For starters, depression is not "bad." Pretty much everybody gets to deal with depression at various times. It will happen and occur in life. Depression therefore isn't bad, it is just human. It goes with having an "emotional body," the part of you that feels feelings. And you definitely aren't bad or wrong or broken for feeling it.

Depression is usually described as feeling devoid of energy, unhappy, empty and meaningless, bad and wrong and deficient for more than two weeks at a time. So while feeling an unpleasant sense of "wrongness" is part of depression, you yourself are not deficient or bad or wrong or not ok because you have those depressed feelings.

Obviously, we all feel some of the symptoms of depression from time to time. We all occasionally feel unhappy. We all feel like we don't want to get out of bed at times. We all feel like we aren't getting pleasure anymore from things that gave us pleasure. Depression is generally diagnosed when we have these feelings often and repeatedly - lasting about two weeks or so.

None of us want to hear it, but feeling unhappy, listless, lethargic, despondent, downcast, meaningless and deficient is human. We each and every one of us have to deal with those feelings. But when feelings such as those stay around for more than a few hours, days or weeks (depending on our perspective) we go get a doctor to diagnos depression, or we give ourselves a diagnosis of depression.

This is why depression is so serious, because it involves all these unpleasant emotions that we don't want to feel for a minute, let alone for a few days or longer. One of the biggest features of depression is our resistance to it, we don't want to feel those emotions. Thus taking drugs to anesthetize those feelings is very popular.

You aren't wrong or not okay for feeling depression!

Depression is called a mental health issue or disease. Are you bad or wrong for catching the flu? Of course not! Similarly, you aren't bad or not okay for having the illness of depression. Just like the flu, it feels terrible, sometimes like you could just die. But you aren't "wrong" for feeling like dying when you have a flu, and you aren't bad or not okay when you feel deficient from depression. Depression happens in life, and there are ways to make it go away fast.

The good news about depression is that it isnt bad, and you arent wrong or not okay for having it. In fact, you are only bad if you do nothing about it and let it run or ruin your life. But if you can look at it as an emotional learning experience, an opportunity to heal yourself and move forward powerfully in life, then you are ahead of the game!

The other good news about depression is this: it can even an exciting step in your personal growth and development. It is an opportunity to learn a lot about yourself, how you work, what turns you on and turns you off, how to deal with the difficult emotions that come up in life, and what you need to know to actually thrive emotionally. Depression can actually lead to self awareness at a very impactful and rewarding level.

We didn't get to take classes on thriving emotionally in school. We did not get to take courses on dealing with difficult emotions or on how to feel more inspiration and passion in our lives. So depression can be a chance to learn more emotional intelligence. That will have long lasting benefit! You can start by picking up a book on emotions or emotional intelligence to begin your journey of learning!