We live times when we have everything we need in daily life, but at the same time the number of depression cases are raising each year. According to a World Health Organization Report the number of people suffering of depression in 2020 world wide was of 264 million people, and that’s if we consider that these are the diagnosed cases of people that realized they have a problem, and of those who afforded to go to a doctor.
The large number of people diagnosed with depression shows that first of all people do not understand themselves and that this fact makes difficult for them to manage their own mental and emotional problems.
Human needs and late understanding of the self-knowledge need
This increase in the number of people who are diagnosed with depression and other mental problems can be explained by Maslow’s pyramid. People throughout history have worked hard and developed only in the direction of satisfying the first 3 basic needs, namely: physiological needs (water, food, roof, sleep, etc.); safety needs (personal safety, job, health resources, property security, etc.); of the needs of love and belonging (friendship, sense of belonging, etc.).
Step by step, the humans managed to fulfill these 3 basic needs, but once they reached these needs, they felt the need for other 2 more needs such as: esteem and self-actualization. Although it seems simple, many people trying to be respected at their jobs or to develop their career, end up creating deficiencies in terms of sleep, health, belonging, family, friends, and so on. Therefore, the system we live in does not seem to allow us to meet all our needs.
On the other hand we have the subject of psychological development, namely the fact that for a long time we focused only on providing basic needs such as food and roof over our heads, which made our psychological development in terms of self-knowledge, self-analysis, recognition, identification and management of stressors to be way behind our other developments, this is the reason why we need psychologists to help us solve our own psychological problems.
What we should understand is that humans have focused very much on ensuring their basic needs and they did not notice when the other needs created expectations and disappointments that led to various psychological problems. Another thing we must understand that it is not normal for us to psychologically need someone to unravel our inner problems, and that this disclosure needs to be made by ourselves. At first we must develop a certain degree of mind openness to accept that there is a possibility of not liking some answers we may find about ourselves, but despite of that to go over our problems and discover ourselves.
What I described here is called meditation. Many people speak of meditation as a particular practice; however by analyzing the writings of Buddha, Krishnamurti and others, we will see that meditation is the simple act of thinking and analyzing, being aware of and understanding things.
What is the importance of meditation?
Meditation – as an act of thinking, self-analysis and development of human consciousness is the most easily accessible tool for people that helps to solve problems, understand their causes, find solutions, avoid stress and negative emotions, and develop awareness, live beautiful moments and correct our behaviour when it is based on an overreaction or when we can cause a breakdown in interpersonal relationships.
Nowadays psychologists have become highly sought, when they shouldn’t be. They should have in front of them cases related to irremediable psychological problems like those caused by genetic problems, strokes, etc., not cases linked to the simple absence of human desire to do a self-analysis.
How to avoid a visit to a psychologist?
To remedy psychological problems, we must develop habits of self-analysis even in cases where we act pure instinctively. So, in order not to get to the psychologist we must be aware of what we are doing at any moment. And by that I mean, if for example we are arguing with someone in the family, then we would better ask ourselves, “Why did this quarrel start in the first place? What was the reason? Why does the discussion and comments of others about this subject hurt me so much? or Why do I consider the comments on this topic as an attack on me? ” and so on. Or if we get annoyed, when this happens it would be good to ask ourselves “What was the factor that triggered this process? If every time we reacted like that when it came to a certain topic? Or if we react the similarly in relation to certain people or to any other person? “. In the end, it all comes down to an analysis, to questions to ask ourselves and the openness to possibly unpleasant answers, and to the knowledge of our subconscious.
Meditation and happiness
I think you have heard about the “rule of the 5 minutes”, or the “break rule in a quarrel”. For those who don’t know, I will tell you how it works. When people argue, they often say bad things to, they remember all the bad things and this way the quarrel grows even more. The longer the quarrel lasts, the more it escalates. Therefore, the 5 minute rule or the quarrel break rule appeared as a solution to avoid “putting gas on the fire”. What happens in the 5 minutes or in that break from the quarrel? – The moment people take that break, they start to forget a bit of the bad things, to feel sorry for what they said or of the things they could have said and often they end up discussing in a calm tone and focusing on finding the problems that made the quarrel exist.
This rule is very useful for couples, to whom I strongly suggest to take a break, and then return to a mature and calm discussion, without egos and with much compromise on the issue that aroused the argument.
Meditation acts in a similar way to the effect of the break in a quarrel. It refocuses our attention from quarrel, fear or anger and makes us concentrate on understanding the true source of our problems, the reason why it affects us and possible solutions. From another perspective, because meditation helps us to be aware of our actions, it is also the path to happiness, namely the method by which we end up avoiding the emotional and psychological load with problems and stress it helps us develop awareness and experience, live consciously each moment of our life.
Sources:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles. (2014, 06 12). Can’t get started? End procrastination with the 5-minute rule. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, https://cogbtherapy.com/cbt-blog/end-procrastination-5-minute-rule.
- McLeod S. . (2020). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Simply Psychology, https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.
- National Center of Health Statistics. (2021). Depression. National Center of Health Statistics, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/depression.htm.
- Sison G. (2021). Depression statistics 2021. Single Care, https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/depression-statistics/.