Thrive On Purpose (T.O.P.)
Hopelessness, depression, thoughts of suicide… these are a few of the mental health concerns of adolescents and adults in the Nevada Needs Assessments over the last 10 years. Adolescents are considered middle and high school aged children. Both adults and adolescents admit to experiencing stress at home, school, and/or work. Studies show kids who experience sadness, depression and hopelessness for consecutive weeks often reach a point of no longer participating in academic and social activities.
Many of the Nevada Health Assessment questions showed differences in race and ethnicity for topics such as teen pregnancy, household incomes, and insurance; but on the topic of youth sadness, depression, and thoughts of suicide-all ethnicities and races rated within a few percentages of one another showing we are all susceptible to feelings of mild or extreme sadness and depression.
The great thing about depression is it reveals something about you as a person. For example, if you were depressed because you lost your job it would perhaps reveal that you are a person who values your income, or your coworkers, or your job title. If you lost a loved one and were depressed- your depression is equally equivalent to how much you valued that person. If you didn't have these feelings then it would reveal you didn't care about your job or the person that passed away. Sadness isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Emotions become bad when they run our conscious self. Conscious- means we are capable of thinking and decision making. When our emotions run our conscious self, it means feelings of frustration/anger/perfectionism/depression… are now doing the thinking and decision making. You were designed to override these emotions and use logic. Logic allows you to extract necessary information from your emotions in order to make wise decisions.
So how do we do this? How do we put out the emotional fires? Do you remember “Stop, Drop, and Roll” that was taught to save us in the event we are on fire? Well we are going to Stop Drop and Role Play for emotional fires.
STOP. Be honest with yourself about what’s wrong. This is best done on half a sheet of paper- you will use the other half later. After jotting down your perception of what’s wrong…
DROP. Go deeper and answer “why does this all bother me so badly?” Jot down your answers along with your other notes.
ROLE PLAY is where the other half of the paper comes in. Think of your most beloved person and imagine they came to you with everything you just wrote on the opposite side-what advice would you give your beloved? Write it down. Talk out any objections that might come up. Once you’re all “talked out”, you should have written logical and wise advice and maybe even a plan that you can now apply to yourself.
Even when we are feeling hopeless, we usually want the best for the people we value. Removing your problems from yourself and temporarily imagining they belong to someone else allows you to tap into a more beneficial state of mind. Once you have given your beloved person advice, you can take back your problems with a sense of personal power and move forward.
We would never want a person we love to feel hopeless, depressed, or attempt suicide. You are just as loveable and in need of hope and joy.
There is a Scripture that reads: “Stay alert! Watch out for your enemy the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour- 1 Peter 5:8. Basic laws of science tell us gravity is the force that holds you down. Regardless if you prefer a spiritual perspective, the scientific, or both- there is always a force against you. Feelings are our alert systems that can prevent us from being devoured or held down. Don’t let feelings of hopelessness, depression, anger, anxiety turn into emotional fires that spread from adolescence into adulthood. Stop. Drop. Role Play. Let us thrive on purpose.