Depression Quotes

Introduction 

Here’s the truth: overcoming depression is one of the most courageous fights a human being can ever fight. Because while an illness of the body is visible, an illness of the mind is not just invisible, it is also a fight against society’s notions.

You are a warrior. Whether you have been fighting depression for years or having been feeling depressed recently, know this: there is hope.

You are the hope.

And we are here to help you find that hope and love in yourself. os.me Hotline is here to serve you, true to its cause and its free. Reach out to a life guide to seek help. Cross the murky depths of your mind into a life of true joy and peace.

Here are some quotes to help with depression. The change is coming. It’s here, my friend. Right here, in your heart and in the words you’re about to read.

Let’s go 🙂

Depression Quotes 

• If your signs of depression are limited to great boredom, sluggishness, stupor, insomnia, phobia, and restlessness, your depression is at the initial level. You are still in the green zone and can get back to your original mental health in a short time frame.
• If your body is fit but you simply have lost taste in most things you used to enjoy and you find yourself indecisive as well as indifferent, chances are your depression has risen to the level of the subtle body but has not yet touched your physical body. It is still at the level of consciousness. It can be cured with discipline and effort.
• If your body is now unwell because of the depression and you have developed hypertension, high blood pressure, loss of appetite or irregular appetite or similar problems, your depression has already traveled to the physical body. Chances are you suffer from constipation as well.
• Every sane person, at some point in their life, is plagued by a persistent feeling of emptiness. Everything is there but nothing is, you feel. There is no real reason to be unhappy and yet happiness is nowhere to be found. Find the secret to your happiness.
• A life devoid of challenges and conflicts is not necessarily a happy life, in fact, it is immensely boring and will eventually lead to intense sadness and a big void. Our struggles teach us, they shape us.
• What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. – Dr. Victor Frankyl

• The truth is that treatment of depression is entirely dependent on the nature of your depression. And, if you are suffering from depression, you alone are in the best position to ascertain the severity of your depression.
• Before anything else, the demon of depression sucks the hope out of its victim. It starts to feel that it will never leave you. But, there is hope. Really, there is.
• When you constantly compare your lives with others, even with the simple act of prying into others’ online life, you are setting yourself up for misery.
• A noble life may have its share of stresses and challenges, but it does bestow inner peace and extraordinary strength. There’s no room for depression in it.

Anxiety and Depression Quotes

• This is the mother of all diseases, in fact. Really. It is the seed of depression, of anxiety, of negativity. It is the source of human misery and what’s worse is that most people are suffering from it. Far more tragically, and even worse still, they don’t even know it. I call it the disease of Excessive Thinking. 

• In low self-esteem, our physical body is the most gullible and prominent victim. Some may respond to lack of self-esteem by going into depression, drugs, social isolation, but for many, they almost start disliking themselves.
• If you can channelize and harmonize your thoughts, undesirable emotions will disappear like bubbles in a fizzy drink, bringing you at peace.
• With practice, you can strengthen and insulate your inner world to such a level that it remains unmoved, unfazed, unsullied, no matter what. Meditation, serving mankind, good karma, gratitude, and being positive are some of the methods that help you get rid of the anxiety; you can add praying to the list if you wish. It will help you be at peace.
• In my view, our expectations are the primary source of our fears, phobias and anxieties (saving mental disorders). The ones we have from ourselves and others. Each one of us experiences the burden of expectations in our daily lives. If you are any different from what’s considered “normal”, there’s this constant pressure that you have to either become like the rest or prove the value of your exception. 

• One of the two things happens in the face of anxiety and fears. Either we start resisting what creates fear in us (be that a person, an expectation, a situation or anything else) or we give up completely (that I don’t care anymore). Both approaches are pernicious to our spiritual and emotional progress. Ideally, what’s required is to dispel our ignorance that sits at the root of our expectations, at the base of our fears. At some point in time, we have to learn to absorb our resistance, to turn our carelessness into mindfulness.

Deep Depression Quotes

• Anything that shakes us out of our illusions is suffering. Such incidents and experiences, while disconcerting, push us out of our comfort zone. They make us humble and more open to other perspectives. They impel us to reflect on our life, our choices and actions.
• For Buddha, it was the sight of suffering that melted him enough to quit royalty, don robes and embark on his journey.
• When you remain oblivious to the goodness, beauty and divinity in your life, or if you don’t selflessly devote a portion of your time to a cause, life is then forced to hand you the third perspective: suffering.
• Himalayan lotuses don’t grow in freshwater ponds, they blossom in marshes. Emptiness or unhappiness is not a dysfunction of life. It’s not a malfunction of your mind. It simply means that life is telling you to reflect on yourself and your actions. It’s asking you that you no longer neglect your calling or that you find one.
• With everything that we do, so hard and so sincerely, happiness continues to remain a fleeting feeling, an elusive emotion, like the lone cloud on a sunny day — only appears for a short time and keeps changing its form while it’s there. Managing emotions is difficult when life is tough.
• For someone who hasn’t found his or her purpose in life, or for someone who is not passionate about what they do, living can be a mammoth task. Something like happiness should be natural to us because we are beings of joy, we are born out of love.
• You protect what you love, you naturally try to save what you love. If you hurt life, it stops belonging to you, it ceases to be your life. Are you hurting your life?

Motivation and Recovery from Depression Quotes

• Tire your body out a little. Go work out in the gym or play some sport.
• Eat vegetarian foods that are alkaline in nature. Avoid acidic foods. Increase your intake of whole foods. Avoid starchy foods and spices.
• Eat at strictly the same time every day. Do not keep large gaps between your meals. That prompts the body to use stored energy raising insulin levels.
• Go to bed at exactly the same time every day. Do not get stressed about not being able to sleep. Just hit the sack as a matter of discipline.
• Avoid watching TV. It really dulls the body and mind.
• Your life has a life of its own. If you love it, value it, protect it, it would want to be with you. It will become yours. But, if you are going to hurt it, it will fly away from you, far, far away.
• It’s all about how you handle life as opposed to how your life ought to be. Life is what it is. If you deal with it compassionately, gratefully, delicately, you will discover that it’s every bit beautiful, that it belongs to you wholeheartedly. 

Inspirational Quotes to Help in Depression

• Do some selfless service or engage in an emotionally fulfilling social or spiritual cause.
• Do what makes you happy. If you like going outdoors, painting, cooking, reading or whatever it may be, do it. Do NOT read up on depression and other people’s stories.
• Do not talk to those who drain you out emotionally. Reduce phone calls and pointless conversations.
• Do not mention to anyone that you are under depression. Most people will say there is nothing to worry and that you are just stressed, and all the others cannot do a thing about it.
• Even physicians, after you pay them a few visits and keep complaining of depression, will diagnose you with it, putting you on some ludicrous prescription plan. I even suggest that depression is probably a trick condition, a highly profitable one, created by pharmaceutical companies.
• Just like you think of ice cream but may not have it, you can choose to let go of depression exactly like that.
•  It is impossible to know or feel that you have depression until you entertain the thought of actually having it.
• Since we are here, on this planet, with a certain lifespan at our disposal, we may as well live gracefully. Why not carve your own path of happiness based on what all you are blessed with?
• Everything you have ever earned, everyone you’ve ever known will one day be separated from you. It is only prudent, therefore, to value what you have. For nothing is forever (diamonds come pretty close though). Let’s live and honor this life for what it is — a blessing.
• Pain is not only inevitable, it’s necessary. Indeed, it’s absolutely required for our emotional and spiritual growth. It pushes us out of our comfort zone and thrusts us into focused action. Once you are past the anxiety, sorrow and bitterness brought upon by pain, you find yourself stronger and wiser.
• As you are hurt when the other person doesn’t appreciate your efforts, life is hurt too when you keep on resisting rather than appreciating what it’s doing for you.
• Life is frightened and hurt, when you shoot arrows of jealousy, complaints and selfishness. Every time that happens, it distances itself from you. And, when your own life moves away from you, no one or nothing in the world can make you happy then. Not for long anyway.

Sad Quotes

• Sadness is a sneaky emotion, you know. Just like it doesn’t matter how well you feed yourself, hunger starts tugging at your stomach within a few hours, it doesn’t matter how happy you are, sadness with or without its cousins (grief, anger, guilt, melancholy, resentment, fear, repentance etc.) sneaks up on you quietly.
• What is particularly disturbing about depression is that it distances you from everything and everyone you know. You feel like a stranger in your own body, in your own world.
• The root cause of sadness is our expectation that most of what we do should result in joy to us. We tend to look at others and feel they are happy because of “what” they have in their lives. The truth is “what” has never brought everlasting happiness in anyone’s life. It’s “who” you are and “how” you live that determines your happiness.
• One definitive way to ruin your happiness is to compare yourself with others or to covet their kind of life. The modern equivalent of this is checking the Facebook profiles of your friends (and of those people you don’t even know, have never met and will never meet). You look at the smiling pics, happy family, rejoicing, and you think what a great life they have. At a very practical level, social media has made an enormous contribution to society’s overall sadness, I feel. 

• When someone feels sad and unfulfilled most of the time, it’s no longer a question of feelings but of attitude. How to overcome sadness?
• People who are eternally sad live on borrowed dreams. Like every other human being, they want things from their life, things they feel will give them happiness. Nothing wrong with having such expectations except that those suffering from the sadness virus hold others responsible for not seeing their wishes fulfilled. They feel that someone else should have done it for them. That, what they want from their life is not their own but other people’s responsibility.
• The feeling that I-don’t-have-enough doesn’t always arise from comparison, for, you could easily desire better things in life not because others also have them but because you want them for your own comfort. I-don’t-have-as-much, however, arises when we compare ourselves with others. That, others have it more than me and that they have it maybe because they just got lucky. Nothing takes away your happiness as swiftly as these two feelings: I don’t have enough or I don’t have as much.
• Whether we deserve our struggles does not matter as much as the wisdom that nothing will change if I don’t do something about it.
• Remember, a fleeting feeling of sadness is not the same as suffering from the sadness virus. We all experience sadness in different ways, at different times, that’s normal. While sadness lasts the longest out of all the other emotions, it remains a passing emotion. It comes and goes. The sadness virus on the other hand just knocks you out. It needs precaution and treatment.
• The next time you feel sad, do ask yourself this simple question: am I just feeling sad or am I suffering from sadness? Do you feel someone else is responsible for your feelings, or that life has been unfair to you or every other person you know seems to be doing better than you, or do you feel sorry for yourself? If the answer is yes, you need to get up and get into action. Change your thoughts, change what you tell yourself and others, change how you do what you do and change how you look at the world. Start with a positive change, start with something small and measurable. Before long you will walk out of sadness unscathed. Your fears and insecurities will no longer bother you, you will feel as invincible as a lion among a herd of deer. 
• The next time you speak to someone, or they speak to you, no matter how difficult the situation may be, try and select positive, inspiring and hopeful words. Life will feel a lot easier then.

Depressing Relationship Quotes

• If you want to make the existing relationship work, or you just cannot call it quits, you are only left with one choice: accept your partner exactly the way he is. You have tried to change him, and he has tried to change himself but it has not worked. Acceptance will give you peace.
• In broken relationships, there comes a point when two people no longer care about the relationship. They are tired. Giving up on the other person, they become indifferent towards each other. In that indifference, they feel like strangers. It no longer hurts then because strangers can’t hurt you.
• In reality, you can’t forget your own. You can only forget strangers. To forgive though, you have to own them one more time. And when you do that, indifference gives way to love and other emotions. This sets you up to be hurt yet again. It’s almost cyclical. You love, you get hurt, you make up or adjust, you love them again and you get hurt again. It’s nearly inevitable. That’s why people can spend their whole lives in abusive relationships even when they have the choice to move on.
• The only way to avoid being hurt in a relationship is total acceptance of the other person, and that, I may add, is extremely rare. If you become indifferent, the relationship won’t be close anymore, and if you stay close, getting hurt is almost certain. A knotty thing, this life. Naughty too, perhaps. The more caring you are, the more sensitive you will be. And the more sensitive you are, the more hurt you will be.
• Your own will hurt you, for love is not about never getting hurt. Instead, it is about not losing sight of the good in the other person even when they hurt you. Sometimes, it’ll drizzle lightly and sometimes it will rain heavily. At times, it will snow and other times it may hail. Ultimately, it’s all water. Learn to let it pass.

If you store it all, life will become a stagnant pool—it’ll get dirtier with time. If you let go, it continues to flow like a beautiful, blue, clean and placid river. Let it.

Depressing Quotes About Love

• If you are seeking someone in your life because you are lonely, you will be disappointed. You are seeking a seat in their heart and they, perhaps, simply want your chair. Granted that having another person will keep you busy as most worldly relationships do but busyness does not equal fulfillment or bliss. Two lonely people do not make a festive crowd.
• If anyone, only one person wields the power to pull you out of your loneliness once and for all. And that person is you. The complete you, the beautiful you, the indestructible you that is seated in you, that being of boundless glory and magnificence who is forever away from anything even remotely close to ordinary loneliness.
• The only true and eternal relationship you have is with your self. Live it. Love it. Value it. It’s worth it.
• When your partner constantly compares you with others, when most things you do are greeted by criticism, when your freedom of expression or action is not encouraged, when their behavior is erratic, you will gradually and almost surely become an eternal patient of low self-esteem. How to protect self-esteem? 
• Beneath low self-esteem is the underlying feeling of I-am-no-good, a subtle sense of shame. If you experience it then please know that someone has banked on your vulnerability and infused this feeling in you because it is impossible to feel shame on your own.
• We want to live our dreams through the other person. We want the other person to fulfill our desires. Perhaps, it’s natural that we want such things. After all, it is why people enter into relationships so they may feel fulfilled and complete.
• In the words of C.S. Lewis, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

Depression Heartbroken Quotes

• It’s impossible to be completely invulnerable in love. And, this vulnerability is what makes most relationships challenging (and rewarding). Because, when you are vulnerable you are not yourself really. You tend to say or do things you didn’t mean to. You end up making wrong moves. What to do? Obviously, you can’t close yourself to love, lest life be unbearable. And you can’t leave yourself fully vulnerable, lest you be hurt repeatedly. There’s a middle way, there’s hope. Let me give you the golden rule of love: Don’t hurt back when you are hurt. Let the dust settle after the storm and then express yourself non-violently, compassionately. 
• Why shouldn’t we hurt back when we are hurt? Because love is not just a feel-good feeling; that’s easy to have for the one who cares about you. To want someone desperately is not love either. Everyone wants a loving partner. To express that you love the other person is not love. Even a parrot can rant for hours. No doubt, these feelings, desires, and words also make up love. But, these are more like symptoms of love. For, love, in its own right, sits way above all these. What should I do when I am hurt? 
• In love, no one person is a master, for, between you, love, and her, love alone is the master. When two people are in love, they follow “love”. In that devotion to love, in that vulnerability lies the greatest security. Mind may reject this notion but heart knows. That is why, you get hurt, and yet you don’t stop loving. You are hurt again and yet you love again. This is love, this is life.
• Love, in its truest sense, can only be experienced when you don’t hurt back when hurt, when you are mindful with your thoughts, words, and actions. In such a scenario, you rise above negativity and petty emotions. The one who is blinded by his (or her) own desires, or driven by their ego (and not goodness) is unable to fall in love.

Family Depression Quotes

1. Believing we have to “fix” situations and make others feel better prevents us from being present.
2. The other person is simply sharing with you what is bothering them or how they are feeling. If they need your advice, they will ask for it. Until then, they have come to you with the trust that you will hear them out and not judge them, that you will not dismiss them or their concerns as nothing. That, you will not try to lift their spirits with hopeful talk and grandiose statements about their future. You know why? These tactics don’t work.
3. Empathy is not pep-talk or a flurry of false assurances. It is simply the art of sharing their vulnerability and confusion by being fully present. ( Tweetable)
4. In true empathy, the aim is to remove the block of intellectual understanding so we may open our hearts to make space for the other person. The idea is not to interpret their words according to our understanding and regurgitate what we know. Instead, it is to open your door and let them in when you hear the knock.
5. If you have children and you are thinking of putting up with abuse for their welfare, it is a mistake. They will emerge stronger and better human beings living in a peaceful environment. It is better to have a loving and caring family with a single parent than a loathing one with both. If you cannot move out because you are not financially independent, you must gather your inner strength, explore your options and gain such independence. No doubt, you may end up with drastic changes in your lifestyle, your standard of living may go down, but your quality of life will go up significantly.
6. When we know that loss is imminent, that we are about to lose something dear to us, it brings us anxiety, it gives us pain, it makes us feel low. We question everything. It throws us into uncharted waters, our reactions are unpredictable. Just look around and you will see that a majority of the breakups are not “amicable”. We tend to take things personally and the more personally I’ll take something, the greater the hurt. Loss of loved one is painful.

Unhappy Marriage Depression Quotes

• In a marriage, or in any other relationship for that matter, you must take responsibility for your own actions. The other person is not responsible for making you feel happy and good all the time. Let me ask you a question: why did you get married? Did you marry because you wanted to fill someone’s life with happiness or because you wanted to have someone in your life? Perhaps both, but mostly the latter. Besides, your definition of filling another person’s life with happiness may be very different to theirs. You may want to fill her fridge with mangoes whereas she may want papaya.
• When marriage becomes a contract of responsibility in which the other person is constantly watching out for you, such a marriage is doomed to failure. Why? Because one day he or she will get tired. And, when they get tired, they’ll look for other avenues of happiness and joy, they’ll like to be elsewhere where they can rest and recuperate. A sense of tiredness creates distance in a relationship. 
• Demands destroy marriage.
• Inconsistency in the behavior of the other person is what makes most relationships particularly complicated. What’s even worse is that an abusive partner rarely changes his or her ways. When they are fickle and discordant, they’ll remain like that with you. I also want to make an important point here: don’t think that it’s in their nature to be angry. They are — albeit not necessarily consciously ­— choosing to be this way with you because you’ve accepted their misbehavior in the past.
• Most abusive partners come across as loving and respectful at the beginning of a new relationship, but, as time goes by, they become increasingly condescending, even manipulative. If you keep on accepting misdemeanor, they’ll continue to misbehave. Never for the sake of a child or for any other reason should you ever put up with a partner who mistreats you. They treated you well when they were courting you, didn’t they? It means they are capable of good behavior and now you are being taken for granted. If you are financially independent, move on. If you are not, seek financial independence as a matter of priority. 
• If you don’t move out of an abusive relationship, you are doing yourself great disservice. And, if you just can’t call it quits then you must develop your personal method to keep your sanity. Whether your coping mechanism is compassion or shopping, forgiveness or meditation, it’s your personal choice.
• If you are going to treat yourself second-rate by accepting or ignoring offensive behavior, please know you’ll have to face it till your last breath. Your partner won’t improve or change. Better than getting caught up in social definitions of right and wrong is to lead a life of peace and respect. A life of dignity is your birthright. Don’t discount it.

Depression Quotes About Life

• Every event in life changes you a little, some can completely break you. But, often we don’t have the option to remain broken. We have to pick ourselves and rebuild. The truth is the old you never comes back. What happens when a wound is healed? New flesh and new layers of skin are formed, right? This is how any injury heals. The body is old, the wound is old but new skin comes. Similarly, when you are hurt, you may have the same body, same mind, but a new you is building inside. This is an organic process and it takes time. How do I heal myself?
• You have as much right to live, to be, to laugh, to freedom as anyone else. If you are not going to protect yourself, if you are repeatedly hurt before you are healed, bit by bit this life will start to feel like a big burden, a drag. Don’t do that to yourself. This life is a beautiful song; find your voice.
• Make a list of painful events, people, and circumstances in your life, and let go, burn the list or discard it. Keeping them inside can make you cold; consequently, others, including yourself, may not feel your warmth any longer. Remember, warmth is comforting, and it hurts more when it is cold. 

Depression Loneliness Quotes

• Loneliness makes you feel everything is out of place and that you are not complete as an individual or that you must do something or find someone and fill the void you are feeling. 
• Maybe you need to be in a new or different relationship, perhaps you need to change your job or move to a new country, or who knows, you may just be depressed. 
• That feeling of falling into an abyss or just staring at a wall, not knowing where you are heading or ought to go, all of that stems from one’s inability to handle loneliness.
• Loneliness is what you experience when you feel utterly directionless in your life, when you find everything pointless (even if for a short while).
• American writer Edith Wharton was the wisest person ever on loneliness. She believed the cure for it wasn’t always to have company, but to find a way to be happy with your own company. Not to be antisocial, but not be scared of your own unaccompanied presence.
• She thought the cure to misery was to “decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone”.
• Just like fulfilling your desires gives birth to more desires, trying to fill loneliness by having company does not really work in the longer run.
• Everyone we meet in our life is on their own individual journey, we simply cross paths. The cure for loneliness, therefore, is not to find someone or something that keeps you engaged, happy or busy. It is but to find your center of awareness and realize that to taste lasting happiness, we must turn inward and embrace the beauty of loneliness.

Related: Truth of life quotes for wisdom, hope and strength.

Hiding Depression Quotes

• Whether that be two partners feeling anxious in intimacy, a student appearing for an exam or a speaker addressing an audience, hyper-intention severely limits your ability to perform to your potential. Personifying your fear and sending it waves of love and compassion is a good way to handle your fears and phobias. Breathe deeply. Secondly, exposing your phobia, fear or cause of anxiety helps you calm down. Announce your anxiety or its cause right at the outset rather than trying to cover it. Any attempt to hide it will either make it more obvious or you won’t be able to focus 100% on the task at hand because you are so conscious about your anxiety, it’ll only make you more nervous. Your own mind (and many others) will respect you for your courage, for being upfront and honest. By telling beforehand, you have informed others what to expect from you. This approach often works because it goes straight to the source of your fear.

Depression Is Real Quotes from Twitter

“I am Tired” Quotes

Depression Death Quotes

• Your causal body is directly responsible for your consciousness and bodily existence. Many yogic texts state that upon death the soul travels from one body to another just like we discard sullied clothes for fresh ones. But that is not all; the soul does not travel alone. Along with it go the tendencies of the mind (citta vṛtti). Such tendencies that have been strengthened by experiencing the world as an external phenomena through the perception of sound (śabda), touch (sparśa), taste (rasa), form (rūpa), and smell (gandha) with the aid of the ears, skin, tongue, eyes, and nose. Learn how to overcome depression in Yogic way. 
• Is death a matter of choice? Does dying a certain way mean you will or won’t get to heaven?
• When you begin to understand and accept the fact that the departed one has a permanent place in your heart, in your memory, in your life, a subtle healing begins. Do not force yourself to erase them from your memories, to exclude them, just let it be for a while, let Nature take its own course, let it settle. Bereavement heals one over time.
• Grief has two key elements, namely, shock and denial. When you lose someone suddenly, to an accident, for example, it takes much longer to get over the shock. Primarily because Nature did not grant you the time to get ready, to prepare yourself mentally. We slip into a state of denial and disbelief. That leads to an inner resistance. And such resistance leads to inner struggle, depression, and melancholy. How do I overcome the loss emotionally? 
• Acceptance is the key. I am not talking about accepting a loved one’s death, I am referring to accepting the fact that it is painful for you, that it is hurting you, and that everything else is simply a theory. Allow natural healing to take place, allow your emotions to outpour, give yourself an outlet. You can’t afford to have them bottled up, that will make you angry and eternally sad. If you allow Nature to help you absorb and accept the loss, you will find it easier to live without their physical presence. Just like happiness, like laughter and joy, sadness and sorrow are basic human emotions. These make us who we are. Do not curb them, be natural, be yourself. 

Suicidal Depression Quotes

• There is no grief greater than the grief of a parent who has to see their own child go before them.
• It’s true that most religions regard suicide as a sin. It’s considered self-murder in Christianity. Hinduism too calls it atmahatya, self-murder. Scriptures in various religions refer to our body as a temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17 or Bhagavad Gita, 17.6). All this is fine (even though I disagree with the assertion that suicide is self-murder), the truth is religions can be so dry and out of place in the face of real grief. 
• The idea to take one’s own life arises from deep depression, it’s the most devastating outcome of a mental disorder. Just like a doctor is not responsible for a patient’s cancer, a parent can never be responsible for a child’s death by suicide.
• I think to call suicide a cowardly act is to severely downplay the illness of the one who left this world. Their pain must have been so great, their despair so colossal, their path so dark that the only way out they saw was to end their own life. 

• The human mind is a strange phenomenon. In its cruel moments, it can make death appear more beautiful than life, more attractive than any dream. That still doesn’t mean death is a choice. Suicide is not a voluntary act, or a conscious selection. No matter how it appears, no one “chooses” to end their life. Given how difficult and miserable life is for most of the seven billion people on our planet, if suicide was a matter of choice, many would have gone for it wholeheartedly by now. Suicide is a terminal disease. It is the final stage of a mental illness.
• If you have persistent thoughts of suicide then you must seek help right away. Feeling suicidal doesn’t mean your life is bad, it means your depressed mind has taken complete control of you. It means that your freedom of thought is under siege by your own mind. There is always a way to restore the beauty in your life and when death seems to be the only door, you are not looking in the right direction then.
• Shed your fears, your theories and your beliefs for a moment. Listen to your inner voice. Nothing or no one should instil fear in you or make you feel guilty. This life, this moment, this is it. This is the truth. Right here. This is the only heaven and hell. Since we are here, we may as well live it. Let’s flow with the river of life. Whatever be your past, put it aside, let it go. Make your present so beautiful, worthwhile and meaningful that even Death sits by your feet and begs you to stay bit longer, because with you around even Death enjoys life.
• Suicide is one of those things: difficult to come to terms with. The ones left behind are never released from the rattling chains of “why” and “what-if” feelings, that, perhaps they could have prevented it when they noticed suicidal signs. 
• No one is responsible for a soul’s departure from this world, not even the person committing the suicide, or with a person with suicidal signs because my view is that while it may seem one has done it out of choice, in reality, life or death, such an extreme step represents the mind’s failure (and not a conscious selection) to convince itself to remain committed to life. Suicide or suicidal thoughts are not a choice but a fixation. 

FAQs

1. What is depression?

2. What does depression feel like?

3. What causes Depression?

4. Loving someone with depression - How to help?

5. How to overcome fears and phobias?

Fear and phobia dwell and grow in a mind that is full of stress and apprehension towards anything uncertain. Your mindset dictates how you perceive and handle situations in life, and can sometimes carry the burden of irrational fears. This could be due to your upbringing, your lifestyle, your conditioning and your approach towards life. If your mind finds a sense of security living in a fearful or stressful life, you will always find yourself anticipating the worst. And the worst may never come true. Fear essentially makes you weak and does not allow you to think positively.  Watch the full video to hear Om Swami on fear and phobias.

6. What is the main cause of human suffering?

Om Swami says that one of the key things that drives our actions in life or even makes us miserable at times is a fundamental human emotion or desire. Everybody wants to gain in life and be benefited from things they do, for that is equated with progress and growth. It is also nature’s way to grow. So is it with humans.

The greatest gain in one’s life comes with the ability to lose and the greatest learning is to learn that it is ok to lose. It is ok to lose at times and also to be wrong sometimes. If a person wants to win at any cost then they are bound to make many wrong decisions. It is impossible for anyone to win all the time. Even the best teams lose. Om Swami says, the root cause of human suffering is aversion to loss. Watch this video for insights on breaking free of suffering.

Helpful Resources:

• https://www.nimh.nih.gov/ (National Institute of Mental Health)
• https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html (Center of Disease Control and Prevention) 
• https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Common-with-Mental-Illness/Risk-of-Suicide (National Alliance on Mental Illness) 
• https://afsp.org/ (American Foundation of Suicide Prevention) 
• https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide (World Health Organisation) 
• https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ (National Suicide Prevention Helpline)