hopelessness there was
an interesting study done at a psych psychiatric ward for teens
they had two groups of teens one of the groups of teens were there for anorexia
to the point where they'd have to be in a psych hospital and the other group of
teens were there for severe depression or suicide attempts
they each read the Christmas carol as well as another book that teaches
powerful life lessons to the main character and teens who were there for
anorexia were easily able to explain how the main character might change and have
a different future based on the lessons that they learned when the teens who
were there for severe depression and suicide attempts were asked the same
questions about how the main character might grow and change in the future they
couldn't answer this question they were even a little bit puzzled by what the
question even meant and yes this was one of the dis connections that I had when I
was at the lowest point in my depression and I was extremely suicidal I had no
possible vision of the future nothing looked different everything looked the
same and that's what gets us into that hopeless state disconnection 8 & 9 the
real role of genes and brain changes throughout the book Johann Hari pointed
out studies that the story were told about low serotonin levels being the
source of depression isn't entirely true as I mentioned before this isn't just
some crazy theory I will make another more dedicated video on this ok I
promise you in one of the previous videos I did I talked about these
studies that were done where it talked about how only 37% of depression is
based on your genetics ok most of it is dependent upon our environment
situations that we get in trauma and all those things so of the vast majority of
people experiencing depression it is not the genetic component see one of the
reasons why this is so dangerous this is dangerous thinking to think that we just
have a broken brain is that it puts us in a situation where we think I'm
chemically imbalanced things can never get better I'm always gonna be like this
but there have been so many studies in neuroscience on something called neuro
plasticity I will link to another video I did called the science of hopelessness
but science has discovered that our brains are constantly changing from the
day that were born until day that we've died so no matter what's
happening in your life right now no matter what's going on with your mental
illness science has proven that it can change alright enough about the problem
let's get into the solution because that's how we do here at the rewired
soul but now I'm gonna take a look at Johann Hari solutions and see if this is
some type of formula that maybe I can relate to and this might be something
that can help all of you out there or someone that you know alright so let's
get started there are seven reconnections so let's break them down
one by one we'll take a look at them and I'll share a little bit of my experience
to see if these are reconnections that I've made that might be the answer to
why my life is so much better and I have far more good days than bad days and I
have no longer severely depressed so reconnection number one is to other
people so I personally start of feeling reconnected to other people for me
personally it was food 12-step programs but for all of you out there if you are
not a drug addict or not an alcoholic you for somebody who just experiences
depression or you've been through trauma like the point is reconnecting with
other people what happened to me was I started to attend these 12-step groups
and I started to realize like I'm not alone I'm not alone in this struggle
there are other people out there who understand what I'm going through but
the beautiful part of what I experienced was is that we're all there to pick each
other up one of my favorite sayings is thank goodness we don't all have a bad
day on the same day so through different types of community groups that you can
get and live like you start seeing that you are not alone and it will begin to
reconnect you with other people number two social prescribing so in the
book lost connections there was an interesting method in England that was
introduced to people who were depressed they were put into groups and they had
to go around to various parks or they were assigned apart and their job was to
clean up the park plant flowers and get it all nice and beautiful for the
neighborhood and through this experience what they found was not only did they
start connecting with each other so that also solved the disconnection from other
people issue but they also found that they were now having meaningful work
and they saw that they were actually doing more to contribute to the society
they constantly had people from the neighborhood coming by and thanking them
or bringing them food and everything looked amazing so part of social
prescribing is basically working with a group towards a common goal of making
this world a little bit better of a place and yeah I can definitely relate
to that today I am surrounded by people and I choose to be surrounded by people
who all have the same goal of making this world a better place from everyone
for my mom my mom is not only is she in recovery from addiction she works at a
drug and alcohol treatment center she goes in every day helping people
overcome symptoms of mental illness as well as their addictions to drugs or
alcohol then I have amazing people in my life like my beautiful girlfriend and my
son who get involved with everything that I'm doing to help promote better
mental health and increase awareness and stop the stigma and then my best friend
bosses she is one of the kindest people that I know and she is constantly trying
to make this world a better place which is also costly influencing me to
try to make this world a better place so the social aspect of what I'm doing
today is much different than what it used to be reconnection number three
meaningful work of the thirteen percent of people who love their job 63 people
who sleep work and 24 percent of people who hate their job I can definitely say
that I fall into the 13% man working with my clients who are struggling with
various forms of mental illness as well as trying to overcome a drug and alcohol
addiction like I love my work I love my work like man I almost hate talking
about it because it feels like I'm like gloating about it but no like I want to
let you know that it is possible to find a job where you find meaning in your
work I wake up every day excited to go in and see how I can help people today
and maybe just maybe making a small impact in their lives like if we're
being completely honest here I love my work so much that even though I work
five days a week and I'm on call throughout the weekend I then come home
and make this youtube channel so I can keep trying to help people in more ways
you see what I love what I do so let's work on making
that 13% a much larger percentage it is possible reconnection number for
meaningful values I would say that this is probably the number one thing that
has helped me overcome my depression and it's so hard to explain it to people
like when I explain it to people they look at me like I'm crazy and for me
like through through my experience it just really shows me how really
disconnected people actually are from their values like I no longer judge
myself from what I have or don't have I'm not going around in social media
basing my happiness on whether I have more stuff than the next guy or a bigger
house than that guy or a nicer job or anything like that
like I used to think that I would only truly be happy until I got a nice big
house and I eventually got to that point and now if I'm being completely honest
with you like I pretty much live in the hood and I am happier than I've ever
been like one of the best things is I'm no longer just this mindless consumer
who is costly running towards the next shiny piece of electronics or the new
clothes or the new car or anything like that and like it's hard to explain but
is this truly liberating feeling but I still like stuff of course I like stuff
I'm a video game nerd I love playing video games I love saying all the new
comic book movies with my son I love like building Legos with my kid these
are all great joys but because my values have changed I can honestly say without
reserve that if I were to lose these things if I were to lose that stuff
it would not fuel my depression because what truly makes me happy now is the
value system that I have I found that in this day and age with all of the
advertisements and everything constantly being shoved down our throat is very
hard for us to separate our wants from our needs but good news is I plan on
making a video about that very soon and with this exercise that I teach my
clients it'll really help you get back reconnected with your values number five
sympathetic joy and overcoming the addiction to the self for lack of better
words we have become haters we get upset over other people's success how crazy is
that what are the points that they make in this book is that we walk around
acting like happiness is some sort of scarce resource something in our brain
tells us that if other people have too much happiness somehow it's going to
take away from our happiness like I want you to sit back and think about that for
a second that is a crazy way to think but it's something that so many of us
naturally do like I'm definitely guilty of it me this guy right here I used to
be the biggest hater and it was throughout my life throughout the time I
grew up like me growing up with a single dad not having that much money and all
my friends have these nice big houses and all these other things like I would
get mad that people actually have a mom and a dad who are still married I matter
what my friends got more presents than I did about these things and it progressed
into my life like when my friends were getting married and getting better jobs
and making more money I was so upset like I was mad at them I was like I
deserve that I deserve these things right like it's
crazy and it's really no way to live if we're being honest it's exhausting so
what they're talking about with sympathetic joy this is actually another
word for a mindfulness meditation called loving-kindness and I will do some
videos on it if you check out my video about self compassion that is a form of
loving-kindness meditation but because of this book I will be doing a video
about the loving-kindness meditation that they talk about in this book that
relates more to sympathetic joy like now as a result of being more connected with
others not only do I feel another person's pain when they're in pain when
they're sad or when they're down and I go and I reach out and try to help them
but I also feel joy when other people have good things happen to them when I
see my friends get promotions or raises now or they get married or they get a
brand-new car or they succeed I'm like heck yeah like
anybody who knows me well like the most excited you will see me is when I see
people in my life succeeding like I will be your biggest
cheerleader I swear to you because your happiness equals my happiness you see
what I'm saying you might not see what I'm saying but if you follow these
guidelines you'll get there I promise but the other part of this is the
addiction to the self and this is something that I've had to work on for a
long time and it's really about breaking down the ego breaking down my
selfishness and self-centeredness these are things that are kind of our default
but we can naturally work on a way to quit being so selfish and self-centered
this is one of the reasons I make my youtube channel like like I just
mentioned happiness isn't the scarce resource it is something that is
available to all of you and everybody you know so Who am I to sit back and
hold on to all the things that have helped me and not want to share them
with you I want everybody to experience what I've been able to experience number
six acknowledging and overcoming childhood trauma so for me personally I
was able to do this through my 12-step groups there are steps that are specific
to this I was able to go through the things I endured as a child but for all
of you who are not addicts or alcoholics are not in 12-step groups there are
other ways to do this some of you might find it through church some of you might
find it through other forms of support groups some of you might find it through
therapy again if you're interested in checking out online therapy I'll have a
ton of resources down below by the way but these are things that I was able to
process and work through and let go of like one of the most beneficial things
was being able to forgive my mom for being an alcoholic like she's 12 years
sober now I don't know if I'd mention that but even for the first life five
six years of her sobriety no way that's when that bad even for the first eight
or nine years of so her sobriety I had a lot of resentments towards her
this therapeutic process that I went through I was able to let go and forgive
her which was really letting myself off the hook too because the other most
beneficial thing is I was able to look back and say you know I was a child this
wasn't my fault and for a lot of us who experienced childhood trauma we carry
around this shame or guilt like we could have done something differently to
change this situation but imagine telling a kid that imagine you seeing a
kid being emotionally or physically or sexually abused and you walking up to
that child and telling them that they're in control of this situation it'd be
crazy so part of this therapeutic process is letting ourselves off the
hook and realizing that we didn't have control over the things that happened to
us when we when we were children the only thing that we do have control over
is the work that we do now in this new chapter of our life number seven
restoring the future this is probably most the most difficult one and what
Johan explains in this book it was fantastic but I don't think he had as
much optimism as I do and I'll explain that in just a second so in the book he
discusses a social economic experiment that was done in Canada in the 1970s
that greatly helped reduce depression and anxiety
I won't dive too much into the details now but I will do a later video on it
the problem with this idea of how to restore the future is that it's purely
based on many factors that are completely outside of our control it's
about govern the government spending money on mental health which a lot of us
know isn't gonna happen anytime soon so when I share my story when I share my
story of recovery with clients or other people anybody who wants to listen to it
I share about how I got sober on my 27th birthday and how I was furious
I was furious with my mom that she gave me this ultimatum to get clean or I'd be
on the streets of Las Vegas okay like the reason I share that with people is
because I want people to know even if you don't want help or even if you feel
hopeless and there's no this is gonna get better I want to be an
example that I felt that way over five and a half years ago and now I live an
amazing life so I share that because I want people to remain hopeful because
I'm living proof and the reason I found this the reason this this switch flipped
was because I met a ton of men and women who were as low as I was at some point
in their life they were hopeless they were down they were defeated they were
depressed they were suicidal there were all these things but then
they ended up living these amazing lives this was some hope that I could believe
in I realized I'm like man if that person could do it then so can i and
once I had that kind of hope in mind I knew I knew that I could attain it too
and Here I am I have so that's why I somewhat disagree with that point that
we need some kind of huge outside force to restore the future we need to start
latching on to people who have been through some stuff and now they're
living amazing lives okay because it really puts things into perspective we
often think oh well you know that's okay for you but not for me
but when we start reconnecting with other people and seeing what they've
been through and they'll work that they did to get through it we start to
actually believe that we could do it ourselves I often tell people that the
only reason the only reason I'm alive today is because of one word one simple
word and that's hope okay like hope is such a big deal for me
I literally titled it the name of my first book like it is the only reason
that I'm here today is because I found hope that the future could be better
looking at yo.hannes nine causes of depression and the seven different ways
to reconnect I think this experiment was a success I
can honestly look at everything he listed and it really shows why my life
is better today all of the things that I was able to be reconnected to the moral
of this story is that we can we can overcome depression and it's not
completely dependent on antidepressant medications now because I didn't put
this disclaimer somewhere else in here I don't want to make anybody think that
I'm against antidepressants the studies show that antidepressants do work but
they work very very minimally so what we have to do as people is start doing the
work to reconnect in all these different ways so what we've discovered is
overcoming depression takes work a community of people as well as a
willingness to change but the good news is that it is possible and I am proof of
that as well as so many others so again I've also provided a bunch of resources
down below from the link to johann hores new book lost connections there's some
online therapy there's some other information down there so make sure that
you check out the description down below so I highly recommend that you go out
there and check that out this book or at least share this video share this video
with somebody that you know and let's start seeing if we can start working
together and restoring some of these lost connections okay and I want to end
this video with one of my favorite quotes from the Buddha himself which I
butcher all the time and can never seem to find it on the Internet but here's
the quote that I wanted to share with you don't take my word for it
go out there and try it for yourself if you like this video please give it a
thumbs up and if you're new here I'm making a ton of videos to help you as
well as everybody else out with their mental health make sure you click the
little brown subscribe button over there there are some thumbnails that you can
click or tap on check out some other videos on this channel again please
share this video with people that you know so they have hope restored that
they too can overcome depression thanks for watching I'll see you next time
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